Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
, Ari welcome to Live Free Ride Free.
I'm so happy that you're here for the listeners.
I, I knew Ari about 20 years ago in Austin, Texas, where we were both
part of an ecstatic dance group.
And anyone who's ever done ecstatic dance knows how ecstatic it is.
It's a, it's one of the most wonderful things you can do if you stumble into it.
And it tends to attract obviously fairly interesting people.
I remember Ari, my interactions with you just always thinking, wow, that's a really
interesting person who's going to go on and do really, really interesting things.
And I knew a little bit about your background.
So now to reconnect after so long and to find that not only have
you been doing interesting things that you sort of blow one's socks
off with your interesting things.
Can you please tell us who you are and what you do?
Ari Honarvar: Thank you so much for having me, Rupert.
It's so fun to catch up after feels like ages.
And yeah, so I'm the founder of Roomie with a View, and the purpose of that is
to bridge the of between war torn America.
Countries, borders, and also it's an intersection of art, dance, which includes
dancing, poetry, music, everything that you can imagine that's artistic,
and also well being and spirituality.
So that's where I'm at.
I dance with refugees.
I've danced with thousands of refugees throughout the past decade or so, and
I practice all sorts of different kinds of ways to bring joy into my life, and
I do facilitate resilience through joy.
Workshops and retreats on both sides of the U.
S.
Mexico border.
Just as I dance with refugees.
I conduct those sessions with frontline workers with mental health care workers
with doctors with with people who are asylum Attorneys and work, how you just
deal with a lot of vicarious trauma.
And throughout my experiences, I've found that just my own childhood
coming from, from a war torn country, which was super oppressive to
women and and everyone else that.
Joy is what is pleasurable is sustainable and joy is like a renewable fuel
that can transform our relationships with others, with each other,
with work, with our whole world.
So that's, that's what my gem is.
Rupert Isaacson: The war torn country that you came from was, is Iran.
You were how old when the Shah fell and Ayatollah Khomeini came in?
Ari Honarvar: I was six and just like that, in a matter of months,
women lost their right to ride a bicycle or sing or dance in public.
Couldn't
Rupert Isaacson: sing.
A woman could not sing.
Ari Honarvar: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: A man could sing?
Ari Honarvar: A man could sing.
A woman's voice was deemed too provocative by the Islamists that took over Iran.
Rupert Isaacson: What did that mean for you as a six year old child?
Describe the shift of your reality from A relatively westernized kid
because Iran at that time, certainly Tehran, was relatively westernized.
What changed, like, in the perception of a child?
Could you describe it for us?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, so my best friend was a boy, I was kind of a tomboy, and we were
just getting into all sorts of troubles.
And and all of a sudden, I could not be You know, playing with him
without a chaperone in public.
He could go on as he pleased, whereas I had to cover my hair and my body.
I mean, that took, took a couple of years for that to happen, maybe a year or so.
For, for.
The regime to implement the mandatory hijab laws.
And once they did that, then I became more and more restricted.
I felt like I was just having to blend into the background.
I couldn't run.
They wouldn't let, you know, if I ran, someone would be like,
What are you doing running?
You know, bringing attention to yourself.
You're a girl, you're supposed to be you know, whatever.
And we literally had to sit on the back of the bus as, as women.
So there was a gender apartheid that was happening that we were subject to
that was so unfair to my seven year old.
mind that, that I, you know, just kept my hair really, really short.
I cut my hair and I pretended to be a boy so I could skirt those
laws and get into as much trouble as I could before some well meaning
neighbors are like, hey, that's a boy.
Girl pretending to be a boy.
And my parents were like, no, no, no, you can't do this.
So then I had to get into trouble in other ways because it was so unfair to me.
To live in a world where a group of people are favored over another group.
And that's the basis of my social justice or the sense of morality and social
justice that you know, human rights and, all of our relations rights is not a
choose your own adventure kind of thing.
You have to honor everyone in this world as a, it's the basis for me.
Rupert Isaacson: So you're six years old, this happens to you, you, you think, okay,
fine, I'm going to pretend to be a boy.
That doesn't work.
At what age do you get out?
How do you get out?
And what's your.
As you go into like later childhood, early adolescence, because then I should imagine
things must have changed even more.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
So I was I had so many terrible things happening all around me.
People were getting arrested, tortured, killed executed.
The dissidents, anyone who said anything that was not jiving
with the, with the authorities.
Freedom of speech was extremely curtailed.
So people had to talk about the weather to, you know, as a metaphor is like, Oh,
I think the weather's going to get better.
Meaning like this regime is going to go maybe.
And and people, and then people started getting arrested for
even talking about the weather.
So it was, it was just this kind of a lottery of torture and
death that was that befell us.
And then in the middle of that, about a year, I was like seven, seven years
old when the Iran Iraq war happened.
Saddam Hussein took advantage of the internal turmoil and attacked
Iran and started a war that lasted eight years and destroyed countless
lives, more than a million lives.
And it was, you It's really hard.
We had to deal with internal you know, suppression and
oppression and, and crackdowns.
And then there was an actual war going on.
And but the war on joy that we felt.
You know, really, really hurt in a different way.
And and it was not okay, but by many of us, we actually took risks, dangerous
risks to, to bring joy into our lives.
We would even, we would have little tiny parties, you know, in, in in kind of like,
speakeasy type situations, but sometimes they would get like our neighbors.
Neighbors party, birthday party got raided because they were birthday party,
Rupert Isaacson: a child's birthday party.
Ari Honarvar: a child's birthday party.
They would
Rupert Isaacson: raid a child's birthday party.
Ari Honarvar: They raided a child's birthday party and
everyone took off there.
It was our neighbors.
Everyone took off, climbed the wall, got into our house to, to run away.
And there is my mom handing everyone a veil, a chador to put on their head
so they can, everyone's like barefoot because, you know, it was just so, So
unexpected and these men with machine guns show up and and the mother of the
child was had a brain tumor and she was very weak and it was like she gathered all
her strength to, to throw this birthday party to have one final moment of joy.
And so when she came over to our yard, she had a seizure and.
These men with machine guns held the machine guns to us, you know,
I pointed the the guns at us and said, you cannot go help her.
So we're watching this woman right on the ground and and we are helpless.
We, you know, they wouldn't let us help her.
And so my mom is like, she's gonna die.
And so the man is like, oh, let her die.
So what?
So this is the kind of oppression we're talking about.
So of course it enraged me.
It made me so, you know, intolerant of such injustices.
So what I did was I would sneak out at night and I would write
anti regime stuff on the walls.
And the punishment for that is death, because when you live in a theocracy,
anything that you say against the regime, you also say that against the against God.
And of course you can't be blasphemous.
So my sister's classmate, she was a senior in high school when she was arrested,
half her classmates were arrested and taken to prison for various acts of
defiance, just bringing joy to their life or have a sense of expression.
And My sister's classmate, Roya, was executed without a public
trial and they just told her parents to come get her body.
So that kind of, you know, just, detonated these shockwaves through our
neighborhood as we're getting bombed, as we're, our family members are
getting killed in an actual war too.
So, so yeah, but we were like, we're gonna, we're gonna have joy
anyways in the midst of it all.
