#3 £8

holy fashion · sacred art · stark visions · naked revelations

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 photos: Siobhan Bradshaw

coverphoto: Masoud
styling: Damien Fox · make-up: Charlotte Day @ Transit
hair: Luke Hersheson · model: Mebrak @ Select

2 3
 Fiction
book I Opium by Rikki Ducornet p.60
Boxer by Alex Harrison p.184

Photoessay
book 2 Signs + Wonders by David Gibson p.48

Memoir
book 3 Unearthing the Life of a Communist by Tim Craddock p.24
Vacancies by Tim Kavanagh p.88

Small World
book 4 Txema Yeste p.112
In the Name of God by Abbas p.232
Iran: the Quiet Revolution by Malu Halasa p.242
Useful Phrases by Mark Leigh p.277

Fashion
book 5 Denise Ledé p.20
George V p.36
Opium Del by Glen Erler p.68
Peter Frazer p.74
Fashion Animals by Iris Broach p.80
Crena Watson p.98
Fred Aufray p.106
Vera Pals p.132
Matthieu Deluc p.136
Ursula Steiger p.176
Masoud p.268

Art
book 6 Fabio Almeida p.10
Mellisa House p.42
Slippeye p.144
Ninth November Night by Gottfried Helnwein p.150
Kevin Martin p.208
Anna Gaskell p.218
Hammond Holmes p.224
Gerrard Hemsworth p.228
Gregory Crewdson p. 260
Mike + Rebecca p.278
Common discovery by Oscar Stevenson p.288
4
Issue #3 · February 1999

Editorial:
Editors in Chief: Masoud Golsorkhi, Andreas Laeufer
Features Editor: Malu Halasa
Art Director: Andreas Laeufer
Arts Editors: Claire Canning, Anthony Wilson
Fashion Editors: Gianni Couji, Geriada Kefford, Charty Durrant,
Jo Phillips, Yasmine Eslami
Editorial Assistant: Richard Christiansen

Patron Saint: Julian Vogel

Public Relations: Carolyn Mac · Phone: 0171.837 03 00 · E-mail: pr@gotank.demon.co.uk

For advertising and business inquiries contact 0171.916 52 64 or E-mail: bill@gotank.demon.co.uk

Tank strongly urges and demands unsolicited contributions; they must be accompanied with a self-addressed
stamped envelope if they are to be returned. Tank will not be held responsible for loss or damage in the post.
Tank is published six times a year by Tank publications Ltd. Reproduction of any material without written
permission of the publisher is an absolute no no. It is also assumed that model releases are obtained by the
photographer or contributor. The opinions expressed in Tank are that of the authors. Tank is in no way
responsible or liable for the accuracy of the information herein or any consequences arising from it. Now
you know.

Distribution by Art Data (44) 0181.747 10 61 and Seymour International Division (44) 0171.734 21 11

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London NW5 4ZD © Tank publications Ltd. 1999
Phone + Fax 0171.916 52 64
E-mail: editors@gotank.demon.co.uk Issue #4 · out April 1999

(for subscription details see page 292)

 try god
Anthony Wilson, 1999 ©

From the series good for nothing

8 9
 art: Fabio Almeida @ Creative Union
with the help of Adrian Self
10 11
13
15
17
19
 photos: Denis Ledé
styling: Elisabeth Haury · make-up: Philippe Milleto · hair: Maxime dress with body cut out by Isabelle Ballu
20 21
super long stretch knit dress Xüly Bêt polymide blouse with red fire print Yoichi Nagasawa
 unearthing the life of a communist

memoir by Tim Craddock

images by Unknown

24 25
 Paulina was a Slovak from Bratislava. Her family history embodied the turbulent
politics of Eastern Europe. Her grandfather had been captured by the Nazis during
World War II and liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp by the Red
Army. He eventually went on to become a high ranking policeman in Bratislava,
but was ejected from the force when he criticised the Communist invasion of
Czechoslovakia. In 1968 his daughter Jana, a student, was part of a group who took
down street signs, a token gesture of defiance, which hindered Russian tanks from
entering the city centre. Jana had worked for a government propaganda depart-
ment, and ironically preferred the old life she had as a Communist behind the Berlin
Wall. Paulina's brother-in-law was sick all the time, directly related to the radioac-
tive fallout from Chernobyl, a few hundred miles to the east, in the Ukraine.

Paulina herself had been a Young Pioneer, Communism's answer to the Hitler
Youth. The Pioneers performed at party functions and like the Hitler Youth pro-
vided the perfect propaganda photocall. In her red skirt, white blouse and red neck
scarf, Paulina saluted, reciting, "To build and defend the Czechoslovak Socialist
Republic, be ready. ALWAYS READY!"

Last year with Paulina I visited Bratislava, now the capital city of Slovakia, the
poorer, sadder half of the former Czechoslovakia after the country split itself in half.
I had come to the region not to see the totalitarian edifices illuminated by western
neon - Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Levi's. I’d come to look for the country that existed
during the Cold War under whose shadow I had grown up. I had also come to
Bratislava because I had fallen in love. Getting to know Paulina’s country was
another way of getting closer to her.

We had gone to visit a castle, once occupied by Central European Celts, on a rocky

26 27
 outcrop on the confluence of the rivers Danube and Morava. The castle and the
nearby village of Devin had long been a symbol of Slovakian defiance. Many ancient
battles had been fought and won here by the Slovaks. The modern version of their
language was symbolically born among the ruins of the castle. Because the castle
was closed during the time of our visit, in the winter, Paulina and I walked down to
the Danube to view the ruins from the road. As we rounded the corner we came face
to face with crumbling, pastel yellow building, at two stories high not particularly
large but imposing, with three large windows positioned below two protruding obser-
vation platforms, silently guarding the Slovenske Nabrezie road to Bratislava and
the rivers that lie beside it.

"What's that?" I asked Paulina.

"I think it's the old border station."
"Is it Russian?"
"Of course it’s Russian," she said with a slight laugh and the little smile that I noticed
in so many people when I tried to broach the subject of the Communist occupation
of their country. Nobody really understood my interest; there was little acknowl-
edgement of what had been left behind. She finished by saying, "I'm hungry. Let’s
go and get something to eat." The wind chill had reached about minus fifteen and it
was starting to snow again.

For the next few months, I returned often to Devin. When the Communists began
their occupation of Czechoslovakia, the village became one of the most heavily pro-
tected borders in the region. Its dangerous proximity to the west, Vienna was only
an hour away, changed the life of this unassuming village forever. I began pho-
tographing the border station, a harder task than I initially thought. The support-
ing walls had collapsed and gaping holes in the floors led to murkier levels below.

28 29
 The main rooms remained relatively intact, littered with rubble from the Russian
withdrawal a decade ago: empty 9mm bullet boxes and practice targets, spent and
rusting Kalashnikov rounds, even a red banner stating in Slovak ‘We have the power
to unite the party’. Dark corridors ran the full length of the building, riddled with
bullet holes, leading to dormitories and administration rooms. I didn't venture far
into these, the darkness and silence coupled with Satanic graffiti and the rumours
that ex-Soviet buildings are used by the secret police as training centres - a possi-
ble explanation for the discarded targets - were enough to keep me away.

On the roof of the building was a bizarre open-air theatre used by the Russian Army
to entertain the locals, the remains of the banked seating was being reclaimed by
the hillside. Whilst photographing the lookout posts at the front of the building I
noticed a Border Police car driving slowly along the road towards the station. This
was not unusual as the river remains the border and is still patrolled on a regular
basis. What alarmed me was that the car stopped and a lazy looking policeman let
loose his two German shepherds. I ran back to the edge of the hillside and played
the tourist, pointing my camera up at the castle. I don't know if the police would
have challenged me. Instead the dogs took an interest in a passing cyclist. By the
time the police controlled the dogs and the appropriate apologises were made I man-
aged to get clear of the border station, and continued looking as ignorant and as
lost as possible.

In the spring I returned to Devin with Paulina. We had decided to make the mile
walk from the castle along the bank of the Morava river, alongside the remains of
the posts that once held the electrified barbed wire fences. Towards the edge of the
river, lay tangled clumps of barbed wire, overgrown and rusting. Paulina recalled
the signs that ran at intervals along here, ATTENTION! THE RIVER IS THE

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 BORDER. STOP! DANGER OF DEATH!

About half a mile away the path split. We left the main route and carried on up a
hillside. On the way we passed several discarded frames of photographic negatives
lying on the edge of the track. I made a joke about how somebody had obviously
been unhappy with the way they looked. Paulina always disliked the snapshots I had
taken of her. We continued walking until the path we were on became part of a pri-
vate driveway. On the way back down curiosity got the better of her and she bent
down to look at one of the frames. She laughed again in that despondent way and
said, "You’re not going to believe this." The strip turned out not to be a negative, but
a positive, a frame from a motion picture.

"What is it?" I asked her.

"Zivot Kommunisty."
"What does that mean?" I was intrigued.
"Yes, Zivot is life and Kommunisty means communist, The Life of a Communist."

For the next few minutes we searched in the nearby bushes for further title frames
from this unknown film. Pieces were found hidden under the weeds and long grass,
but the majority of it came literally out of the earth. One tug pulled ten or twenty
frames on a single strip out of the dusty soil. Everywhere we looked there was more:
Russian and German officers, Soviet newspaper headlines, battle sequences with sol-
diers running up hillsides only to be met with an explosion in the coming frames,
close-ups of eyes, worried faces, villagers playing the guitar, the launching of ships
and industry in full swing. All were highly deteriorated and unstable images from
what appeared to be a Russian film about the war. The Soviets never missed an
opportunity to celebrate their victory over National Socialism so I assumed the film

32 33
 was intended as propaganda.

I tried to find out about the film, but again local people asked me why I bothered.
I went to the university library, but my limited knowledge of Slovak ensured that my
research was short-lived. I have always believed that the best photographic images
are those that keep you guessing. In the end I preferred knowing as little as possi-
ble about the film. Each image was evocative enough. It was certain that The Life
of a Communist was just another low budget triumphalist propaganda tool. Just
like the border station, knowing the mundane daily routine of the place detracted
from the sinister world that lay behind it. Perhaps this is simply a reflection of the
very thing that started my interest in the Cold War to begin with, the not knowing.

Paulina and I became engaged at the end of the year and I returned to Bratislava
several times after that. During one of our last phone calls together, I quizzed her
about the slogans she recited as a Young Pioneer, at the time I was unaware of the
imminent demise of our relationship. With hindsight I should have paid more atten-
tion to the words, in particular the last line, a subtle warning the likes of which the
Russians have always been good at.

"Bud pripraveny, vzdy pripraveny!" Be ready, always ready.

