The Magic Lantern

We, Persians, are famous of unique demeanors and grooves, some are righteous, some are culpable. One of the latter ones is our inclination to necrolatry not in its literal meaning but in the way that we tend to praise long eulogies for the mortified ones and exaggerate about their virtuous traits when just before they die, we completely ignore them or in the case they present or support some contrary or unique idea, we destroy them as much as we can.

I felt the same when I wanted to write about the news I read today in the papers: "Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Passes Away In The Age of 89".

Sometimes you find the great ideas and people so late. A couple of months ago I watched my second film of him, Winter Light, my first film of him was Wild Strawberries. I was astound with what he does with lights in his films and how simply, with no action or much effort he presents the most complicated cognition of human-beings and God relativity in Winter Light. It was very impressive. So I bought his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, and collected around 20 of his films with the help of a friend. I was about to define an "Ingmar Bergman Project" for myself, but I postponed it, to deal with "some more important stuff"*, anyway. Now that he's dead, I should be Persian.

* ...and who knows which is which and who is who...

Captain

South Korea started her car industry lunge at the same time Iran did. They improved day by day, but we produced that junk product over and over for more than 30 years and we were proud to call it our national automobile. Koreans developed other industries and we developed ideologies. The result is that today we are a great market for Korean cars and electronic goods. I use a Korean monitor on my desktop. Korea is a symbol of economic development for Iranian economists.

During 1996 Asian Cup our national football team defeated Korea 6 - 2, that was a great achievement because even in football we have been always behind them. The man of the match was today's best scorer of the whole football history in the world: Ali Daei, who scored 4 of 6 goals.

Daei has had the undeniable position as the team captain till the last FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. But that wasn't easy for him to hold the position. As he got more and more famous he became the target of the most envious critics inside Iran. From one side he became the best scorer of all time with 100+ goals in international matches, but from the other side he was cruelly criticized by the media because he had some deficiencies during some matches and the media and people following them wanted him to retire. Finally all pressures made the national team coaches to omit the long term captain from the list.

He didn't gave up. As he was playing in a mediocre team in Iranian Premiere League, he accepted to coach that team in the middle of the season, and in the end, that mediocre team was the champion of the league with Ali Daei's last goal. He abandoned playing football with glory and with all the envious people who always tried to destroy him.

I once read somewhere describing Daei's personality, it said: "He is the kind of men that has plans for everything, except for his death". And I saw him in an interview when he was asked: "Is there anything in the world that you like to exchange football with it?" and he said: "I exchange football with every good thing in the world. Football is just a small part of my life, I've got many other plans and issues that I like to follow, football isn't my everything."

He is the man of his plans and fighting for his plans.