We are going to express ourselves in the midst of all of this.
And I just watched the adults who were able to put their grief or,
or even bring their grief and their joy together and, and and celebrate
whenever we could, whenever we could.
And my parents decided that it was too dangerous for me to be in the U.
S.
So I left.
So, so they, so my mom actually wrote a poem about India's Independence
Day and submitted it along with our visa application to India.
And India in the, in Indian ambassador must have liked that poem.
So she, they, they granted us a visa to go to India.
And in India I secured a meeting with the American Consulate.
I was 14 at the time.
And through a series of miracles, I got a visa to come to the us.
But the fine print on that miracle was that I had to do it alone
and my parents had to go back to Iran to be with my sister.
They didn't give them a visa to come.
So I had to learn a new way of life, a new language and on a new planet.
Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
Okay.
I've got some questions before we go to how on earth you managed to
Survive in the US at 14 by yourself.
The first question is okay listeners Ari is also a best selling author and
she's the author of a book you've got to check out called, A Girl Called Rumi.
Rumi, as many of you know, Is, was, I guess still is, along with Happy's, a
sort of staple in the, what would we say the, the, the, in Western eyes,
the sort of inspirational, spiritual
poetry, sort of beloved by scholars, new ageists, hippies, just people
that like poetry, you know, anyone who likes a good poem at some point
is going to come across roomy.
Without a doubt, this high medieval writing, I think in the 13th century
Persian poet has penned some of the most beautiful literature
that's, you know, recorded that we can get our hands over.
But for your people, Rumi is as Shakespeare is to the Brits
or whoever, perhaps more.
How did this expression of poetry, and particularly the poetry of this
particular poet and poets like him, mitigate the suffering of the war on joy?
How did that help you?
What did you do?
How did it manifest?
Ari Honarvar: So, it's so wild because you couldn't compose new poems.
Like, I, my mother was a poet and, and I talk about how the
regime pruned her of her poetry.
And because anything that you said was blasphemous, but then there is Hafiz
and Rumi and Saadi and, and Harveen, Etesami and all, all the older poets
well, Etesami is more new, but, but the the older poets, you know, you could just
recite their poems and, and, and every
Rupert Isaacson: People just know them in, in, in Persian culture,
in Iranian culture, people grow up reciting them, knowing them.
Is it sort of common knowledge or is it just only the educated?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, so it's poetry is as part of a Persian person's
makeup as their very heartbeat.
We recite poems not just in at funerals and weddings, but when in
conversation, or even when we're trying to resolve a conflict, we
do it through a verse of poetry.
And and it's just woven in the fabric of our lives and and now every time
someone says something that is you know, neuroscience or, or wisdom is like, Oh,
it's all about emptiness or crying is good for you or compassion or gratitude is the
way to go, or all of those little things.
There is a verse for everything that these mystics and poets
knew thousands of years ago.
Or hundreds of years ago, and it's just part of that that mantra.
It's become like a mantra of sorts that we can say that and it evokes this passion.
I think I mentioned that part in in so many of, of the, the talks
that I do about this rooftop scene where I'm on the rooftop and I'm,
and we're watching the anti aircraft missiles shoot down from the sky.
And I'm really scared.
I'm seven years old and I don't know who's going to die next.
Is it going to be my sister, my friend, my best friend, my teacher?
And all of a sudden, someone from a passerby below says something like,
And that means, Even if from the sky poison befalls all, I
am still sweetness, wrapped in sweetness, wrapped in sweetness.
Wrapped in sweetness.
And then someone from below or another rooftop is gives an
answer to that with another verse.
While others are singing about love, I am the ton of love
and verses like that, really going into your 7-year-old heart and radiate to
every cell of your being until your world is as ecstatic and magnificent.
as the 13th century poets.
And in that moment, what bomb could ever touch that?
Rupert Isaacson: Here's, so here's the question that bubbles up in my mind.
My family, as you may well know, is colonial African.
And so joy is so much part of of the African experience, no matter
whether you're white, whether you're black, whether, you know, even under
apartheid I suppose they absolutely tried to go to war on joy, but there's
no way they could, you know, you're going to tell Africans to not sing
and dance and, and make praise poetry.
And so, you know, no, you're, it's, that's, you know,
telling the ocean to go back.
But, In a culture that,
where people are raised on this kind of poetry and ecstatic joy,
what made so many people decide to go along with a war on joy?
Where did these young men who were pointing the gun at the mother
having the seizure in your yard, they must have also been raised on this.
What made such a sizable chunk of the population decide
to turn their backs on it?
Ari Honarvar: Well, you could address, this is a very good question, and you
could address it from very different ways.
I would like to address it historically.
To and, and also bring about colonialism and imperialism as, you
know, you're very familiar with that.
So, in 1953, Iran had a democratically elected leader who was popular and
they were going to nationalize oil.
They did nationalize oil.
That means that the Brits and the U.
S.
weren't going to get cheap oil anymore.
And so, this was the first time that the CIA decided to stage
a coup for profit overseas.
And what they did is that the Brits can convinced the U.
S.
government to, to stage a coup.
And so they started paying money to thugs.
And the thugs You know, just started beating people up and and, and it
was just like nothing that like that had ever happened before and they
were successful and they, they were able to oust Mossad there, who was
a democratically elected leader and get them and, and, and then the U.
S.
installed the Shah.
Who was a dictator and then the dictator ended up being what dictators do.
He had some you know, some educational programs and he had some good things
that, that he implemented, but he also kind of like the royalty in Britain was
very opulent while people were suffering.
So their income equality was became worse because we were no longer
a democratic socialist country.
And and then there were cronies and then he went on the,
on a war on the dissidents.
So people were whoever was saying anything against him was
getting tortured and killed.
Then the backlash happened and people became really, really dissatisfied.
And the CIA again started colluding with this unknown mullah, Ayatollah Khomeini,
and they, they kind of, I guess they made some back room deals with each
other and he, she, he became the, the de facto leader of, of the country.
And he had promised democracy, he had promised women's rights,
he had promised so many things.
Amazing things, but he became even more brutal than the Shah.
So by that time, there was so much such a fractured society.
And that's the people saw the corruption of the Shah.
People saw the torture.
People saw the.
The opulence when other people were starving.
So, so they, some people chose religion, their religious
routes and ideology took over.
And then the other side was like, no, we kind of like this.
So there was like this, and then there were other ordinary people
were like, well, I don't like this.
And I don't like that, that I'm stuck in the middle.
Rupert Isaacson: I guess what's still, I'm just sort of as a journalist peeling
back the onion layers a little bit.
I could see all of that historical process happening within a national
character that still allowed for the sort of culture, main cultural
expressions to keep happening just because they were so powerful.
You know, I could see this dictator, that dictator takes power.
I can, you know, let's face it.
I mean, this goes on all the time, everywhere.
But it was just so interesting, because every Iranian I've ever met
has had this sort of joie de vivre.
I don't think, I can't think of a single Iranian that I know, whether they were
born in or out of Iran, who doesn't have, as you describe, this love of culture, of
dance, of poetry, of exactly, like it's in them, like, like, like their blood.
So, what's intriguing to me is, for example, you know, I saw
dictatorships come and go in Africa.