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photos: George V.
assisted by: Celia Peterson · concept and styling: Suzanne Pawson
hair: Cim Mahoney @ Marina Jones using Sebastian
make-up: Petros Petrohilos using Ruby Millie right: Leather jumpsuit by Sophia Kokosalakis · Cream neck piece by Sophia Kokosalakis
models: Laura Foster @ Storm · Mebrak @ Select
left: Leather waistcoat by Robert Carey Williams · Black neck piece by Ruhwal
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Cream pleat neck piece by Masaki Matsushima · Cream top by Justin Oh · White skirt by Ann-Sofie Back left: Neck piece stylists own · White shirt by Ann-Sofie Back · Black skirt by Ruhwald
right: Black dress with white collar by Junya Watanabe · Black shoes from Gamba
38 39
left: Black half jacket by Marc Le Bihan Grey trousers by Ann-Sofie Back Grey & orange pleat top by Masaki Matsushima
right: Grey top by Shelley Fox · Grey pleat top worn as skirt by Masaki Matsushima
 photos: Mellisa House

42
 signs + wonders
photos: David Gibson
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 Once, not long ago, the Pope issued a Bull extending his powers across all territo-
ries known and unknown, illusive yet looming, dreamed and undreamed; and to all
crimes against the Church, known and unobserved, ancient and newly rehearsed.

But now this Pope of infinite powers, who has the authority to transform living souls
into torches, and who in the simplest things has discerned a sorcerous complexity,
is himself failing. In a dream he imagines that he is a lump of hot and heavy mat-
ter slowly receding, as if time were a silent vortex and his fall both final and with-
out risk. Cushioned by opium, his fall is delicious. Steadily he sinks into his feather
bed, almost vanishing altogether much the way the droppings of a polar bear burn
their way down through arctic ice before tumbling into an element too deep to be
fathomed.

For weeks the Pope's only nourishment has been little balls of opium wrapped in gold
leaf and flavoured with honey; opium and the milk of a wet nurse. The milk is fed
to him from a gold cup. But this morning the Pope makes a request. He wants the
wet nurse to come to him herself and suckle him directly. His voice is weak and
strange; the words bubble from his tongue like oil from a bottle and yet there can
be no doubting his intention: the cup hurts his gums, he has tasted blood, he can no
longer lift his head without vertigo. He wants the girl to open her blouse here in his
chamber and to cause her breasts to dangle in such a way that he may seize the nip-
ples between his gums.

This is a delicate matter. How may the Grand Penitentiary comply with the hier-
arch's request without scandal? Hurrying like a huge bird through a succession of
opium
apartments, he comes to the door of the chamber where the wet nurse now prepares
by Rikki Ducornet to ease her milk into the half-moon of glass she holds pressed to a breast. Just as a

60 61
 spray hisses into the glass, the Grand Penitentiary knocks. Startled, the girl and the
nun whose special office it is to carry the gold cup to the Pope's chamber, exchange
a troubled look. Having announced himself the Grand Penitentiary steps inside.
The room smells of lactose and of freshly threshed hay; it also smells of verbena:
smells that ever after will evoke the young girl who, her shawl pulled tightly across
her bosom, the glass clasped in her hand, is burning two holes in the floor with her
eyes. The Grand Penitentiary bows his head and attempting to put the two women
at ease, aborts a smile. Then fluttering his hands in the air as if to dispel an invisi-
ble threat hovering there, a threat caused by the sweetness of the girl's own perfume,
he bids the nun to leave. Dissolving, she could not do this more precipitously.
The Grand Penitentiary is standing before the girl who is so small he thinks he could
crush her with a word. Her hair is so pale it is almost white and her little hands are
no bigger than a child's. He wonders at her youth; she looks no more than twelve.
Why is she not a virgin spinning in her father's house? As she stands before him
trembling, he recognizes that the situation makes him anxious also. And floods him
with shame. The milk, until this moment an abstraction, is, he sees this now, a sex-
ual fluid. He wonders if there is an infant at home. Or if the infant, her first, for
whom the milk was intended, is dead.
"Child in Christ," he manages at last. To his terror and surprise she lifts her gaze
from the floor and with two perfectly clear, grey eyes, eyes spinning like the wheels
of perdition, needles him through and through. He turns away and utters a prayer;
recalls how in the presence of the sumptuous courtesan sent to seduce him in his cell,
Blessed Thomas took up a branch from the hearth and putting it to his loins,
quenched his own fire.
62
"The Pope. . ." he says. "The Pope..."
The morning they found her, a mole had made its way into the kitchen so that when
she was asked to follow the Papal messenger, she was amazed that such unprece-
dented good fortune should attend a bad omen. But now when she hears the Pope's
request she knows she is doomed. As she follows the Grand Penitentiary down the
hall and into deep rooms thick with tapestries and gilded stoves, she falters and her
shawl slips to the floor. Treading upon it, the half-moon of glass she has held so
tightly slips from her fingers and breaks in two. As from out of the air a page
smelling of amber appears. Picking up the pieces he vanishes.
"No matter," the Grand Penitentiary whispers as he cleanses the air with his fingers.
"It doesn't matter."
Although the day has only just dawned and a grey light illumes the city, entering the
Pope's bed chamber is like entering a cathedral at midnight. All the curtains have
been pulled and the room's bilious atmosphere is blistering with more candles than
she has ever seen. These candles illume the figures of angels that in the flickering
light appear to scurry up and down the walls like monkeys among the tendrils and
vines of an enchanted forest. Or troops of evil angels riding saddled owls and even
the old gods, cloven-hooved and horned: the figures evil women use to enflame the
passions of their rival's husbands and kill infants in the crib. These figures adorn cab-
inets and candlesticks, chairs and chests and the Pope's own bed and are reflected
in and multiplied by mirrors. The walls of the Papal chamber are crusted with mir-
rors: should the Evil One ever manage to enter here, he will be struck down by the
compounded shock of his own fatal glance. But the wet nurse thinks the mirrors do
not exorcise evil so much as conjure it. She has heard of the nocturnal orgies of
63
 witches and imagines they take place in rooms such as this.
So great is the girl's astonishment, so great her terror, that upon entering the Pope's
chamber she neglects to make the sign of the cross. To bring her to her senses, the
Grand Penitentiary pinches her arm.
"Fe and Minus", he murmurs, thinking: the feminine is far too feeble to persist in the
Faith. Still pinching the flesh of her arm he leads her to the Pope's bed, recalling the
previous day when a girl not much older than this one had been chained to an iron
ring. The ring was attached to an iron pole set in a circle of fire. From a Vatican
window he had watched as the girl ran around and around in her attempt to escape
the fire. He imagines the wet nurse running within a circle of fire.
A tasselled canopy yawns over the Pope's bony head like a mouthful of gold teeth.
She sees the stubborn beak of his nose, his hands like talons gripping an ivory cru-
cifix the size of a small tree. As she unties her blouse, he opens his eyes. Those eyes
are blind and this is a consolation. When she bends over the bed, her breast tumbles
forth, shining like a planet in the firelight. The Grand Penitentiary reminds himself
that if her breast, her throat and lips are smoother than oil, her womb is as bitter
as wormwood.
There is so much smoke in the room that when the Pope gums her nipple she coughs.
Her nipple leaps from the Pope's mouth making a sound which evokes childish laugh-
ter. Peering about her as best she can she sees a tiny black child dressed in white
lace and circumventing the room with an aspergillum and holywater. She has never
before seen a black child and she is astonished to see one here in the dying Pope's
chamber. Was he a gift or had he been purchased? This power of the rich to buy the
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bodies and lives of others causes her to weep. Studded with pearls, the Pope's night
cap soaks up her tears.
She returns to the Pope's chamber in the afternoon. Entering the room she looks up
into the Grand Penitentiary's eyes which reflect the candle flames and glitter as
though made of glass. Because she is wildly superstitious, when she sees those flames
in those eyes she fears for her soul. And he, looking into her eyes in turn, sees a lit-
tle man. Once again he knows he must guard himself against her.
The Pope drinks from her body without eagerness. She thinks that her life is seep-
ing into a dark place like a dark hole of soft earth and wonders at the world's
strangeness. Why has God caused her own little one to die that she may give suck
to a moribund? For some reason she recalls how her brooding turtledove seemed to
sob just as her hatchlings broke free from their shells. Moving near, the little African
in his astonishing white dress offers her a shy smile. She wonders what would hap-
pen to her if she ran from the room with him. And in the village what would they
say if she took him for her own? What would the child say when she fed him barley
gruel and black bread? She supposes his enslavement is sweetened with spice cake
and jam, things she has never herself tasted.
When having once more circled the room he approaches her again, she asks him
what he is given to eat, and is it served on a gold plate? But the Grand Penitentiary
is beside her and with a grimace silences her, although this afternoon the room is
sighing with a conclave of cardinals; they rustle in their red robes like wind in sails;
they whisper unceasingly to one another.
The following morning when she offers her breast, the Pope does not drink. Instead
65
 when he opens his mouth, a gold ball falls out and catches to the lace of his pillow.
This astonishes her and she stares at the thing in awe. Later in the day the Pope
dies, and as the air shudders with the tolling of bells she is taken to an inner court-
yard paved with stones as white and round as ostrich eggs, and there her neck is
broken.
For these acts of war, of faith and of longing, they will be awarded miracles: phan-
tom earthquakes, the sight of a mosque spontaneously combusting, of a Moorish
king struck down by lightning, the vision of a white city filled with cries but devoid
of inhabitants. And they will be awarded glory which, like riches and miracles or so
they imagine buys sufficient time to aspire to immortality.

Not long after the new Pope issues a Bull dividing all the world's undiscovered places Copyright © 1997 by Rikki Ducornet. Used by permission of Rikki Ducornet,
between the Spanish and the Portuguese. A vast number of ships set sail for Africa Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency + Henry Holt & Co., Inc.
and India although those lands swarm with infidels, astrologers, druggists,
alchemists and planetarians. It is easy to find men eager to join in the adventure of
territorial expansion for all Europe stinks of burning flesh. The promise of sea air,
of breaking heads with mattocks and axes, of pillaging flourishing cities, of poison-
ing fountains of sweet water with the corpses of camels and children; to in the name
of the Holy See cut off so many noses and ears the land of Ormuz will appear to be
populated by lepers; to destroy all those who worship the sun, the moon, the lamp
and cows, and those who hold trees sacred, and those who worship the circumpolar
stars which never set, and those who worship the whirlwind, the hurricane and waves
on water; to annihilate the princes of Malabar who feed the crows before feeding
themselves; to slay men who for medicine inhale the powdered dung of leopards and
drink the urine of virgins inspires several generations of men. Restless at sea they
dream of the four tastes of the oranges of Celam, of certain hairy caps from the
Levant and weapons made by wizards; of gold plugs taken from the ears of kings
and red and white coral shaped and strung; of pieces of true musk the size of a fist
and loaves of coarse camphor; of fine rosewater kept in little barrels of tinned cop-
per, of earth from the tomb of St. Thomas and of opium from Aden. Upon return-
ing they will bring a white elephant to kneel at the feet of the Pope and they will
scatter the gems made by Adam's tears across the Pope's path.

