An Iranian dreams of walking on water
In pursuit of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton attended a conference of entrepreneurs in "an unfamiliar part of north-west London". There, he saw "satellite tracking systems for cattle, hand-held radar devices for recovering lost golf balls" and met three Swedes who "had brought with them a scale model of a power station running on chicken droppings".
All of this, and much more, convinced the philosopher that "capitalism as currently developed remains in its infancy... Untold numbers of new businesses lie latent in our present inefficiencies and wishes." So, he decided to interview Moshen Bahami, an Iranian who had invented a pair of fibreglass shoes, each equipped with an outboard motor, to help their wearer walk on water. Bahami, we learn, had spent five years testing the shoes "in the waters near his mother's house in the resort town of Mahmudabad on the Caspian sea, and envisioned applications in both the recreational and military markets." But then international politics intervened:
"The two of us had made plans, via email, to meet for lunch at a Pizza Hut concession opposite the convention hall. I had just put in an order for some garlic bread and a bottle of sparkling water when I received the news that Bahmani had been detained at Heathrow Airport on the suspicion of importing bomb-making equipment and taken for questioning to an immigration centre at Hounslow. The message was delivered by one of his colleagues, a scientist named Mohammad Shorabi, whose old-fashioned courtesy, cadenced English and tweed suit pointed to a strain of Anglophilia now unlikely except among those whose contact with the United Kingdom has been restricted or exclusively mediated through literary works of the pre-modern period."
What a disservice the mullahs have done to the people of Iran! They have made life miserable for the educated as well as most of those under 30 — who make up more than two-thirds of the population. Rampant unemployment means that these cannot afford to marry, and lead increasingly frustrated lives in cramped family homes. No wonder the country is revolting.