But I wouldn't say that there was ever a war, and, and, and
brutal, horrible, nasty things.
But I wouldn't say there was ever a war on
per se.
There was certainly, if you spoke up, if you did all those things, yeah, you
were just gonna get tortured and killed.
But if you wanted to dance in the street, if you wanted to have your
musical festivals, if you wanted to do all that you know, In fact,
it would almost be encouraged to sort of, maintain the pretense of
a status quo that was harmonious.
You know, that, that can actually serve a dictator quite well.
What do you think?
You know, if you were the soldier pointing the gun in, in that yard back then or if
you were the soldier going to war with Iran, with it, with Iraq what do you
think was going on in the minds of those young men who were also raised on the
poetry, who also grew up seeing their sisters dance, who also participated in
the, the childhood that you described?
What do you think made those particular people think?
Yeah, I'll just jettison all that and take on this strange alien persona.
What's your theory?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, so that extremism that and especially religious extremism,
and if you want to talk about Africa, we can also talk about Boko Haram.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, sure.
Ari Honarvar: You know, those people were also brought in a, in a, in a culture of
joy and res, you know, resilience through joy and song and dance and poetry and
expression, but when you get radicalized in a way that is harmful because you
put your ideology above everything else.
So you become like, it is almost kind of like a, Addiction were when,
when you have healthy habits the, the the habits are supposed to, to
support the entire organism, the human organism, whereas addiction
is like the whole entire organism.
Human organism is supposed to support that addiction.
Got it.
So it's kind of similar analogy to when you put ideology above people.
It's, yeah.
You will absolutely kill people.
And it's the same with capitalism or anything else.
It's not just religious.
Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
Ari Honarvar: When, when you put when you forget what's.
What's important because of a set of rules or an objective or whether it's the
shareholders, you know, bottom line or whatever, it's it results the same thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, exactly.
You know, there was actually a precedent within English history.
You may well be aware of it in the 17th century, the Brits were the first people
to cut off the king's head and say, you know, You know, down with the monarchy for
this reason or that reason, and they did, and of course a new bunch of gangsters
got in and those gangsters were religious fundamentalists who were Puritans, Puritan
Protestants, and they banned dancing, they banned singing, they banned Christmas,
they banned everything they could ban, and
this coincided with, you know, the witch burning years and the many, many
cataclysms that, that followed that century, and it, in the end, After about
30 years or so of the historians here will say no Rupert it was 40 whatever
it's roughly No, it was a few decades of parliamentary rule they brought
back the monarchy because at the end of the day, they said, well, they were a
bunch of wankers, but these wankers are like even wankery than those wankers.
So choose your wanker.
Let's get the old wankers back.
And they did.
And of course, that that was King Charles II, who was who's known as
the merry monarch, you know, who was brought back partying and science
and arts and dance and, you know,
It was a sort of nouveau renaissance that ushered in the enlightenment
in the Industrial Revolution.
One can hope that similar situations can happen.
Ari Honarvar: Well, hopefully better where we don't need a monarchy, but it was the
Rupert Isaacson: best we could do at the time.
Yeah.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
But, but now we have, we have good models of you know, countries that
can grow up and have enough equality.
Of course, everyone's going to have some problems, but when you
have enough equity, equity and transparency and all those good things,
Rupert Isaacson: is there a verse for that?
Ari Honarvar: I'm sure there is.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: What is your verse before I want to return to you getting to the U.
S.
as a 14 year old scared and alone Having just been in India,
which is its own culture shock.
I've lived in India is can you think is there a verse that you can think of?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah
Rupert Isaacson: embodies hope optimism
Ari Honarvar: Well, what when you said like The, the moving that, when
you talked about moving from the, from Iran to here, I go with the,
which is this know, it's a read, the song of the read that has been cut from
the source and it just sings because.
It is so, has, is so full of longing for, to go back home.
And I was very, very homesick during that time.
So, so that, that is definitely a a song for, for that, or a verse for that.
But then dancing really helped me you know, stabilize my nervous system.
I didn't know that at the time that it was helping me with trauma integration
and and just, Getting better and better.
And and so there's a number of verses.
Let me see.
I love this man, Tara.
And it's, Tara is the Arabic word for the rhythm of this moving world.
So when your heartbeat becomes one with the rhythm of this moving
world, and and, and that then you're.
All life kind of becomes this, this synchronous, beautiful song.
And and so, yeah, so that's kind of.
Kind of, I think that's what we do when we have these sessions together,
when we have these communal experiences of love and joy and dancing together,
our nervous system is a home in device for pleasurable experiences that
stabilize, nourish and fortify us.
So, so of course, you know, like this is what we're meant to do.
With each other.
And, and if we could, you know, get people to more people to do that, then,
you know, just our whole quality of life will, will definitely get better.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: You get, you're at 14, you arrive in
the U S who do you stay with?
Where do you go?
How do you live?
Who feeds you?
How do you get educated?
Where are you living?
Ari Honarvar: I landed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and this very kind family And why
Rupert Isaacson: there?
That's such a random place.
You know, you think of port of entry city, right?
Las Cruces is I suppose it's port of entry if you're coming from Mexico, but yeah.
Why?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah so One of the things that happened during the revolution is
my brother, he was, he's 10 years, my senior, he left as an exchange student,
and then he couldn't come back to the U S I mean, come back to Iran because
of the revolution and everything else.
So I hadn't seen him for 10 years and I was stuck in Iran.
He was stuck in the U S and so I you know, so, so I was like,
You know, he became my guardian
Rupert Isaacson: and
Ari Honarvar: became this anthropological experiment.
But before that, I lived with a very kind American family too.
and memorize 300 words of English a day to be able to learn English
and communicate with them.
And so, so yeah, for, for a few months I did that and they
were very, very wonderful.
And, and then I lived with my brother for the rest of it.
Rupert Isaacson: And who connected you with that original family?
Was that the state department or?
Ari Honarvar: No, it was my brother.
My brother did.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So it was still all very organic.
You know, you expect these things to happen through very stratified sort of
official lines, but really they sent you to your brother and your brother
couldn't take you at that point.
So he found people and good luck sort of thing.
Ari Honarvar: Yes.
Yeah, like the, and it was a better bet to do it that way than to seek asylum.
I had a better chance of, because, you know, I had no evidence
that my life was in danger.
So you have, it's, it's so hard to seek asylum in the U.
S.
People don't realize this.
They're like, well, why don't they go through, through proper channels?
And then when you do, when you don't have an evidence, you know, credible,
you evidence and then you're turned back.
So yeah, so this was the path for me to, to to arrive.
Rupert Isaacson: And meanwhile, your parents have gone back from India to Iran
Ari Honarvar: and
Rupert Isaacson: presumably they're in danger and you're cut off from them.
Ari Honarvar: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: And you're trying to navigate American school.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, yeah.
I skipped two grades.
And because of, I was a pretty good student in Iran, despite everything
that was going on and and I just kind of muscled through learning the whole
culture, student culture and graduating.
And then I went to, to college and, I went to Texas State and studied there.