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 opium del
photos: Glen Erler
styling: Geriada Kefford · styling assistant: Cynthia Lawrence-John
thanks to Yuko + Nico @ The Pineal Eye
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White vest with sequin trim by Versace
red felt top with snake skin trim, from The Pineal Eye White dress, Ozbek

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 photos: Peter Frazer · fashion: Song & Kelly

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animal fashion
photos: Iris Broach @ A+R Associates
styling: Jackie Allocca-Astier @ A+R Associates · make-up: Francis Hathaway @ Bradley Curry
Management · hair: Greg Bitterman @ Bradley Curry Management · props: Karin Bagan @ Bradley Currey
Management · models: Marianne Schroder @ NY Models · Sophia Chrysochoidou @ Aline Souliers
Management · Lisa Davies @ Ford
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page 81
Mink Pullover and bronze beaded skirt by Fendi · Wrapped scarf by Adrenne Landeau
Hat by Yohji Yamamoto · Boots by Hermes · Mohair sweater by Paxton · Leather sheath top by Barbara Bui
Faux fur trim sweater by Anna Sui · Skirt by Patrick Robinson · Bag by Fendi · Boots by Manolo Blahnik

page 82
Yellow dress by Patrick Robinson

page 83
All necklaces by Roxanne Assoulin · Dress by Jill Stuart
Skirt layered under dress by Donna Haag · Boots by Jimmy Choo for Jill Stuart
Carpet and faux fur pillows from Adrienne Landeau ·Velvet pillows and throw from ABC Carpet and Home

page 84
Velvet coat with fur collar by Jill Stuart · Lace Dress by Collette Dinnegan
Mohair furry tube by Paxton · Skirt by Vivienne Tam · Fur scarf as hat by Adrienne Landeau

page 86
Fur and satin dress by Fendi · Fur coat by Fendi 87
 vacancies
photos: Tim Kavanagh @ Wilde
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 photos: Crena Watson @ fourtytwomanagement

hair: Raphael Salley · make-up: Glen Jackson @ Rockit

photographer’s assistant: James Knapp & Carl Fox · styling assistant: Dan

hair assistant: Scott Hoban · make-up assistant: Jo Zeid

models: Zoe Manzi @ Models 1 · Samia Bayou @ Models 1 · Katy Lyons @ Models 1

Rebeka Bardou @ Elite Premier

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Gold bracelets by Farah Lister · Topaz rock ring by Van Peterson · Gilt chain by Van Peterson
Gilt matt wrist knobble by Van Peterson · Gilt Brooch by Van Peterson · Handmade multi-strand
crystal beads · Long crystal necklace by Farah Lister · Silver bracelet by Butler & Wilson
Clear crystal rock pendant by Van Peterson · Rock crystal ring and grey pearl by Van Peterson
Gold choker multi-drop by Farah Lister · Handmade crystal spider brooch by Farah Lister
Matt silver torque by Van Peterson

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 photos: Fred Aufray
styling: Yasmine Eslami · fashion: Gaspard Yurkievich
photographer’s assistant: Amir Boughir · make-up: Marco Latte
hair: Wendy Iles · models: Christelle Cervelle · Andrea Uskova · Charty
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 Every summer the motorways of Spain are witness to a wave of North Africans
returning home. They are burdened by gifts and goodies for relatives back home.
The migrants can't afford hotels so they rest by the roadside and try to make the
trip as fast as they can. "You can always recognise them by the heaving roof-racks
covered in the signature blue tarpaulin," observes Spanish photographer Txema
Yeste who hitched a ride with a family from Barcelona.

photos: Txema Yeste

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 930 miles

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 929 miles

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 702 miles 552 miles

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 402 miles

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 399 miles 399 miles

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 251 miles 99 miles

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 0 miles

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home

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 photos: Vera Pals

styling: Delphine Pavy · hair: Ed · make-up: Alex

image manipulation: David Martin

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 photos: Matthieu Deluc

styling: Christoph Martinez · hair: Fouad @ Olga + Katherine Verxeman

make-up: Marmotte @ Callifte · Special thanks to Hotel Westminister Paris

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Jacket by Dries Van Noten · Skirt by Jean-Charles de Castelbaljac

Model: Melissa Peters @ Metropolitan & Juliette

page 138

Dress by Dice Kayek · Necklace by Irie

page 139

Trousers by Sandra Wauchob · Tights by Courreges · Shoes by Martine Sitbon

Bag by Jean-Charles de Castelbaljac · White Scarf by Veronique Leroy

Models: Kelly and Sandrine

page 140

Waistcoast by Dries Van Noten · Model: Julia R. @ Marilyn Agency

page 141

Shirt by Vivienne Westwood · Model: Tim Rippert @ Next

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 art: Slippeye
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149
 ninth november night
by: Gottfried Helnwein · go: www.helnwein.com

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Words by Reinhold Mißelbeck, Museum Ludwig Köln

The National Socialists developed a system from a mixture of arrogance, racial the-

ory, dictatorship and military might, which allowed them to define "life not worth

living", to discriminate against and eventually to annihilate millions of people. Since

the turn of the century science had described and evaluated racial characteristics

with the help of a profusion of pseudoscientific literature. Reichskristallnacht,

German Crystal Night, was the signal, and on November 9, 1938, the general

destruction of Jewish property took place, in the particular the smashing of the

glass, the crystal, in shop windows. All that had been developed by scientists and

made legitimate by politicians was put into effect.

The 100-metre picture wall of Neunter November Nacht, developed and construct-

ed by the German artist Gottfried Helnwein, serves as a timely reminder of the mass

murder of 18 to 26 million, including Jews, Romanys, Slavs, Russians, homosexu-

als and victims of the doctrine of racial purity. Erected between Museum Ludwig

and the Cologne Cathedral along Platform 1 of the main train station were 17 pic-

tures of children’s faces, measuring four by two metres, finished using the scan-

nachrome process. Next to these, in small format, a black and white table shows a

schematic illustration from the Test Book of the Sub-Human, which compares the

pseudoscientific differences between Aryan and "inferior" races’ seated postures and

footprints.

165
What we see in Helnwein’s portraits are average faces, identical to hundreds of

other children we could meet on the street. Except the faces of these children,

between the ages of six and seven, whose skin is slightly toned white with make-up,

are passive in a way which is difficult to describe: sometimes the eyes are half closed,

sometimes the head is photographed slightly from below or just off-centre. The por-

traits are irritating. There is no good cheer, no childlike innocence. We imagine pic-

tures of children to be different. It is merely the subtle alterations in the facial

expressions and posture that cause us to be disturbed by these images. As soon as

one rids oneself of the emotional impression and attempts a sober appraisal, it

becomes obvious that these are wholly normal, thoroughly average children’s faces.
It is exactly this effect, which Helnwein aimed to achieve in his work. He wanted

to shock, but at the same time he also wanted to make it clear that there is really

no reason for such a shock, that all that we see is completely normal. In this man-

ner he achieves an impact, which is principally comparable to the effect of National

Socialist propaganda. The people who had been targeted and murdered during

World War II were lovers, friends and neighbours foremost. They had not changed.

What had been altered, through a pernicious government campaign, was their pub-

lic image. The study of this tragedy demonstrates that it is enough to alter the way

an image appears to the public in order to achieve the destruction of a system of val-

ues handed down through generations. Something similar is induced by Helnwein’s

portraits, which cause the sight of completely normal children to be shocking and

make their faces appear ill and strange.

From the outset Helnwein has complimented his work in art with photography.

Through the years he became conscious of the possibilities photography possessed

outside the realm of painting and drawing. As much as photography has been manip-

ulated, it still bears the remainder of its authentic force and of its daily use - the

power of documentation.

Helnwein’s Neunter November Nacht appeared on a grand scale during the

Photokina ‘88 exhibition, which was visited by hundreds of thousands of people. The

100-metre wall did not fail to hit its mark: it induced bewilderment as well as

aggressiveness. After a few days numerous pictures had been slashed, one even

stolen. Helnwein did not renew the pictures, but patched them up to show that the

persecution of the Jewish people still bears the traces of a lack of insight and under-

standing even today. The appearance of the picture wall arouses feelings as through

much more than a picture had been injured by these stabs and slashes.
173
175
 photos: Ursula Steiger

styling: Victoria Adcock @ The Industry · make-up: Liz Pugh @ The Industry using Ruby and Millie

hair: Lance Lowe @ The Industry using Aveda · photographer’s assistant: Simon Taylor Ruffle neck blouse and pleated skirt both by Sophia Kokosalaki

styling assistant: Jennifer · models: Charlott Quarmby @ Select · Sebastine Renyolds @ Models 1 Black moulded bodice and pendant both by Boudicca
176
Zebra print feathered hat by Philip Treacy ./.
White flec jacket and multi coloured check trousers both by Andrew Groves
Yellow silk shirt by Yoss
Hair band and piece by Anna Sophia Back · Black shirt and striped tie both by Paul Smith
Black trousers by Alesdrandro Dell Aqua · Butcher's apron by Robert Carey Williams
Burnt effect top and skirt both by Shelly Fox · Silver circle ring by Jacqueline Rabun ./.
Silver dress by Robert Carey Williams · Tights by Jonathan Aston · Shoes by Paul Murray Watson
Breeks by Holland & Holland · Tights by Jonathan Aston · Shoes by Paul Smith
 There is a gulf between where Asif Ahmed is, a bare-knuckle champion, a cobble
fighter better known for his ability to tear apart doormen and their reputations than
he is for the power of his left hooks and his expert defence, and where he wants to
be: acknowledged and respected by those he sees as his peers, those he admires, the
boxing pros.

And part of the secret to this is gleaned from the BBBC yearbook, his meagre
record: eight fights in a 20 month period, four wins and four losses, and those seven
years ago. Irredeemable as a pro, but in the illegal ring he had still a savagery and
wildness which he tied up with science and skill, speed and stamina. Something the
memory of those losses unleashed in him. He was far from being a spent fighter ...

"How popular is your sport now?" I asked Marlov, the colourful Russian promoter,
who also managed Ahmed. "In recession, people love to hark back. They look at the
bills and the mortgage, the money they must spend for all their entertainments, their
complicated financial position in short, and they feel nostalgia: and why not feel nos-
talgia for the great days of the English prize ring? Why not? It is folk memories
recreated," Marlov declaimed. "See, people talk about bloody kung fu and their
karate, but it was here in Britain that the most effective and the most beautiful mar-
tial art ever was begun. Think on."

