October 2, 2015 - 17:38
The Appropriate Response
I might as well have been of a different species – we were both human, though I couldn’t understand his language, his gestures, his expressions. I was in his territory, playing his game—the blatant other in this unfamiliar field. My zone of contact existed within another social mechanism, where the dynamics of power are inherent in appearance and aspect. In Iran, I must behave and conduct myself in a certain way, because I am a woman. I must dress a certain way, and respond in a certain way. Having arrived to the country only three days prior to the eve of ‘the happening’, I was unaware of this vast divergence in demeanor between the Iranians and Americans.
This recounting entails a further speculation into the event in which I went out into the Iranian market unaccompanied, at night, for my first time. It still brings me discomfort, to summon the face of the man who shadowed me, who chased my every step for half an hour. Recent ingestion of the reading “Ravens at Play” has brought to surface the possibility for another interpretation, further complexifying the case.
Stuart Cooke describes an encounter with two ravens during his journey through Death Valley. During his meeting, Stuart maintains a certain distance between himself and the ravens, taking “another step closer” as the “two ravens hopped one step away” (331). He “took yet another step; they leapt further away” (331). This happening between Stuart and the two ravens is outrageously similar to my encounter with the human who I call ‘the man in the brown leather jacket’. Drifting through a herd of bodies as they meandered through the Tehran bazaar, my uncertainty carried me somewhere in the current of the crowd. Much like the movement of Stuart with the raven, as I moved forward a few paces, the man in brown followed behind. Maintaining a distance that caught my attention, I knew this sort of movement was occurring as a result of my presence. He was not riding the course of the crowd; he pushed forward and kept on my tail. I would quicken my pace in order to preserve a comfortable bubble, though he would move forward to reach that uncomfortable closeness again. “The space between us never increased, but it never decreased either” (Cooke, 331).
‘I am an inexperienced foreigner’—my being seems to scream— the likely target for the pestering play of one who is familiar with how things work. The experience left me with many questions, and now I question the intention of the man who followed me—was he playing? Was I being played?
“What marks the difference between being played and actually playing—in so far as there can be a solid border—is a willingness and an ability to respond playfully to the advances of another. This requires attentiveness to and knowledge of others, even if only to know when we are being invited to play, as well as skillful learning of the kinds of actions that might or might not be appropriate or safe.”
After having noticed that an interaction was taking place, I had no decision but to take part. To the best of my ability, I tried not to respond “playfully”, however that may be defined in the “material semiotic field” of the Thursday night Tajrish Bazaar in Tehran. In order to maintain my safety, I politely declined the invitation to play, by refusing eye contact to the best of my ability – and so, I was being played. It was apparent that if I were to respond beyond moving away, I would be taking a risk, I would be “daring not to be in complete control, or even to really know the other but to play anyway” (336). The pervading sense of danger took away the “sense of humor” that one may experience in an environment where the power dynamic is not quite so imbalanced.
There was an immense inequity between me and ‘the man in brown’—there still is. While he knows and asserts his place in the “dynamics of power” (329), I—although I ‘was in no doubt that I had been addressed—couldn’t fully agree on an appropriate response’ (Cooke, 328). The interaction between Stuart and the ravens was not quite as stark in imbalance of power as my experience, and this allowed an opportunity for each species to respond playfully. Rather than fly away, the ravens suggested “a confidence in their skills (their ability to escape)” (Cooke, 333). Stuart was able to remain present because the human species is the most powerful, so what did he have to fear from a mere raven?
My human interaction did not give me any sense of comfort in my ability. Stripped of my sense of the word ‘appropriate’, I was trapped within a crowded urban landscape that I was foreign to in the zone of response. There was so much Persian humor that I did not understand before living there, so many gestures, so many expressions.
The possibility of a contact zone exists in every which way, from all directions—and yet, in my described incident, no exchange occurs. In no way does this invalidate the presence of a contact zone, it simply adds a layer to the communication. “In this way, movements and behaviors from other contexts can be put into use as metacommunication” (Thom, 335). After summoning the memory of the event once more in this account, it is clear that although I didn’t know “what the precise signals were in order to know that play was being proposed,” (335) a sick, twisted “game emerged” (335). Although Rose, Cooke, and Dooren speak only of a type of play that extends to multispecies interactions, it is clear that their lens can be applied to human interaction.
To what extent does my Persian blood give me an inherent connection to the people of Iran? Without even having to say a single word, Iranians can tell within seconds that I do not live there, that I am an outsider. They can infer from this that my ability to keep myself safe is limited, and for some time, this made me fearful of going out alone. However, my experience within this contact zone has nurtured my flexibility of behavior, allowing my range of environments to expand. I am not yet daring like the raven, though my willingness to enter these fields and grow from these experiences have improved my adaptability.
Works Cited
Deborah Bird Rose, Stuart Cooke and Thom Van Dooren. "Ravens at Play."Cultural Studies Review 17, 2 (September 2011), 326-43.