I studied molecular biology and in grad school, I studied melanoma genesis,
which is how melanoma is, the cancer is is propagated in, in the, in the body.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so how do you discover dance to help you through what
why and and how does dance suddenly open up for you as a teenager And as we know
the American high school culture can be you know unpleasant How do you integrate
that and then why molecular biology?
Let's can we do it in that order, please?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, dancing has always been part of me.
So even when we were not allowed to dance, we would dance.
We would get chased by the morality police.
And and it was like, you know, that's why we felt like it was like we didn't,
you know, when you're, you're prefrontal cortex is not developed enough.
You don't really have that, that sense of danger and consequences
that could be followed.
So we would do that as teenagers, me and my friends.
Rupert Isaacson: Where would you dance?
Where, where, where the variety place to find you?
Bubs houses?
Street
Ari Honarvar: each other's houses in the streets when we could, we
would just like shake her booty, you know, whatever anything to do a act
of defiance against the injustice.
So, in the US, I had all this limited unlimited potential to dance.
So I used it.
I just would put on MTV and I would dance.
And it was yeah, and it just, I, I kept feeling better and better and it mitigated
my homesickness, which was terrible.
And yeah.
And then why did I choose molecular biology?
I was always very fascinated by.
The human body and and I originally thought about going to medical school,
but I had a friend who was a doctor and he said, you're going to be so
like consumed by medical school.
You're not going to be, and then you're my life sucks.
You know, he was not very happy as a, as a doctor.
So as I changed my mind, I was like, well, maybe I'll become a researcher.
So.
Switched to, to to research.
I was interested in cancer cause my father had cancer and passed away from it.
So, so that's kind of, I started that and then I got recruited by Nikon,
the microscope company, or they have a microscope division, the lens company.
And so I became.
Tech person, you know, the, the microscope specialist and I would help the
researchers and it was very interesting to see different types of research that,
that different university professors were, were involved in the cutting edge
that I was figuring out the imaging for.
Rupert Isaacson: How does that become the writer of A Girl Called Rumi and
the ambassador, the musical ambassador dancing with refugees in war zones?
That's a bit of a jump.
Can you please tell us how that happened?
Ari Honarvar: Sure.
Well, I blame you for the first part because I remember very clearly we
were sitting in a cafe and I was telling you, you asked me about my
story, kind of like you are now.
And you said, Hey you know, you should write a book.
And that was the time when no one would be writing, you know, it was not that common.
Everyone is writing a book now, but I was like, well, I've
only written technical papers.
I have no interest in writing or what it was just not part of my world.
And and then when the science field and the, the tech business was not,
absolutely did not agree with me.
I was not the person for this.
It just felt wrong.
Every cell of my being was like, do not do this.
And so, I quit one and then I laid, got laid off from another
one cause I tried another.
high tech com or a biotech company and it didn't work out.
And so I was like, all right, that's it.
So I became a carpenter's apprentice.
Someone wanted an apprentice.
I was like, yeah, I'll do woodworking.
I'm terrible at that.
I have no no natural aptitude for it, but I really liked it.
So, so it was, it was kind of cool.
And then at the same time I was teaching meditation to teens and I was very
much into spirituality and Buddhism.
So, and then I started dancing at the ecstatic dance.
And and, you know, it kind of like took off from there.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you tell listeners a little bit about Ecstatic Dance?
Those, those listeners who know me a little bit will not be at all surprised
because you know what a big hippie I am.
To know that I like going into rooms full of people and taking off my shoes and,
Making a fool of myself and the bigger fool I make of myself the more I enjoy
it however Ecstatic dance isn't something that everyone is familiar with and I
always feel they kind of should be because it's one of those things I feel that if
you fall into it, you realize that you always have this access to happiness and
well being that I think relatively few people Have can you tell us a little bit
about what ecstatic dance is, please?
Sorry.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah the Well, I mean, I'm not the best person to, I'll
tell you what my experience was.
So basically you go into a space and yes, you take off your shoes.
And you're barefoot and there's a whole bunch of other people and they
put on this curated set of music.
Someone has figured out a set that starts with some sort of a
warm up, some sort of a crescendo and then a cool down at the end.
And it's about, I think, two or three hours of the time.
And usually by the end, everyone is sweating and feeling really, really great.
And I've met some of.
The most amazing people through dance, including yourself.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It's I, I only discovered it because we, as you know, we were in Austin,
Texas and we were going to a yoga class.
And at the end of this yoga class, all these people would start coming into
the yoga studio and like hugging each other and looking happy and there'd be
these sort of beginnings of this rather interesting sort of trance y techno y
music and I remember thinking that sounds, that sounds quite interesting, doesn't it?
And then I remember hanging out just, just out of curiosity to see,
well, what do they do, these people?
And watching sort of entrances.
Some people like really, really dance and other people like lay around on the
floor and wept and others, you know, sat in apparent meditation against the wall
and others did this and others did that.
And I remember thinking this looks amazing, but I'll never, I'll never
like I'm not that much of a hippie.
I'll never really do that.
And of course, within like two weeks, I was completely hooked.
Because As you know, I was at that time spending quite a lot of time in
the Kalahari with, in Southern Africa with San Bushman hunter gatherers,
you know, on the human rights work that I was doing, and I was seeing
dance being applied for healing.
all the time, you know, and healers dancing themselves into trance
against a backdrop of the people of the clan and the extended families
dancing, creating a polyphonic chant with clapping and singing.
And this could go on for 12 hours.
And I watched cancers being pulled out of people's bodies and shape
shifting and all of this stuff.
I saw it.
And I realized the power of dance, and I realized that dance is, of course, at the
root of what it means to be human in the same way that, say, storytelling does,
that we're the ape that speaks, right?
And that to cut yourself off from dance is really to be kind of sort
of colonialized in a weird way.
And of course, in British culture, we are, we are cut off from dance, and except
in very, very certain stratified ways.
Situations cause the explosion of techno music and raves to some degree knock that
sideways But it's still in there to the point that people feel maybe they need to
take ecstasy or something before they can access You know that intrinsic human state
Where did you decide
I'm actually gonna do this as My vocation my metier and and how
did you get involved with that?
For healing, for conflict resolution, for peacekeeping, as you do now.
And tell us please about the organization that you represent and
just, just give us that story, please.
Ari Honarvar: Well, interestingly enough, I met Cameron Powers, who was
the founder of Musical Ambassadors of Peace, the organization that I work with.
Rupert Isaacson: Musical Ambassadors of Peace.
Ari Honarvar: Correct.
Yeah.
I met him through dancing in Boulder, Colorado.
And it was the same thing, barefoot boogie, that's what they called
it then, the ecstatic dancing.
And I, I was dancing and he started dancing with me and then I found
out that he and his wife, Christina Sophia, they had just traveled to
to the to Iraq during the invasion.
And and they were like, and so the.
Wow.
Very.
very talented musicians.
They sing in like 10, 12 languages and and they absolutely
abhorred the way that the U.
S.
imperialism has wreaked havoc on so much of the world.
So they went to the border in Jordan, Iraq and, and Jordan, and
they were gonna They're like, well, we're not letting any Americans.
And where is your visa?
You know, you're not state department.
And so this Cameron takes out his oud, which is an Middle Eastern
predecessor to guitar and and starts singing and Christina and, and Cameron
starts singing Iraqi love songs.