"But Asif kicks ..." "No. No. There are times when Asif has been involved in promo-
tions where the rules have allowed the fighters to kick but I defy you to find me a
single tape — and there are many many tapes, up to seven generations of tape of
his battles — on which Asif kicks his opponent. And you can take my word: if the
boxer
man did kick, he would kick like the mightiest horse. Asif would have the kick of
by: Alex Harrison Pegasus."

184 185
 Marlov spoke as if there were particular concepts in his sentence that he wished he
could give more expression to: "complicated financial position" "bloody kung fu" and
irony, scorn, and empathy attached themselves to strange parts of his paragraphs:
he was a man who truly spoke in them. Words foamed from him, and yet his mean-
ings were obscure.
DATELINE: LONDON, SEPTEMBER 2004, "The Boxer Who Cried" by Max
Pendlebury, Exclusive to The Sunday Times — On the eve of his most recent fight,
Asif Ahmed and Max Pendlebury, a journalist, made a desolate sight sitting beside
one another in a small pub in the East End. Max had spent the morning writing
questions which span from spoked bubbles on small pieces of card and sorting out
his tapes and his pens. Asif had skipped, shadow boxed and stretched for an hour
turning his fear into adrenalin, trying to concentrate it back on Bobby Blue, his
opponent.
The barmaid, a woman with a blazer on her back despite the heat, who picked at
the torn up orange she had in a saucer below the bar, looked them up and down.
Asif and Max were preoccupied with avoiding each other’s eyes and trying to grab
the slippery thread of the sentences the other spoke.
In the pub’s doorway off-duty policemen, whose smiles and laughter left their men-
ace intact, tripped over large sports bags filled with their workwear eating cockles
out of polystyrene cups and surveying the well-meaning community members who
were handing out flyers for the Brick Lane Festival that was taking place in the
afternoon.
Asif Ahmed was uncommonly big and the keener police saw something familiar in
186
his beard and piercing eyes. Years ago, he had featured on posters for small hall
boxing events round this part; his brown torso underneath the Stone Island shirt was
wider than it had been, his neck thicker, but you would not mistake him for a body-
builder. Max Pendlebury, a chubby white guy, wore brown cords, suede shoes and a
mac. He knew that Ahmed was still licensed by the BBBC but had been making a
successful living fighting on the illegal circuit which Marlov claimed had more kin
with British prize-fighting of the eighteenth century than the overblown pay-per-view
political nonsense of twenty-first century boxing.
When he bumped into Marlov at the gym of a British champion in Manchester he
knew there was something to the story he told about a Bengali Eastender who was
tearing it up: bringing fans to the illegal prize ring who had found themselves priced
out of watching boxing, assuming they could even find a fight to watch.
He fiddled with the notebook on the bar, "Why did you suggest meeting here then?"
The pub brought back listless afternoons in the dog days of summers when he had
been younger, less busy, and the pay-off of early drinking: desperation, guilt, the
scent of depravity.
“I’m not a drinker," Asif said. "Can’t be, one, through my religion and two, for my
profession. But I used to live local and I didn’t fancy the gym today. I’ve finished
there anyway because I’m fighting in five days." Max looked up from his notes, per-
plexed. "Have you moved? I thought you were living in Bethnal Green?" Bethnal
Green was only a mile from where they sat. "I do, man," said the boxer. "But that
ain’t local." Max underlined "fiercely territorial" in his pad.
Asif had chosen the place because it took him back — he remembered bowling past
187
 the pub in summer, the impassive stares of the drinkers, his crew play fighting and
shouting. Perhaps a little louder than when they were out of sight, he thought.
Strange to actually be sat inside.
"What keeps you fighting?"
As Asif pondered, he rubbed his eyes. "Before I went off for that time, just after I
got beat by Leo Badman — that was my last pro fight and I thought I had the beat-
ing of him till he punched me clean out — I was doing well. I was getting respect
and love from the people around here, making mad money ... I’ve still got the
Bengalis, the kids and their fathers right behind me." Max nodded. Badman was the
biggest name on Ahmed’s record. "That’s why I’m looking forward to giving them a
good fight, right here in Banglatown, my roots and my community ..."
"Where did you go? That time?" Max broke in; as soon as the question was out of
his mouth he wished he had waited. A better moment would arrive to elicit Ahmed’s
story, which he already knew in any case: the boxer had been imprisoned for
manslaughter after killing a biker in a fight in an abandoned warehouse just months
after the Badman affair. He wished instead he had asked about the venues for such
events: deserted buildings in areas where all that remained of industry was the mid-
dle syllable; disused multistorey carparks; nightclubs with improbable names that
smacked of places beyond the owner’s wildest dreams; the concrete backyard of a
pub with a closemouthed clientele; he could have discussed the different rules which
governed each match; or whether Asif Ahmed still knew Leo Badman but it was too
late.
Holding his gaze in the journalist’s eyes, Ahmed told him, "I’m not discussing that."
188
His face closed up and a prickly heat spread across Max’s cheeks as he stuttered,
"No, no, no, of course not. What you were saying before about ... about the com-
munity ..." His pen scratched a squiggly line on the page as he recovered a semblance
of composure. For all Ahmed’s easiness, there was clear menace in the man: his eyes
had a cold inability to stop appraising, a constant shifting awareness of the move-
ment in front and around him, an alertness to the said and the unsaid, which marked
him out as a warrior.
The boxer nodded, rubbing his hands together. "Now I’m back and there seems so
little here — you get me? — and course it’s possible that while I was away I built
it all up in my head. But I want to do something for my people in the East End and
fighting is what I know. It’s my trade and it’s my passion. Still." "And how much do
you know about the Lithuanian you’re fighting next?" "Lithuania? He’s seen
Lithuania as many times as I have; man works a couple of doors in New Cross."
"You’ve met him?" "Nah — but I’ve seen a tape from the closed circuit of one of
those places, ‘Bobby Blue’s Biggest Blasts’ it’s called. And straight up, it’s a tape
of this Bobby Blue knocking punters sparko in the carpark." Ahmed shook his head.
They looked through the crowded bar to a table where three generations of a fami-
ly sat. The grandma, daughter and granddaughter talked and laughed while the two
men — the granddad and the uncle — shrunk into the racing pages. "I don’t want
no eels. No, I had a packet of biscuits for breakfast. Mum! No." The women’s
voices stayed in the air, made their bodies bigger, while the men might have been
shrinking with every tug of the rolly, rubbing away till nothing would be left except
for a nose and a rasp demanding another whiskey and lemonade.
Ahmed was both bulky and lean. When he knocked on the bar Max glanced at his
189
 hands whose knuckles were like knots of teak; the skin between thumb and first fin-
ger looked rubberised ... "First thing with old fashion martial arts — you turn your
hands into paddles, blunt numb instruments." Max nodded, wanting to divert the talk
back on to his fights ... Interviewing has a moment when you must move to avoid
being pinned. "Your last fight was in Scotland, no?"
Asif pursed his lips. "A real fucking cobble job," he said. "Can’t say I was happy about
it at first but it was broadcast on the internet. Interests of expansion, says Marlov."
He paused with a grimace but relaxed as he spoke again. "Big tattooed cat, broke
one of my ribs, but I stayed cool and he lost his rag ..." He was grinning and shak-
ing his head. "Compared to boxers, many of this lot ... they ain’t ..." He searched for
the words: "They ain’t technically gifted," he said finally.
"How’s that?" Max asked him, wanting to keep the talk on this level. To discuss a
past which could be contemplated and connected to the present — the next fight,
Ahmed’s reputation, getting paid — rather than one in which another man had died
as Ahmed might have died, causing a shift in the boxer’s self unknowable to other
men.
"I was popping him in the mouth ... ears ... eyes, but not hard. And this give him
heart. But then I dropped under one of these wide round-house right hands he was
throwing — like he’d never heard of straight lines — and hooked to the kidney. He
dropped his hands, trying to throw me but nah. I was too slippy for styles like that
and then ..." The journalist spread his eyes wide with interest. "I nailed him. Left,
overhand right, dropped him with another hook to the body." His shoulders and arms
were weaving and hitching as he shifted on the stool. "I never forget a punch," Ahmed
said.
190
Max nodded, remembering the pictures: the Scot, with crude black, blue and red
tattoos all across his body, lying on his front. Blood ran from one ear that had been
ripped from the side of his head — gloveless hands tear flesh — with the shadow of
the tall Bengali leaking across him. With a few exceptions, the faces in the crowd
were wild.
"It was in a carpark?" "Yeah. A carpark in the backarse of beyond." "You get scared?"
"Not till I’m waiting ... walking out. Brew of fear, adrenalin, and uncertainty. Mind
trying to keep a lid on it. But I gotta believe I’ll beat whoever. It’s different from
street brawling, fighting on the door of a club: you have no hatred, just your skills,
your strength. Still, with 300 hairy-arsed Scotties bawling at me, drunk and wound
up, cold because I hadn’t time to warm up before I got in the ring ... yeah, I was
uncertain for a moment there." "Uncertain of what?" "Well — for example, would he
have trained as a boxer since he was ten? How much fighting had he done on the
cobbles? How ill will the crowd cut up when I beat their man? These big things: it’s
not like I can scan a paper to find out about him, or even know who else the man’s
beat, you know?"
"You’re a huge hero to the British Asian community aren’t you?" "Yeah," he rapped
on the bar.
"See, the reason he couldn’t touch me — plant me, kill me all them things he threat-
ened ... and he was a tough street fighter, a convict too, a criminal — is how I move:
even when I was a kid I’d watch Naseem and Roy Jones and think yeah. Yeah, that
can be me. My sisters laughed at me, this big fat kid, asking why I was skipping.
What did I know? I knew boxers skipped. But I’d dance around on my toes, bend
my knees, try and be all flexible — I could see Naseem was bendy. Like strong rub-
191
 ber. Dance through the small gaps, flicker, change directions. Plant my feet and
throw punches and kicks I didn’t know how to throw yet."
"How old were you then?" "Ten, twelve. I enjoyed fighting too. I’d fight bigger kids
— Bengalis, white kids, black kids, old drunks in Bethnal Green, guard dogs on
Commercial Road — and often even when I won I’d be so full of adrenalin and
excitement that I’d cry which was ..." "Embarrassing?" "Yeah, it was very embar-
rassing." That, thought Max, will sit very well in the feature. The Bare-knuckle
Boxer Who Cried ... well, the subs could work something out.
"And when I started getting a little coaching ... it’d be the same but now I’d prac-
tice slipping — slide my head to the right, shift my weight back, turn my hips, you
know?" He nodded. "And then come back with the right hand ... ducking ... pivoting
