Peripheral Visions

early childhood, learned to chant several notes on the same breath, a chord. They had begun to offer their chanting rituals before Western audiences, but only in spaces sanctified to prayer and under conditions of careful solemnity. This was what they had come to do in Iran, I learned. Because the ecumenical impulse is minimal in official Shiite Islam, they were to present their rituals in Christian churches. Muslims regard Jews and Christians as People of the Book who have accepted some portion of the revelation of a prophet of the One God and thus are on the road to the truth; but Buddhists are regarded as pagan idolaters.
    The agenda of the monks, then, was religious: to present their rituals in such a way that a spiritual meaning and benefit would be imparted to their audiences, bringing them some fractional step closer to enlightenment. But the agenda of their hosts was very different. The monks—along with other groups of actors, dancers, and singers from all over the world—had been brought to Iran as an “act” for the Shiraz Arts Festival. The shahbanu, the empress, had created the Shiraz Festival, with performances ranging from the exotic to the avant-garde, scandalizing traditional Iranians—postmodern experimentation in provincial Shiraz, city of poets and gardens, simulated rape, incitement to blasphemy. The festival came to represent the efforts of the monarchy to introduce dangerous and alien innovations. Two years later the religious community, protesting the tyranny of the shah, demanded free speech and, in the same ultimatum, demanded the right to censor the festival.
    In Athens, speaking with and through the interpreter, I learned that the monks knew almost nothing about Islam and were anxious to learn, but that no arrangements had been made for them to do so. So I offered to take them the next day to some historic mosques where tourists were permitted, and to the lodge of a Sufi teacher.
    But first I would attend their ceremony, scheduled to take place in the evening in a little Presbyterian mission church in downtown Tehran. A sort of island of Tibetan Buddhism had been created in that church: in front of the tall-backed chairs and choir stalls, scarlet and orange cushions had been set out, a low table covered with brocade, long Tibetan horns, bells, images. Above them, a portrait of the Dalai Lama partly obscured a cross outlined in neon.
    It was summer and very hot. Tehran is built on a mountainside, the wealthiest houses on the cooler slopes, and as you go, literally, downtown, the city gets hotter, poorer, and more crowded. Open watercourses run alongside the streets; although these are by no means the open sewers that Westerners tend to see in them, there is a vast difference between the crystalline clear fountains of the Niavaran Palace at the top of the city and the dirty water that reaches the bottom. Smog is heavy, and the traffic is horrendous, old, fuming vehicles and aggressive drivers. So I was not popular with my husband when I told him to meet me at the mission church. The place was packed, but I had saved him a seat. He arrived caustic and complaining, and matters got steadily worse as we waited for the monks to begin. And waited. Lights for filming were set up at the sides of the sanctuary. The little church got hotter, Barkev became more sarcastic about my eccentric tastes. And still we waited.
    Later I learned that the monks had been outside the whole time, sitting in a bus and declining to begin, because they had discovered that they were to be taped for television. Their sense of mission, their sense of the efficacy of their ritual for those who heard it, required actual presence, and they refused to have it canned. The Arts Festival officials were furious. “Tell them they have to perform,” they said to the interpreter. “No,” he said, “they don’t. Telling them that won’t do any good at all.” Officials threatened cancellation, lawsuits, expulsion from the country, jail. The monks sat serenely in their bus. The waiting audience became increasingly restive. One hour after the ceremony was supposed to begin, technicians came in to dismantle the TV lights, and finally the monks entered.
    They walked with dignity to the front of the church and sat in a little circle of Tibetan culture surrounded by evangelical Protestantism, like Victorian imperialists dressing for dinner in the jungle. They began to chant. Suddenly that little church was cool and calm; dirt