And it's like, this is our visa.
And so the, the agents were so floored and they're like, come on in.
They led them into Iraq and they started singing these love songs on
the streets of Baghdad and people were like, Oh my God, you're not contractors.
You're not military.
You're not here to kill us or make profit off of us.
And and they're like, yeah, we're, we call ourselves reverse missionaries
because we're not here to to preach a gospel where we want your stories and
we want to bring them back to the U.
S.
So we, they see what an amazing culture you are.
And so this gained a lot of fame in that region.
And they ended up in Cairo performing in front of 60, 000 people in the stadium as
musical ambassadors to the Middle East.
And when they And I was like, I would love to work with you guys.
And this was at the height of the anti Muslim and anti immigrant kind of
sentiments were just really bubbling up in a, in a terrible way in 2015 or so.
And so they were like, sure.
Yeah, let's let's do some roomy shows.
So I would tell a story or recite a poem.
And I had like this huge, beautiful ensemble behind me with music and singing.
And and it was, we called it edutainment, which was to bring, to show a side
of the Middle East to the American audience that is not, you know, bearded
men with machine guns, but inclusive.
wonderful and an inviting culture full of poetry, mysticism, and
the the kindness and compassion.
So when we did that, they were then Syrian refugees started coming into
San Diego and I asked if I could do anything for them besides bringing them.
We're living
Rupert Isaacson: in San Diego at this point.
Ari Honarvar: At this point, I'm living in San Diego and I asked
him what, what I could do and to help besides bring in donations.
And they said, start a drum circle.
And and I was like, isn't that what hippies do in the Bay area?
Like, what, how's that going to help?
You know, like it's still, even though the dancing was really helping me, I still
wasn't convinced that for people who have been, you know, Traumatized doing drumming
might help, but actually, and then I took a facilitation course with another musical
ambassador who had been to Kurdistan and Iraq Christine Stevens, and and of
course, there was like paper after paper.
Research paper showing how amazing drumming is for refugees, for, for
the, for the nervous system, for, for recovery from addiction, for
recovery from, from surgery, for a substance abuse prevention, et cetera.
So, and I was like, well, I, I, I started doing a drum circle with with
another Kurdish woman who in town named Ahwaz Ahmed, who is so I was
from Iran and she's from Iraq and we had our families, probably in France
had killed each other in the wars.
And there we are holding a drum circle together for, for refugees from
Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.
And it was so transformative.
And that, and, but drumming is right, wasn't really my thing,
you know, like I enjoyed it.
It was transformative, but so, and people wanted to dance.
They didn't, didn't want to just sit down.
So we started dancing and that brought this whole other amazing Layer two to
our work and and so just from trial and error of what works and what doesn't work
I started just holding these sessions and then the Muslim ban happened in 2017 and
there were no more new refugees coming from Middle East and At the same time a
crisis was brewing at the border At the U.
S.
Mexico border, and so I shifted my focus to there to the U.
S.
Mexico border, and I started holding sessions for asylum
seekers who were standing.
This isn't a 18.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
In 2018 is when they were doing child separation at the
border and there was so much.
And I was as a journalist, I was covering all of that.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
How did you end up being a journalist?
Because you skipped that bit.
You went, we went from biotech into meeting these amazing people in
Boulder and dancing and then find, you know, doing things for refugees.
Where, where, where and how journalism?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, it was very much kind of another coincidence.
That kind of fell into my lab, not, not intentional, but when the Muslim
ban happened, I wrote a op ed about I'm a, I'm a refugee from a Muslim, I'm a,
I'm a refugee from a banned country.
Here's my story.
And I told the story of, of my childhood and what.
Why, why people seek refuge and why we shouldn't shut our door to,
to refugees coming in from the U.
S., especially since the U.
S.
was, was to blame for much of what had happened in the, in those countries.
So, So that kind of went viral and and then editors started
asking me for for opinion pieces.
And then I started doing more, some investigative just because I was at
the right place at the right time.
And and then it kind of took off from there.
Rupert Isaacson: What did you find as an investigative journalist?
I mean, were you investigating, for example, the children being
held and separated and so on?
And what did you find?
What should we know?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
So there the activists, because I was very active in that, in, in those
circles who were working with the separated kids and their families with
their, the legal teams and everything.
One of them brought a piece of paper to me and it just floored me.
It was.
a paper tucked into a backpack of a child, six year old Guatemalan
girl who was separated from her mother at the Texas border.
And then she was transferred to a Arizona facility, detention facility,
without her mother, and she was sexually abused at this border, at this detention
facility, and she had to sign a paper.
They made her sign, this six year old, they made her sign a paper that said it
was Responsibility to stay away from her abuser and she couldn't read or write in,
you know, so, so basically this is was
Rupert Isaacson: her abuser, a staff member or another refugee.
Ari Honarvar: It was another kid.
Okay.
So the so her signature was this broken D and we had this paper.
And so I wrote about that.
And of course.
Okay.
Everyone went wild and the senators were retweeting it and
Trump wrote a tweet about it.
And and then He said, maybe they should come try to come over legally or something
like that, but they had come over legally.
So that's the whole thing to seek out like asylum is absolutely a legal
thing to do under international law.
So, so then The detention facility ended up being closed, fortunately, and
the kid was reunited with her parents, and they all got therapy because of
the publicity that this got, and they got all their legal fees paid as well.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I'm glad that, you can't say it's a happy
ending, but at least there was hope.
You know, an attempt to right the wrong when you were going in to spend time with
these communities who are sitting in camps and so on, and you're dancing with them,
a, what's the, what's their reaction is, are they like, well, hold on a second,
we need, you know, practical help.
What, what, what, what's with this dance thing.
And then secondly, At what point do they go, no actually we
really do want this dance thing.
And then thirdly, what are you dancing?
Ari Honarvar: So it's interesting because it was never the refugees who
were the gatekeepers to the dancing.
They were thrilled to dance from the get go.
It was, and we never go empty handed.
We always bring donations because it's kind of ridiculous to ask people
to, to, you know, dance with you when their basic needs are not met.
But the, it was the other activists who.
We're like, what are you doing?
This is so frivolous.
They need
Rupert Isaacson: the sort of Puritan do gooders sort of thing.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
So it's basically like the colonialized mindset that thinks that doesn't
everything has to be streamlined.
Everything has to be according to, they don't look at the whole refugee
experience or the whole person to see what they're looking for.
Absolute needs are the fact is what when you're in a camp like that, so
much of your time, you're spending worrying, you're spending in boredom,
you're spending having difficult physical ailments, because you're
not moving your body the way you're supposed to, you're, you're consumed
by your trauma, you're consumed by so many different Terrible things.
So when we put on a dance, everyone is just like, Oh my God, thank you.
You know?
And so, but I mean, I actually was.
So I asked the shelter director at, at one point I was like, maybe it is
because the other activists were like, this is, this is wrong, you should be
working more on, on the bringing, you know, legal help and medicine and things
like that which we were, but so I was like, well, maybe I shouldn't do this.
Maybe this is just like a headache for them.
Why am I doing this?
And so I asked the shelter director and they were like, Oh my God.
No, even if you don't bring anything at all, please bring your dancing because
once they dance everyone is just so calm and the effects last for several days.