off my front foot. I loved it." He described how on his first job, as a binman, he’d
run the entire route, stopping to heave the metal bins into the back of the lorry
before he sprinted on to the next one, trying to beat his mates in the truck, shadow
boxing, and how as a young professional boxer he had revelled in such physical jobs:
tunnelling, road digging, like the teenage Henry Armstrong building railroads for
strength during the Depression.
A ripple among the throng made them look at a short man in baggy track suit bot-
toms and unlaced Timberlands who was heaving towards them, a man unexceptional
save for the Reactolite glasses which he kept pushing up his nose — before pluck-
ing them from his face to fold into a pocket — and the toothbrush of beard sprout-
ing beneath his lower lip. "Here’s Marlov," said Asif, without enthusiasm.
Although here and there he grabbed a hand to acknowledge a face he recognised,
192
Marlov was visibly spluttering at the people obstructing him, and he even turned
around to push a rangy young black man who was reaching protective arms over his
shoulders to work him through the tight-knit pub. The young man looked over
Marlov’s head and Max and Asif saw him flash a grin at them as the Russian arrived
where they sat.
"What in God’s name, in the name of Allah as I put it to you, in the name of all that
is holy and all that is sinful, are you doing sitting here? Is the inside of a smoky pub
and a position on your posterior the right place from which to contemplate your fight
against the mighty Lithuanian? No more than the place for me to make deals is
inside the square ring ..." He prodded Asif’s chest with a closed fist. The boxer sighed
and rolled his eyes.
Marlov deigned to notice Max and said, "You are ...?" "Max Pendlebury ... a jour-
nalist. I spoke to you on the phone and met you ..." "Of course, Sir, of course. I
remember as clearly as a June day high in the Caucasus and I am pleased to see
you because it means that even though Mr Ahmed is not in the gym he is at least
exercising his mind: you are, I trust, working him hard in the mental gymnasium?"
He waited for an answer which came only in the form of a grunt as Max scribbled
shorthand in his notebook. Marlov expanded: his chest broadened and his eyes flut-
tered while the hair below his lip quivered and straightened; Max felt the man’s ego
and energy even as the Russian opened his fist and pushed his palm into the jour-
nalist’s back.
Asif stared at the family at their low table: the oldest woman had come back from
the bookies crowing about a win, news which revived the granddad. He pulled her
to him in a clumsy, touching dance to the family’s delight and the ill-masked annoy-
193
 ance of jostled drinkers.
The animosity which had risen so fast in Marlov’s face startled Max but before he
could protest, the man was talking again. "I am sorry, Mr Pendlebury. Really sorry.
It is easy for me to forget that for you, a writer, this is the equivalent of sparring
for Asif; though if Asif were sparring, it would not stop you from writing I believe."
He gestured at the young man beside him who had been watching proceedings with
detachment. "And for you as much as for the fighter, competition is necessary: to
establish your worth, to yourself and to the world in general, you must be matched.
Styles make fights, writers’ styles as well as fighters’ ..."
Max was staring at him with perplexity. "So, let me introduce Ray Pencek to you,
otherwise known as the Media Assassin. Another writer delving for meaning, and
for passion, the fruit of bitter bloodshed, in the bare-knuckle boxing ring." Pencek
took his hand from behind his back where he had been clasping it to shake with the
older journalist.
"Ah, such a pleasure to introduce two noble members of an earth-shaking fraterni-
ty: men who know how much mightier than the sword is the word, how much more
efficacious it is to tap the keyboard than the nose of one’s fellow man. A photo is
worth a thousand punches. Long live the Fourth Estate!"
"Gentlemen, you must excuse me, I must allow you to swap quotations and inter-
pretations with one another ..." his eyes were sinking in his head, glittering more
brightly. "We should step outside. I need to talk with my fighter."
The four men pushed their way out of the pub, the journalists trailing Marlov and
194
Ahmed down the thin cobbled street on which drinkers reclined and sat cross-legged
in front of boarded up sweat shops and the stickered glass of telephone businesses
offering cut rate calls to far places of the world. Max and Pencek, with their well
rehearsed perspectives on boxing and race, sport and sociology, found it the most
natural thing in the world to be following an illegal prizefighter through a deindus-
trialised landscape peopled by bucolic revellers.
The street which the Romford Arms was on crossed Brick Lane, and all four now
stood on the corner, watching a Bengali singer entertain a large crowd of young men
and women. Whistles pierced the air and Max looked up the street to where a rock
band played for a mere handful. People were eating curry, eels and fried chicken,
drinking coffees, cokes and cans of warm beer. "Twenty-first century things," the
black man said to the white as they trained their eyes and ears on the odd couple
five yards away. Max nodded dumbly.
As they were stopped by the crowd outside an architect’s office whose front was
designed to resemble a garage door, they saw Ahmed say, "What?" in disbelief to
Marlov, who looked nervous — a proposition which would have seemed impossible
ten minutes ago. Max felt a strange pang for the fighter, sensing that all his slip-
ping, bobbing and weaving would not make him a match for the Russian. Pencek
had pulled a digital camera from the pocket of his immaculate dark denim suit,
haute couture streetwear, and he held it in one big hand and popped off pictures of
the two men. "You know what’s happening?" Max asked him as they moved closer.
"No. No chance. It’s gotta be here. Right fucking here," Ahmed was jabbing away
at Marlov, who raised his shoulders in a helpless gesture. Pencek turned and
snapped Max before leaning towards his ear and saying, "What’s happening? You
195
 get anything on this you tell me, yeah?" Max pursed his lips and raised his thumb.
"Marlov’s only switched the venue. It was going to be the wasteland walled off
Fashion Street, now it’s down in the south-east ..." Max lifted his eyebrows, he knew
what was coming next. "Yep. You’ve got it: one of Bobby Blue’s clubs down there in
New Cross."
His eyes expanded, striking white in his red brown skin, as he shivered with mock
horror. "A long way from home for the Lion of Bengal. Long way from home advan-
tage ... lot of dutty old Irish men down dere," he added sardonically. Pencek snapped
him again and walked towards Ahmed and Marlov: the former was now shrugging
but he would not look any of them in the eye as he stalked down Fashion Street,
dirty and quiet, and beeped open his Mercedes. The licence read K80XER and
underneath, ‘We have the right to remain violent’.
An ancient breakdancer — whom Max remembered seeing as a kid 20 years ago
— had dropped his lino on the floor and was executing clumsy headspins. A small
crowd clapped while their heads twisted to the Bengali singer and his whooping
audience. Max remembered the dancer from when he could spin hands free; differ-
ent parts of his routine on the floor segued into one another at dangerous speed and
with an intensity that gave him the seriousness and grace of an athlete. Now, like
an aged vaudevillian, he compensated for his body’s shortcomings with a wide smile
and opened his arms as his young female partner took over his moves at three times
the speed, with a look of serious devilment on her face.
"What do you do when you’re an old breaker?" Max asked as he pulled a coin from
his pocket. "Dancer. Never mind dancer," Marlov said. "What do you do when you’re
an old fighter?" he demanded and Pencek looked at him, then spat softly on the
196
ground before he began to photograph those watching the girl. Few of the faces in
the crowd were wild. "You think I want him fighting down there?" Marlov asked
them. They could not give him an answer.
•••
Making notes for this story, I took a map of London and pinned it to the office wall:
the City can be divided up by its families of gangsters, the Brick Lane Massive in
the east and the Adams in the north, the Hunts in Canning Town and Soho, and
council tax bands and bus routes, by administrations both official and unofficial.
That the distinct parts of London — northside, westside, south and eastside — are
always someone’s particular province was borne home to me in no uncertain fash-
ion when it turned out that Asif Ahmed, the Bengal Lion, was not fighting his next
fight on his hometurf by Brick Lane but had to contend in New Cross, proud slab of
south-east London.
Although he claims to have fought as far abroad as Turkey and the United States,
neither journey gave him the misgivings that crossing the water did, the bad, brown
Thames, and when I arrived at the Millennium Dancedrome in SE15 his reasoning
was clear to me. Perhaps one-twentieth of the crowd were Bengalis, and they stood
in small groups knotted within easy reach of one another; the bar told a true story,
seven deep, predominantly white although there were occasional glimpses of black
and oriental faces. Ahmed’s supporters did not seem concerned despite the stares
directed their way, and they gossiped quietly in their slacks and Stone Island
jackets.
197
 Many of these men looked like definitive examples of the modern hard case: there
were several who probably would have made either one of the fighters quail,
although to be sure their techniques of violence might lack sophistication by com-
parison with Ahmed or Bobby Blue. Still, the faces made me uneasy; turned my
mind to the promoter’s equation of his version of the old fashioned prize ring with
a hearty, but deeply skewed vision of the old England in which it had existed. Marlov
talks persuasively of "people’s champions" and it makes me shiver, electing people in
the name of an indefinable volk.
Although Marlov’s fighter is a Bengali, his nationalistic invocations packed a fright-
ening buzz when I recalled them in this dark, beery atmosphere where men were
gathering to revel in violence.
For the Millennium Dancedrome, with its bits of old railway on the wall and pic-
tures of dusty labourers beside them, at this moment in time was off any map, bare-
ly a flicker by which a neutral observer could distinguish it from any of London’s
other hundreds of low rent nightclubs; those inside, however, were burning as they
flicked their eyes at the dancefloor which had a turfed and roped circle in the cen-
tre.
And in the changing room too, where Ahmed was preparing, I could feel such a
weird concentration of energy that it seemed strange that only a few thousand peo-
ple knew what was happening here tonight ...
DATELINE: LONDON, JANUARY 2005, "Meedya Azzazzin" Column by Ray
Pendek, Sun Sports — When Max reached the Millennium Dancedrome an omi-
nous growl rolled through the crowd through which could be heard the occasional
198
cry, "Oy, oy," punctured by fits of laughter. Visceral was the word he would use. A
sound with blood in it, tortured throats, cheers and curses ripped from the innards
•••
On the club’s tv screens was video of an empty space, blue and green, clearly at night
and lit by sodium: jostling figures filled it at intervals of a few seconds, spread out,
froze and dispersed. Shouts followed from the crowd and Max realised he was
watching film from the club’s security cameras. What was it called, Bobby’s Gonna
Spark You Out? In the heaving space the video had an eerie quality, a violent dream