People have better collaboration, cooperation, headaches disappear,
need for medication disappears, and and it's just like absolutely needed.
In fact, during the The COVID lockdowns where I couldn't go to
Tijuana to dance because there was a lockdown, the borders were closed.
And we, they're like, we need our dancing.
So we did our Zoom sessions.
We started doing Zoom sessions instead.
Rupert Isaacson: How long, how long would a dance session last like this?
And again, what are you dancing?
Is it Taylor Swift or is it like the dancers of the countries
that, that they have left?
Or is it both?
Ari Honarvar: I think it is so important to, to honor the
population that you're working with.
Again, this is not my dance.
This is.
our group.
So what are, what are, what are they?
So if I'm dancing with Haitians, we dance to Haitian music.
If we, I'm dancing with Ukrainians, we, we dance to Ukrainian music
and we do the Ukrainian dances.
They teach me how to do it because I have no idea how to do Ukrainian
dances, so foreign to my senses.
And or when I am in Tijuana, a lot of them are from, yes.
Mexico or South and Central American countries and we dance
bachata, samba, I mean bachata,
and salsa and merengue and and then sometimes they teach me
some dances that I have no idea.
So, so it's, it's all about the music that makes them feel safe.
Makes them feel have a sense of belonging works in reparative
rehumanization and honors their wishes.
Rupert Isaacson: What's the neuroscience of dance?
Why does it restore?
Ari Honarvar: So again the, one of the things that happens when, um,
when mammals are experiencing danger.
When they get to a safe place, they shake their body.
They literally shake it off.
And somehow we humans used to do that.
And and we just stopped doing that.
We stopped shaking our bodies when, after trauma.
It's a little bit of a mental, emotional hygiene that it's kind of like when you
get your hands dirty, you wash your hands.
It's a similar thing that helps keeps us healthy.
So we don't ingest germs.
This is so we don't You know, we don't, we don't have the cortisol and the adrenaline
and the harmful hormones and chemical neurotransmitters just keep going.
How can you
Rupert Isaacson: shake off cortisol?
Cortisol, that's a stress hormone that's now coursing through your system.
How does shaking mitigate that?
Ari Honarvar: So it's interesting because you have both cortisol, you
know, so cortisol doesn't just like stop it it when you're dancing when
you do pleasurable activities you have cortisol too like dancing or having
sex or or exercising you also have Cortisol, but it's mitigated with some
other hormones and neurotransmitters like serotonin oxytocin And endorphins
and dopamines that flood your body.
And eventually there's a balance to that.
And then eventually your, your rest and digest system, which is the
parasympathetic nervous system kicks in.
And it It starts and then you feel really good.
That's when you rest, digest and create rather than be in a survival mode, which
is when it's just those only the cortisol and adrenaline and other chemicals that
are, that are only supposed to be like a spike, you know, to get you enough
stress to get out of a bad situation, you know, you don't want to be.
In a prolonged situation that is that is present in that you
Rupert Isaacson: have your sympathetic nervous system excited.
And then through the dance through these other chemicals, the oxytocin,
the serotonin, endorphins and so forth, the, the parasympathetic
can then also become excited and then balance out and take over.
Is that basically the process?
Ari Honarvar: It is.
And once.
And when you do it together, when you do acts of art or dancing or, or
anything that is stabilizing to the nervous system and it's together,
then the effects are amplified.
I had a doctor at one of my retreats.
Who told me that the etymology of sympathetic can be tracked back
to pathos, the Greek word for the disease or feeling of self.
And sim is the Greek root for together.
So when it's combined with pathos, it's sympathy means together in feeling.
And so what causes suffering befalls all of us.
And so this sympathetic nervous system is really tuned into the environment and
all that it contains and it automatically decides to activate or, or not based
on the stimuli it receives and the parasympathetic also when so that becomes
kind of like a contagious stimulus.
Contagion when, when we are all like stressed, you know, that's
how riots happen or impedes and the opposite is absolutely true.
Joy is very contagious and we all And we all feel that joy and it's amplified
and we resonate with that together.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So we, we, we understand that the parasympathetic has now become active
with at rest and digest and one can see how for anyone, especially someone who's
been suffering, this is a good thing.
What goes on in the brain?
So once it crosses the blood brain barrier, what goes on there?
Ari Honarvar: What, what our brain was evolved for was movement,
otherwise we would be plants.
So it is, so there's the, the body budget, which the, Refers to the
constant process of predicting and balancing the body's needs and resources.
So that it replenishes that body budget that when you cross that, then you got,
you know, like your cerebellum starts.
It's producing like Purkinje cells and all sorts of ways to mitigate
the, the amygdala, which has a you know, it's, again, amygdala is
also activated during the fight, flight, freeze, et cetera, response.
But it's also activated during learning.
It's also activated during learning something new or communicating something.
You know, that you haven't before.
So it's when you move in a different way, when you say a different thing,
your brain keeps getting rewired.
And so, when, when that, when we keep doing the same thing more and
more, those, those neural pathways keep getting stronger and stronger.
So the more that we dance, the more, or we do, we engage in pleasurable activities.
That activate our parasympathetic nervous system, the more we make
those pathways stronger and stronger.
Right.
Yeah.
You're
Rupert Isaacson: talking about novel movement and its effect on the brain.
You mentioned those cheeky little things a moment ago, Purkinje cells,
which I always think of as like a Pokemon character bouncing around
with long floppy ears or something.
Tell, tell the listeners what's a Purkinje cell and what does it do?
Why is it a good thing?
Ari Honarvar: Well, there is It's in that, I guess the base of the cerebellum.
I have to like look up the, the, the exact definite, you know, the
exact what it does, but it's a, these are really large neurons.
And if you look at them under the kind of focal microscope, they're so beautiful.
They're like a tree.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, or a placenta even.
Yeah, absolutely.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
Yeah.
And and so the once, you know, the, they stimulate the release of, of
certain chemicals, you got BDNF, you got serotonin, you got oxytocin,
which is the bonding chemical.
And it also is active in communication and and, and learning and creating.
So, so yeah, it's, it's a really beautiful way to there, and
there's so many other chemical processes that happen in the body.
Yeah, you
Rupert Isaacson: mentioned, you mentioned BDNF that's, you
know, brain derived neurotrophic factor the protein that becomes.
A stem cell that becomes a neuron stimulated by movement.
And as you, as you point out, you know, Purkinje cells get fired as part
of that with our work with autism, those people that know that side of
me, of my work, we rely very much on the creation of Purkinje cells through
novel movement, play balancing dance.
Because with the oxytocin.
Which is both a feel good hormone, but as you say, a bonding hormone
that promotes communication.
Someone has autism, they don't particularly maybe want to communicate,
and then suddenly they're getting flooded with a communication hormone.
The Purkinje cells among many other things that they do are
responsible for social skills.
So, you know, in my world with autism, I've got someone who has,
you know, I don't particularly want to communicate ism.
And then suddenly they're flooded with a communication hormone
and social skills neurons.
We see change.
But one of the things which we absolutely promote is dance, you know, and I'm so
I'm fascinated by the fact that you're using it so effectively with trauma.
So okay.
So you're there in Tijuana which as we know is a gnarly place cartels.
nasty stuff.
Are you ever in danger when you go and do these dances?
Ari Honarvar: I mean Yeah, it's just like anywhere else really but we did
have a really horrible situation one time at one of the shelters that I danced
with the shelter directors were were unfortunately tortured and killed and
hanged from the pole telephone poles
Rupert Isaacson: Why?
What point were they making or who who did it?
Ari Honarvar: I mean, they don't leave a calling card behind, you know, like no one
Rupert Isaacson: usually when people do something that they
want you to see like that.
We don't take them into a backroom and kill them.
We hang the body wherever we see.
It's usually to make a statement.
Fear, fear this for what reason?
What, what do you think was going on?
What was the message?
Ari Honarvar: I honestly don't know.
And we have asked around and I have found a reason what happened.
But it could be a number of things like after I do a lot of the dance sessions,
after every dance session, I meet with people who need a little bit more extra
support and sometimes they do tell me their stories and a lot of times they
don't know, they don't know who did anything they're like, I have no idea.
But I, there, there were like, you need to leave or we're going to kill you.
even though, you know, they may have mistaken them for a witness or
they were a witness to something, but they didn't know who did it.
Still, they are in danger and they have to leave.
And some of them were shot many times and survived and were, you know, as
soon as they got better, they left.
So, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And these directors of the shelter who who murdered.
Was this in any way connected to the dance or this was just like
a random thing that happened and suddenly you can't go to that shelter
anymore because the people are dead?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, it's was not connected to the dance.
Yeah, the,
Rupert Isaacson: it's terrifying.
Okay, so this is brave that you go and you do these dances in these places.
Is San Diego and Tijuana the only place you do it well?
Where else do you go?
Do you, do you go around the world doing it?
How does it work?
Who sends you?
Who funds it?
Ari Honarvar: I have been to Mexicali, and I have been to London, dancing with
Ukrainian refugees, and I do it, and I do the retreats and workshops all
over the place, but the dances with the refugees are usually, in San Diego
or in Tijuana more than anywhere else.
And Musical Ambassadors of Peace is the usually the funder.
Rupert Isaacson: So at the end, listeners, we're gonna find out how we
can support Musical Ambassadors of Peace.
And I'm gonna ask you about your retreats as well and how people can join them.
But before then, from dance, let's just go back to poetry.
So,
Is to, obviously dancing is physical.
Poetry, you might dance or declaim, you know, move your
body while you recite poetry.
What do, what for you is the difference though, the main difference in the
process of joy between dance and poetry?
What, what's going on differently from one to the other?
Ari Honarvar: Well, what is going on?
I don't know.
Every time I recite a poem, I feel like my body really moves in
a, in a, in a different way that is very potentially dance like.
Rupert Isaacson: Does poetry, does poetry access trance?
Do we automatically go into an altered state of consciousness through poetry?
Ari Honarvar: It absolutely can happen, but any, I mean, there's so many like
the science of neuroaesthetics, which is how our body and our brain are, They're
basically the same, but our nervous system response to aesthetic experiences and
and art shows that, you know, you can get into that state of flow or trance through
crocheting or through painting or through poetry or storytelling, writing a story.
So there's so many different ways of, of accessing that.
Rupert Isaacson: Take us into an altered state of consciousness, please.
You've recited earlier were you reciting in Farsi or Arabic earlier?
Ari Honarvar: It's Farsi.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Please take us again.
It's so beautiful.
A verse that you feel is the verse of now that anyone sitting
in their car in traffic listening to this might benefit from.
Ari Honarvar: We are not that un unruly tree that became
an ax itself.
When life breaks us, we become music.
Rupert Isaacson: I would say that took me into an altered state of consciousness.
Ari Honarvar: It's just
Rupert Isaacson: a wow is not enough.
It's I was checking in with what the feeling was in my body.
So I was responding on a nervous system way just to the beauty of the language.
Very beautiful language, magical sounding language.
It sounds to the English ear like somebody recounting a magical
spell, but a beautiful one.
And then when you translate it.
One follows in that sort of curious way, like, tracking, and then you reveal this
Punchline is the worst word one could think of for it, but you know what I mean?
When, when life breaks us, we become music, is that right?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, so, so the, the, I guess they made palms they
made axes out of palm trees before.
It's like, so this kind of like, it's talking about the cycle of violence.
Yeah.
The abuser becomes, the abused becomes the abuser.
Someone who's been cut down becomes the axe themselves to cut somebody else down.
But when they cut us down, we become a musical instrument.
We become music itself.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh,
Ari Honarvar: through which music flows.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you're also an author and you're the author of a very
poetic book, A Girl Called Rumi.
Tell us first, before you tell us about that book and the story of
that book, I don't want, I want you to tell it, I don't want to tell it.
Just remind those listeners who do not know Rumi, because one always
forgets that there are people out there who don't know who Rumi was.
Who was Rumi?
And why did you choose
him for the title in that way?
And then tell us about the book, please.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, Rumi is the 13th century poet and mystic.
He's his best selling poet, I guess, internationally now because of the
translations that, or the interpretations that have been, have rendered him more
popular than, than even during his time.
But he was a scholar and a like a Quran scholar, like a religious scholar that
basically was like, Yeah, I'm putting my practices aside and I'm gonna
because I'm filled with poetry and and he has so many relevant verses that
keep showing up in in the zeitgeist in both Iran and internationally.
And I grew up with Rumi like reciting his words before I could read or write.
And and so definitely there is something in there and Hafez
too, but when in, in the U.
S.
somehow Rumi, Rumi's words resonated with me more than, than Hafez
at the time when I was in the U.
S.
just like so enthralled by rediscovering him.
He, he just kind of like, found me like a long lost lover or, or beloved
who just kept knocking on my door.
And I was like, Oh my God, it's you.
I'll put you aside because I was trying to assimilate into this crazy culture of, of
the U S and now I can be with you again.
And And I would just walk into, to different gatherings and when someone
would ask me a question, just as in Iran, where we would answer with
a verse of poetry, I would answer with a verse of Rumi in Farsi.
And people didn't learn, like, oh my god, she's gone crazy, let's, let's, let's,
They were like, Oh my God, what is that?
That sounds beautiful.
Can you translate it?
So that's kind of how I started translating Rumi.
And then the book, I call it a girl called Rumi was because the main character is
a nine year old who has to deal with hijab laws and and all sorts of stuff.
And based on my own experience.
And at one point she meets this mysterious storyteller.
And what she does is that he asks her for her name and she doesn't want to tell her
then her name, because she thinks that he could have some magical power over her.
So she says, my name is Rumi.
So
what happens?
Rupert Isaacson: Give us just a little bit of what happens, but
not enough to give the story away.
Ari Honarvar: So basically the story is a story of family bonds and what's
hap what happens to relationships when an entire region is thrown in
the crucible of political oppression and war and at a deeper level.
It's that story of yearning for liberation from suffering and how
can we Revisit our relationship.
It's suffering with the unknown with our imagination.
So yeah, that's the the story.
Rupert Isaacson: I can, I can recommend it.
Listeners garden by it.
It's a brilliant read.