recorded for broadcast.
He waved at Pencek who beckoned him towards the door where he was standing.
Max went after him, taking a long look back at the dark smoky room in which his
presence had not registered. They stood in a narrow hallway which muffled the sound
of the crowd behind them although they could hear a bassline and a voice from a
room at the end of the corridor. "Bobby Blue," Ray Pencek said, pointing. A skip-
ping rope was lashing the floor and the London voice intoned again and again:
"Bobby Blue does him in two ... he goes in two says Bobby Blue."
"Take a look?" Max asked, making for the door and rapping on it twice. "Who?" A
tiny head whose voice matched that which had been making the predictions poked
round the door. His skin and hair were slush-coloured, but his eyes were a mercury
which it was hard to meet. He looked them up and down and announced in a tone
which didn’t brook argument, "No, you can’t see him ... what you think we are?
Atlantic bloody City? Bollocking Vegas or somewhere? Balls to your press pass too
... " "But ..." "No. Too late. You’ll see him in the ring." He slammed the door and they
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 could hear a murmur. The little man’s voice said, "Bollocking cocking nobody is who
that was. Give me your hands."
"What do you want out of this story?" Max asked Pencek as they listened outside the
door where Asif was changing. "To pay my bills." "No, man. What do you want to
see?" Ray Pencek paused before he answered, "Look, to me, this is a closed world ...
it’s shut off from the mainstream. It’s this Bengali fighting and I wanted see if I
could prise ..." Max broke into a fair impression of the little man, "Tcah, all you’ll
see tonight is some bollocking blood." The noise from the club rose and was muffled
again as Marlov emerged. "Come see my fighter, gentlemen of the press. The prepa-
ration is onerous and you are here to witness the last stage, a rare honour for a man
of any ilk."
Asif was changing for the fight in a room with a desk, two phones and pictures on
the wall which suggested a taste for the female form equal with a partiality for dim
scraps of old newspaper and the curling pages of men’s magazines showing Bobby
Blue, Ahmed ... stills from the security cameras in the pub’s carparks. Shadow box-
ing, Ahmed was oblivious to the wall garnish: both the naked girls and the picture
of himself with Marlov’s arm around him, both sets of eyes wide open. Two still faces
beaming from the shouting horde.
Pencek unzipped the dark shirt he was wearing and pulled off his beanie hat. Max
was sweating as they wrapped Asif’s hands in clean white bandages. He felt his
stomach squeezing in on itself as he watched the heat rise from Ahmed whose exha-
lations became louder, and heightened in pitch; his chest glistened with sweat and
he hitched up the baggy black track suit bottoms he was wearing. Pencek leaned
against the wall, recording the sounds in a tiny dictaphone, his eyes roaming round
200
the room.
Time passed, but it passed slowly. The noise from the club was rising all the time.
"Looking good, looking fast and sweet there," Pencek said at last to Ahmed whose
eyes flickered though he said nothing. Marlov too was talking, whispering to the
boxer, who stopped moving at last. He sat down on the desk and had Vaseline
rubbed over his eyes then flicked his head from side to side and in the last minute
before the knock they awaited came he stared at the picture of himself on the office
wall and smiled.
Out in the hall as the door opened the noise and heat of the nightclub erupted.
Ahmed was flanked by three Bengalis and Marlov walked ahead while the jour-
nalists followed in their wake. Pencek was still holding his tape machine aloft, a look
of glee on his face, and Max’s eyes were pinned back.
As they approached the ring the venom of the audience was vented on Asif Ahmed:
jeers and catcalls, all manner of hard-pitched abuse. Hostility that Max hadn’t
noticed before expanded around him and after the euphoria of entering the room a
cold nervous sweat seeped down his chest and legs: fear at the sight and sound of
the people, yakking and howling. Pencek raised his eyebrows at him and nodded.
Max’s face was in a rictus grin to his disgust as Ahmed ducked under the rope and
came face to face with Bobby Blue who was throwing short bursts of fast punches
as a final prelude to the fight.
Blue was built like a knockout artist: three inches shorter than Ahmed but thicker
through the neck, shoulders, torso and legs. He rolled his head on its square neck
and the movement did not look nervous. He carried more fat than Ahmed around
201
 his middle, which might give him a little extra ballast, an extra ounce of endurance,
but it could also mean he had undertrained. The fighters stared at one another and
as Blue leaned forward to whisper something to Ahmed which made him snort the
crowd exploded once more.
On Max’s right was a group of eight or ten men, ranging in age from 40 to 18, one
of whom paced and stared with an amphetamine vehemence, skin pulled close to his
face, sweating right through his Polo shirt, while a girl with a long, tight perm and
a long white nose was bawling, "Go on Bobby, go on. Fucking kill him. Kill the cunt,
Bobby." Max froze as the aggressive eyes of the speeding bloke hooked on his face:
he didn’t want to unleash him by glancing in the wrong direction.
There were no introductions, no fanfares; Marlov and the man with the mercury eyes
left the ring as the referee made final remarks which were lost in the cauldron, rais-
ing six fingers to mark the number of rounds. He checked his watch and jerked inde-
cisively at his unravelling bow tie.
An airhorn blew as the bell and in the momentary silence which followed it the two
boxers threw themselves together. Max was aware of Marlov kneeling on the dance-
floor, Pencek snapping pictures, his recorder hanging from his teeth, and his own
surprise that Ahmed and Blue spent no time probing one another; they stood a bare
foot apart and threw punches, Ahmed short hooks to the body which Blue caught on
his arms, sides and back while trying to answer with straight rights to the heart and
head.
Ahmed pushed the shorter man away and flicked at his face with a left jab. His arm
didn’t move back smartly enough and Bobby Blue arced a long right hand through
202
the smoky air which landed with a thud above Ahmed’s eye. Barely one minute had
passed and the audience was in uproar: Max had always watched fights in silence
but shouts came strangulated from his mouth. A mouse had appeared above
Ahmed’s left eye.
Max twitched his head sideways and saw one of the older men in the group holding
the girl by the shoulder before he looked back at the ring. Ahmed was not lively,
wilted by Blue’s ferocity and the power of his blows, yet he kept his hands up and
threw short flurries of punches which kept the local man at a distance. Max turned
to look at Pencek who was wincing and gasping as blows landed before surveying
the crowd from whom some of the venom seemed to have been purged: the atmos-
phere had lightened and advice was chucked towards the ring: "Hands up ... stick,
stick and move ... and a right, now the right, Bobby Boy."
The sweating bloke who had alarmed Max started up again, "Go on, chin that cunt
... fucking do him now. Fucking do him," in a manner so vicious and desperate that
it was a thing apart from what was happening inside the ropes. Bobby Blue had
changed his stance and was fighting in a crouch, taking a couple shots to get close
and backing him up with vicious hooks to the body. No impassive face watched this.
A chant of "Ahmed, Ahmed," rose which made Marlov punch the air in time while
some of Bobby’s supporters looked around as though disturbed by an unpleasant
smell.
Bobby Blue was quite a fighter, and Max wondered whether Ahmed had underesti-
mated him, blocked off in the corner taking a punch for every one which he blocked
or covered. The girl was crooning now to the New Cross fighter, "Rip him up, Bobby,
fucking rip that fucker up." Pencek nudged Max and they raised their eyebrows at
203
 one another.
The end of the round was coming when Blue threw a wild, wide right which Ahmed
ducked under, in the same moment pivoting on his left foot to reverse their positions:
he pushed Blue into the corner with a stiff left and banged him with a fast chopping
right hand before the shorter man had time to regain his stance. He staggered as
the airhorn blew and Ahmed hit him again as the referee jumped on his back and
voices blazed from the bar to ring to the stairs, part cheering and part howling: men
were clapping more loudly and enthusiastically than they had before as though
stunned from their conventional responses by the speed, skill and audacity which
Ahmed had displayed ...
A crash behind them made the journalists spin around, mindful of the violent possi-
bilities that broken chairs might present to the imaginative drunk: a table had col-
lapsed with the weight of punters standing on it. The bouncers moved in and, amaz-
ingly, dusted the men down, and set them on their feet before resuming their state-
ly vigil at the doors and at ringside. More shouts of "Ahmed" could be heard but the
local men took them well, urging Bobby Boy on themselves. The loud pair seemed
to Max to have been struck dumb and he resolved to observe, to report, and to
remain silent himself.
He turned to Ray Pencek and they discussed the final moments of the round: "ring-
wizardry," Max called it while Pencek held forth about how, in that moment, in that
round, he realised that this was sport, a boxing match unlicensed and uninsured but
sport all the same — an event which demanded its chroniclers, and which would last
for longer than one drunken night in a sweaty club down Lewisham way — not a
crude cobble job, a mismatch put-up affair, not just a satiety of blood and violence
204
for the prurient and the careless.
The referee pulled the tie from his neck once for all and he waved the mercury man
out of the ring. He stood between Ahmed and Blue with his arms horizontal between
them, hands pushed firmly in their chests till the airhorn blew. During this round,
and the ones which followed, Ahmed took heavy blows but none which shook him as
the one in the first had and as Bobby Blue showed neither the instinct nor the aim
to connect with the lump over his eye he weathered the short storms and moved well,
shifting his weight from side to side and opening up on Blue whenever he had the
chance; the cries of "Ahmed, Ahmed" were at nothing like the volume of the early
support for Blue but they were clear now and few among those watching except the
youth on Max’s right paid them much mind. He, however, stared around, and an
antipathy to every single thing and being in there shone in his face; his friends
ignored him studiously.
Ahmed’s speed and timing increased as the match went on, while Blue was slowing
down: Ahmed caught him with double hooks and jabs which even some of Blue’s
fans applauded and as the fight reached the end of the sixth the only thing which
might have saved Bobby Blue was the knockout he was now too beat to deliver. As
the boxers stood in the centre of the ring, faces shining with sweat and blood, the
referee pulled them too him, holding one of their wrists in each hand. The bouncers
had stood up and were trying to prevent too many from invading the ring.
Max felt a pang again, wondering whether Marlov and Ahmed would have to fight
their way out: for how could the referee, the sole arbiter, judge the fight any other
way than Ahmed’s? He had stood there, shuffling out of range, as the Eastender had
rained leather on the other man, moving sharply and confusing him, unable to put
205
 him to sleep.

When the tieless man raised the hands of both men, announcing the contest a draw,
it was hard to tell the booing from the cheering: Marlov was in the ring, beside his
fighter with a crew of family and friends, patting his back and shouting in his ear.
They stood motionless in a tight clump before pushing their way back through the
door and into the dressing room with Max and Pencek trailing behind.

The din was increasing as Marlov ducked out of the room. Those around Ahmed
were telling him he won the fight, that it was robbery, more outraged than him; he
was smiling and wiping the sweat out of his eyes, and perhaps the tears, Max
thought, flashing back on what he’d said of his youth. "He was a fighter, and I loved
it," he said finally, looking over at Max. "Did you see when I spun him in the cor-
ner?" Max nodded with an intake of breath. Couldn’t miss it, the people around the
boxer were saying.

Ahmed pulled on a hooded sweatshirt and sat calmly on the desk, waiting for Marlov
to return. When he did, a cabbage-like bundle of old, dirty notes in his hand, Ahmed
didn’t ask to count them and with the noise from the club still increasing, they made
for the door and opened it into they knew not what: with a local crowd drunk and
high on the real business a bad exit loomed. Only then did the two syllables the crowd
were shouting became clear: "Ahmed, Ahmed ..."

"You can’t say fairer than a sporting crowd, can you?" said Max to Pencek as they
stepped into the warm summer night while Marlov started to spiel and the clock told
that it was only a little past nine pm.

206
 photos: Kevin Martin

208
 Anna Gaskell @ Jay Jopling, London

218 219
220 221
222 223
 art: Hammond Holmes
224
 art: Gerrard Hemsworth @ John Hansard Gallery

228
 in the name of god
a revolution remembered

photos + words: Abbas · Courtesy of Magnum Photos London

232 233
 February 11, 1979 ... Tehran ...Today, Khomeini replaced the Shah! As with

every day following intense acts of revolution, this morning the city wakes with

a hangover. Yesterday air force cadets were the first to rebel against the Shah.

Today the streets are filled with armed men playing soldier. Someone shouts

The Iranian revolution, twenty years old this month, was the first
revolution of modern times whose source of inspiration and legitimacy out that the Eshrat Abad army barracks are being attacked. I jumped on the
was not earthly politics but heavenly principles. Those turbulent days
are remembered in words and pictures by the Iranian born Magnum
back of a motorcycle. It is not an attack. It looks like a cholouguis - utter
photographer Abbas. After an absence of nearly two decades he has
returned to find a much changed Iran.
disorder, on which we Iranians thrive. Everyone wants to assault the soldiers

who still defend the Shah’s regime. Few of the young men are armed, but that

doesn’t prevent them from getting in the way of friendly fire. Many fall,

wounded. I take a calculated risk. Do I want to be a chahid, a martyr?

234 235
Armed militants outside the U.S. Embassy where hostages were held Woman believed to be a supporter of the Shah is lynched by a revolutionary mob

237
 Armed mullahs march past Ayatollah Khomeini’s house After Tehran’s red light district was burnt down in an ‘Islamic Purifying Fire’, the revolutionary
mob exhibits the charred remains of a woman, presumably a prostitute, as evidence of the Shah
regime’s atrocities

238 239
 At night, it’s over. Why aren’t I celebrating like everybody else? This is my country, my peo-
ple, my revolution. Is it the constant reference to Islam? Could it be the defeat of General
Rahimi, the martial law commander? Years earlier I had photographed him in full regalia at
one of the Shah’s celebrations. He is now brought to Khomeini’s headquarters, where he is
exhibited in front of television cameras.
"Do you want to repent?"
"I have sworn loyalty to the Shah. I stand by my oath."
"Do you think they will kill you?" asks a foreign journalist.
He raises his arms. "I am in Allah’s hands."

Five days later, I photograph his body in a drawer in the city morgue. He had been executed -
along with three other generals - after a brief trial. A secret one.

240 241
 Iran: the quiet revolution

The surprise winner of the 1996 presidential elections swept to power

with a massive landslide that was credited to the women’s and youth’s vote

President Khatami during the election campaign words: Malu Halasa · photos: Abbas · Courtesy of Magnum Photos London

242 243
 "What we've been told constantly by the Western media is that Iranian women are
downtrodden. That somehow their physical covered-upness would be an emotional
covered-upness. I wasn't expecting their passion," Kim Longinotto filmed Iranian
women fighting for divorce in a Tehran family court, for the first time. Her docu-
mentary Divorce Iranian Style, with the Cambridge anthropologist Ziba Mir-
Hosseini, is challenging deep-seated stereotypes about Muslim women.
Within Iran’s greater revolution of God, a little recognized, essentially secular
women’s movement has been gradually developing, since Khatami's landslide presi-
dential victory 21 months ago. This new confidence can be seen across society, from
the boisterous, demanding women in the Longinotto/Mir-Hosseini film to 18-year
244
old Samirah Makhmalbaf who made the new movie, The Apple, and Faezeh
Hashemi, one of thirteen women in Iran's 270-seat Majlis or parliament, in charge
of female athletics. Both Makhmalbaf and Hashemi come from dynastic families,
the first is the daughter of the film-maker Makhmalbaf, the second the daughter of
the former Iranian president Rafsanjani. But like the ordinary women in Divorce
Iranian Style, they too suffer under the constraints of the shifting politics of their
religious government.
Last year Hashemi opened her own newspaper Zan (Woman) and a weekly maga-
zine Bavar (Opinion). Bavar published an article about the roughing up of the mod-
erate Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ataolah Mohajerani by thugs dur-
ing a street demonstration. The author of the story identified the attackers as mem-
bers of the security forces, and Hashemi's publications were closed down by the con-
servative clerics in charge of the country's judiciary for "hefazat etela'at", insulting
or offending the counter intelligence services. Last December Hashemi was fined by
the tribunal of the press court. She got off lightly. She wasn't flogged, and her pub-
lications were opened again.
In Divorce Iranian Style women enter the court building, using separate doors from
men. Inside, they pause momentarily in a curtained enclosure, where their hair and
make-up are scrutinised by female officials who insure that the women coming to
court are not revealing their hair or wearing too much lipstick or eye shadow, any-
thing that would cause offense.
In government buildings in Tehran, women and men have separate access, some-
times elevators are designated for women only, even though the lift operators are
male. At airport terminals, women and men walk through different doors marked
245
 'sisters' and 'brothers'. These separate entrances symbolize the very different reli-
gious Shari'a laws regarding the two sexes.

No doubt about it, Islam is a good religion for men. Men inherit twice as much as
women. They also have automatic rights of divorce, and are allowed to go where
they please. But women are increasingly taking this basic freedom of movement for
themselves.

Mir-Hosseini who is Iranian explains,"In Muslim countries politics is the domain of

men, and women have no place. The compulsory rule of hijab covering gave women
from religious families a license to be present. Many of these women see the hijab
as empowering. Last year, 51% of those who got into university were female."

When Reza Shah, the last Shah's father banned headscarves in public during the
Thirties, traditional women were kept at home by their families. Once enforced veil-
ing was instituted as part of the Iranian revolution, women were quick to put on the
chador - the anonymous piece of black cloth that has been demonised in the west -
and leave their houses as fast as possible.

Mir-Hosseini continues, "In some unpredicted ways the revolution has empowered
ordinary women from traditional classes. It has allowed them to be part of the polit-
ical processes and public life."

A notable expression of this occurred when Iran qualified for the World Cup last
year. Women who had been banned by the government from attending a supporters’
rally in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium rushed the stadium gates and joined the other fans
inside. After Iran beat the U.S., men and women danced together in the streets,

246 247
 usually an arrestable offense, but in this case security services gave up trying to stop
them.
By western standards, these small demonstrations of strength don't suggest a full
blown sexual revolution. Yet a thaw appears to be happening, even if the signs are
mostly anecdotal. An Iranian-in-exile who recently returned home said that the first
time he was propositioned by a married woman he was surprised. The second time
another married woman approached him, he was mildly amused. By the third time
he was frightened.
Regardless of gender, fear and uncertainty are components of everyday life in Iran.
After the murder of a liberal politician and his wife in December, the religious con-
servative establishment that controls the judiciary and security services denied their
involvement, but later they were forced to admit that rogue elements in the securi-
ty services were responsible, when officers were arrested and a hit list, which includ-
ed the names of prominent intellectuals and writers, was discovered. These murders
were a desperate attempt to thwart the policies of moderate President Khatami who
has been calling for civil society, increased press freedoms and "transparency" in gov-
ernment - people should be allowed to know who gives the orders.
"Our government is like a jumble sale or bazaar," says an Iranian film producer,
"Everything is there, from the good to the violent. Everything is out in the open,
everyone sees it, but nobody admits to anything."
Last year, two bills affecting women were passed through the initial round of voting
in the Majlis. The first against the exploitation of women in the media, sponsored
by conservative religious women, banned ‘revealing’ photographs of women in
248
newspapers and magazines, (and it’s not as if the photos in question are like the cov-
ers of FHM or Cosmopolitan). This bill was described by Culture Minister
Mohajerani, among others, as an attempt at curtailing the flowering Iranian press.
The second bill was potentially more dangerous and proposed the segregation of
medical services, where women could only be treated by female doctors, at a time
when some wives still need permission from their husbands to go to the doctor.
Eventually this bill was defeated in the Assembly of Experts, a powerful govern-
mental council that decides the efficacy of new laws and also nominates candidates
for key governmental posts. They voted against the bill because Iran, a country
where cooking oil is rationed, couldn't afford separate medical services, and in this
way demonstrated the complexity surrounding women's issues. The essentially con-
servative Assembly of Experts, headed Ayatollah Khamenei, was still able to take a
realistic stance on women's health.
Still, women’s voices are considered potentially dangerous, literally. Last year for
the first time since the revolution, the popular female singer Akhavan gave a public
concert for women-only - since the conservatives’ greatest fear is a mixed male and
female audience. Her two previous performances were cancelled due to sabotage.
Cassettes of women singers are not sold in music stores. In previous generations
Iranian women were told to put pebbles in their mouths, if they talked to strange
men. The sound of the female voice was considered sexually provocative.
Twenty years ago, Iran’s Islamic Revolution would not have taken place without the
support of women. When the Ayatollah Khomeini began his movement in 1963, he
reacted against the Shah’s attempts at westernization, including increased public
roles for women. When he came out of exile in Paris and arrived in Tehran in
249
 February, 1979, three million women and men went to greet him. It was the biggest
gathering of humans on the planet. His arrival and promise to combat the Shah’s
corrupt regime was the Iranian equivalent of the French Revolution. It was an
Islamic revolution, but it was also a populist revolution of hope, and like all revolu-
tions, no one could tell at the time when or how it would go wrong.
Women were central to Khatami’s election. Even though the religious establishment
was against him, he slipped past their harsh vetting of presidential candidates
because of his impeccable government record. He wasn’t expected to win, but his
liberal platform also appealed to young Iranians. Seventy-two per cent of the coun-
try’s population is 21 or younger. Despite Khatami’s good intentions, the murder of
250
intellectuals, the repeated banning of certain newspapers, arbitrary arrests and
attacks, all show a state in flux.
Interestingly some of the people demanding increased rights for women and civil
society are those with impeccable revolutionary credentials. They had demonstrated
against the Shah, or fought in the Iran-Iraq war. Their cries for democracy come
not from any experience of the west, but stem directly from their religious beliefs. And
some of these calls have come from an unexpected quarter - the religious clergy.
"The criterion for good conjugal relations is no longer domination, paying for
women’s maintenance and ruling them," writes Hojatoleslam Mohssen Sa’idzadeh,
best known for his positive attitudes towards women. "The reason a woman obeys a
man is his humanity." These views are considered highly controversial. Sa’idzadeh
was arrested last summer by three plainclothes security men because of a newspaper
article he had written, where he stated that "conservative religious scholars shouldn’t
criticize the Taliban’s treatment of women since the scholars’ strict interpretations of
the Hadith -" the sayings of the Prophet "- were taking Iran down the same road."
The Taliban's extreme treatment of Afghan women has been regarded by Iranians
as a throwback to the worst aspects of medieval Islam. Sa'idzadeh's article, dis-
cussed by clerics and cab drivers alike, caused an uproar. His admission that he
"approved of the Taliban" was clearly ironic, since he had been arguing for the equal
treatment of women under Islam for over a decade. His premise, known as the
‘Equality Perspective’, relies on a modern interpretation of Islamic sacred scrip-
tures.
Sa'idzadeh was only allowed to initiate his discussion because of the tradition of
251
 debate in Shi'a Islam. The Shi'a believe that the gate to ijtihad - interpretation of
the sacred scriptures - is still open, unlike the Sunnis who feel that all religious doc-
trine, formulated during Muhammad's lifetime, can never be questioned or changed.
The willingness to explore new ideas,and sometimes implement them has made the
Shi'as distinct from the rest of the Muslim world.

Whenever Iranian clerics break rank from the ruling orthodoxy or are involved in
legal disputes, their cases are tried in the Special Court for the Clergy by strict and
conservative judges. Sa'idzadeh underwent intensive interrogation during his near
six-month imprisonment. His initial charge was going to be dropped and replaced
by a charge of murder due to the suicide of his first wife, after he had taken a sec-
ond one. The ‘feminist’ cleric was suddenly released last December. As someone
from Amnesty International points out, "It was the only good thing that happened in
a bloody month" that saw the disappearance and murder of intellectuals.

For many in Iran, Sa'idzadeh's crime was not his thoughts, but his bringing a dis-
cussion that belonged behind seminary walls out into the open. He has popularised
the debate about Muslim women's rights by publishing articles and mixing with fem-
inists at home and abroad. One of them was Mir-Hosseini who interviewed him for
her upcoming book Women and the Islamic Republic: Dialogues with the Ulama, to
be published this year by Princeton University Press.

"Sa'idzadeh represents the coming of age of a generation of young clerics who are
tackling contemporary issues within the framework of Islam. He is attempting to
reconcile the changes that has happened in his generation with the status of women
in Muslim society and with certain religious rules."

252
 Their discussions show his reliance on Fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, to prove that God
has no concept of gender. He explains, "For 1400 years discriminatory interpreta-
tions on women have been produced; these aren't religion but interpretations of reli-
gion. I defend my position against those who say I'm questioning religion. I say I
don't question religion, only erroneous religious thoughts." These views echo the con-
troversial arguments of the Islamic philosopher Abdul Karim Soroush who suggests
that intolerance towards other religions has been formulated not from Islam itself
but from erroneous interpretations of Islam.
Sa'idzadeh's initial articles for Zanan (Women) a feminist women's journal,
appeared under the name of his second wife until she was heavily criticized and
made him stop using her name. He contributes regularly to Payam-e Zan (Women's
Message), a journal for women published by young male clerics in the Qom
seminary. In a 1995 essay, which critiques the standard Shi'a view of women as
complimentary to men but unequal, Sa'idzadeh has written that the problem is
"Islamic thinkers' understanding of Islam, which is tainted with political and patri-
archal notions."
Islam was the first religion in the world to guarantee women rights of inheritance.
But it is extremely harsh in its view of women by modern day standards. Under the
Shah, the 1967 Family Protection Act outlawed or restricted arbitrary divorce,
polygamy and mut'a temporary marriage, which is nothing but a religious sanction
of casual sexual relations. After the Islamic revolution, the act was repealed and in
divorce cases Iranian women were summarily dismissed from their marriages, some
of twenty years, with no visible means of support. Since the early Eighties Mir-
Hosseini has been researching Iranian family courts. She recalls the reaction of
women finding out that they had no rights in Shari'a family law, especially after a
254
religious revolution they supported. Some of them were so enraged, they pounded
on the judge's desk, shouting out, "Is this how Islam rewards motherhood?"
Because of intense lobbying by women groups the government made changes in the
marriage contract and women have been given limited rights, in cases where hus-
bands take a second wife. Also in the new contract is the equal division of proper-
ty accrued during marriage, except for inheritance and mahr, gift money pledged by
husbands to wives at the beginning of marriage. Since 1991, men cannot divorce
their wives without making ujrat-al-mithl or a payment for the housework done dur-
ing the marriage.
In effect these payments have strengthen women's position and through negotiation
they are able to get their divorces. Longinotto's and Mir-Hosseini's documentary
show the way in which women cajole, plead and sometimes force the courts and their
husbands to give them what they want. Islam only recognises a woman's automat-
ic right to divorce, if her husband is impotent. Other women in the Middle East and
Near East would think twice about announcing a husband's sexual problem in pub-
lic, but in Divorce Iranian Style, one Iranian woman is so forthright that it is both
impressive and unnerving.
While in the West incompatibility is a valid reason for divorce, not so in Iran. The
judge who allows Longinotto to film his divorce courtroom for forty hours warns
another of the women plaintiffs who desperately wants to leave her husband to beau-
tify herself and win him back. They must live together for a mandatory period of
three months and ten days before the divorce is finalised.
The most far reaching change for women will be when the Majlis passes a new law
255
 regarding child custody. The Shari'a has rigid rules regarding custody: after divorce
women have rights to the custody of sons up until the age of two and to daughters
until seven, then the custody goes to fathers. Also in Islamic law a distinction is
made between custody - the caring and raising of children - and guardianship, which
means ultimate authority. The latter automatically rests with the father and, if he's
dead or unavailable, with his father. Before the revolution the court could decide
on custody, and guardianship as well, but this was reversed after 1979.

In 1997 a famous custody case involving the abuse and eventual murder of Aryan,
a seven-year old girl, shocked Iranian society, and as a result the parliament's new
Actresses, painters, sculptors and writers are experiencing a Tehran Spring; their only hope is that
winter will not come too soon
law will allow judges to decide which parent gets child custody. Although guardian-
ship would still remain with the father.

Feminist lawyer and activist for children's rights Sherin Ebadi represented Aryan's
mother who fought unsuccessfully for custody of her daughter through the courts,
but to no avail. "Iranian society is much more progressive and advanced than its
written laws." Ebadi cites two examples: although the law permits families to marry
their female babies off at birth, with the possibility of sexual relations initiated at
the age of nine, children are rarely married off. In Iran most of the men are not
polygamous, although it is condoned by law. Most Iranians openly frown on polyg-
amists. They are considered out of control, men who shouldn't be allowed near
impressionable young women.

There is no word in Farsi for feminism, but the current trends in Iranian society show
that this too may change as Khatami’s civil liberties and transparency in govern-
ment take hold. Change is inevitable concludes Mir-Hosseini, "What is happening in
the Muslim world more or less happened in sixteenth and seventeenth century when

256 257
 the printed word came into Europe. Suddenly the whole structure of the authority
was altered, and now literacy and mass media are changing it again. And new peo-
ple who never had access to knowledge - a large number of them were women - now
have access to knowledge and information."

Divorce Iranian Style by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini will be shown at the ICA,

in London, March 1 - 4

258 259
260
twilight
art: Gregory Crewdson @ Emily Tsingou Gallery
poise
photos: Masoud
styling: Yasmine Eslami · make-up: Charlotte Day @ Transit
hair: Teresa Broccoli @ Rockit · all clothes by Ocimar Versolato
model: Kirsty Richards @ Models 1
271
272 273
275
 I do not speak German. Will you please speak more slowly. Do you speak English?
We are in a hurry. Two cups of coffee, please. I will go and get a seat on the train.
Is there a porter here to take my luggage? Please keep an eye on my things until I
find another porter. I shall be back about six. Listen to me masturbating. What's
the most fucked up thing you can think of? I have done that. I feel sick. Where
can I wash my hands? I feel better. Do we need passports? It is a business visit. I
have not bought anything during my visit. I have worn it a lot. I have nothing to
declare. I am only on a holiday. They are for my own personal use. Fuck you.
Where is the British Consulate? I want to hire a car. I want to see all that is worth
seeing. I am not wearing any knickers. Lift my pleated skirt. I must see the cathe-
dral. To whom must I apply for admission? Is it still open? I am too tired to go any
further. Is it going to rain? Do you like water sports? I should like a game with you.
Where is my umbrella? Do you lick carpets? The baggage handlers are in front of
the hotel. Did you enjoy it? Let us sit down. I did not know that was a one-way
street. I am British. Here is the reward. My wife is a slut. She did not see the
cyclist. I have broken my ankle. I feel faint. Have you any smelling salts? Can
you get me a nurse? I would like an armpit wank. Smoking in the corridor is not
allowed. There are two handkerchiefs missing. Have you anything cheaper? I need
photo:Tim Kavanagh more pleasure. Weiter! Hinten einsteigen.

Useful Phrases
Words by Mark Leigh

277
 Experience the intense glow of bright materials and details by the visual
illusion of afterimages. Just follow the simple instruction on the next page.

This may not be the first time you’ve experienced an afterimage. You may
have looked at something bright and on looking away the image still per-
sists. It is this image that is an afterimage. Sometimes they are the same
colour (like after you’ve looked into a car’s headlights, or seen a flashbulb
go off) but other times they appear as a different colour. They are caused
by over stimulation of the retina, officially known as ‘retinal fatigue’.

concept and design (© 1999): Rebecca Brown and Mike Heath

photos: John-Paul Pietrus · styling: Jo Phillips

278
 Pink tights by Jonathan Aston · White organza pleat skirt by Joey Nian

Stare at the white dot above (you can blink) for about 60 seconds,
then look at the black dot on the right
Beige hessian jacket with orange insert by Mulligan · Straw bowler hat by Dai Rees
Yellow wool top by Patrick Cox · Blue feathered hat by Phillip Treacy
Blue silk cardigan (worn cropped) by ck Calvin Klein · White jersey skirt worn as a dress by Red or Dead · White "Saturn" hat by Phillip Treacy
 two people find something in common
by Oscar Stevenson @ Hughes Behrendt

288
 it’s a vision thing

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photos: Siobhan Bradshaw

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