And it will reveal a lot about a different lens to look at through for the Middle
East, which is constantly thrust in front of our eyes in a different way.
Rumi himself was a refugee too, was he not?
He, yeah, tell us about his life a little bit.
Ari Honarvar: Yeah, I think he was, he migrated at the age of 12.
He was born in Balkh, which is the in in Afghanistan, in modern day Afghanistan.
At the time it was all one place and then he moved to Turkey to , and
that's where he met his beloved.
Someone who at this old, her heretic who comes in and and they just kind
of, have this spiritual connection and, and he just forgets about
his religion and his po his his.
scholarship and he just goes right into this love affair with this madman
and we don't know if it's an actual love affair or a just a spiritual
or a platonic love affair but what we do know that he started composing
all these poems like 10, 000 verses or more out of this and he had never
wrote a single line before beforehand.
Rupert Isaacson: When I read Rumi It does not sound Muslim to me.
You know, it doesn't, it sounds much more universal.
The boys I went to school with who were Muslim did not.
The, the language he's using reads kind of like the song of Solomon out of the Bible.
You know, it, it's, it's about love.
It's about the beloved.
It's, you can't tell if it's erotically charged or if it's platonically charged.
And it doesn't matter because it's a spiritual love either way.
And the sort of mad joy of.
Connecting with that universal love that is the truth given that that is
not everybody's perception of Islam and certainly the young men who are pointing
their rifles at the Lady in your mother's yard who was having the seizure and who
were trying to make you guys wear hijabs.
They were not Speaking that language or coming from that position.
What branch of Islam
was Rumi?
I know, in fact, a bit, but I know a lot of listeners will not.
And where does that still exist within the sort of modern expression of Islam?
Because, because it's unfortunately not what's projected, really.
Could you just speak to that a little bit?
Ari Honarvar: So, yeah.
So first of all, the translations that are most popular are written by
European, from a European centric gaze by white men who don't speak Farsi.
So I would not trust those translations, the most popular ones.
There are several other translations who are by Farsi speakers who You
know, can have a lot of the original text and the original text is
brimming with religion and Islam.
Rupert Isaacson: So,
Ari Honarvar: so it's, it's fascinating that the,
Rupert Isaacson: But it's not calling for jihad and it's not
calling for vengeance and it's not
Ari Honarvar: Absolutely not.
That's the thing.
It's
Rupert Isaacson: not pouring, it's not talking about infidels or so forth.
Ari Honarvar: Not, not at all.
Not at all.
So the, the, the popular transitions cut him off from his Islamic roots.
It's kind of like cutting Martin Luther King from his religious.
Christian roots.
Now, Martin Luther King was not a Christian nationalist.
He was not the, you know, the extremist at all.
He was preaching love, but he was very much Christian.
Same thing with, with Rumi.
He was a Sufi devoted, but his flavor of Sufism is
Not, you know, what he sees God or goddess is like as as the beloved rather
than this God of fire and brimstone that the extremists seem to to claim.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us about Sufism.
How does Sufism different differ from Wahhabi or, you know, some
of these other more extreme?
How did where did Sufism come from?
And why is Sufism not?
What we know from Islam.
Ari Honarvar: Well, it's the mystical side of or the mystical Flavor of Islam.
That's what what Sufism is.
It originated in the Middle East and and it predates Rumi By, you know, I
don't know how long but it, it just came out of this notion that we are
responsible for our own spirituality.
The, there is no God outside of us that will punish us or.
or or give us a reward afterwards.
And same thing with Christianity here, you know, like the
mainstream Christianity is so different than the, the more
mystical sides of Christianity that that we are accustomed to.
That we see in that is more fringe and it's not super mainstream where it's
more inclusive and allowing and and embraces dance and embraces singing.
So
Rupert Isaacson: that's my question.
Why is that not the Islam that is projected?
Why is that not the Islam that we know?
Ari Honarvar: Extremism seems to have a way to to crush, you
know, the, the others, the other expressions of religion or philosophy.
And we see that here in the U.
S.
with the, a lot of Christians who are extremists who are in the government
and are driving the laws in the U.
S.
as well.
They're oppressing and suppressing
Rupert Isaacson: without doubt.
I mean, what, what's interesting though, you know, I'm a medieval historian.
That's what I did my degree in.
So I had to do a lot of church history, right.
And some, but not much of the interplay between Christianity and
Islam because of the, the crusades.
And then later the, you know, Ottoman.
Colonial adventures within Europe but one knows really quite well documented
why mystic Christianity got kicked into the trash can because the,
gosh, up until about the third century AD, Christianity was Christianities,
like lots and lots and lots of different sects of various kinds all over the
place of course, all bickering with each other, but no one had the upper hand.
And then with The first Roman emperor, Constantine, deciding to make
Christianity a state religion after having tried a couple of other ones,
by the way, tried the cult of Sol Invictus, and it didn't quite do it.
And then, and then he also killed his wife and son in law, no,
yeah, his wife and son, actually.
And like this idea of absolution.
So, he thought, well, maybe I'd go for the Christian thing because
then I could be forgiven for that.
So there are various reasons, but the main reason was that was a time of
massive civil wars in the Roman Empire.
And the idea was to take a, something that you could use to unify people's perception
of government through spirituality, and that had been there previously
with the deification of emperors.
Where the Emperor was seen as a god, but somehow that had become eroded perhaps
because the Emperors were replacing themselves every six months Sometimes the
four different ones on the throne at any one time so it lost its credibility So
he comes in and then there's this thing called the Council of Nicaea where they
decide All right We're going to create a Roman Church and this is the Catholic
Church meaning Catholic Universal and all those other ones over there those
Aryans, and those Manichaeans, and those Donatists, and all those other ones.
No, no, they're not, we're gonna get the sort of state seal, ba boom, and
we have these institutions of the Roman Empire anywhere a thousand years old.
We're gonna bring those to birth, and we can do this so that we
can, you know, get social control, stabilization, taxation, and so on.
And then gradually through the fourth century, It just
becomes more and more extreme.
It starts quite tolerant, it becomes more and more extreme.
And then it becomes the extreme Christianity that we know.
Then there's a brief resurgence, right about the time of Rumi,
with, of Christian mysticism.
People like Hildegard of Bingen, the Cathars in Southern
France, and all of this.
Saying, no, no, no, it's all about love and peace.
And of course the Pope goes, nah, ha, ha, and launches crusades
against all these people.
And To a large degree squashes them.
And then, you know, when you have Martin Luther coming along a
bit later saying, Hey, hey, hey, this has all gotten very corrupt.
Then, of course, massive reaction.
And that's where you get the Spanish Inquisition and, and also the reconquest
of Spain, you know, from the, from the Muslims, you know, cracking
down on, Well, if they, if they convert, are they really Christians?
We need an inquisition to find out, you know, or are they, you
know, actually going to come along and try to get the caliphates
going again and blah, blah, blah.
So you can sort of trace it within Christianity quite well because
it's, it's, it's written down.
You can see what the guys were actually saying in these, in these conferences,
but with Islam, what's interesting is, I presume that does exist, that record does
exist, but obviously we in the West don't get taught it unless we do some specialist
medieval Middle Eastern studies.
What do you think
was the reason why something like Sufism arose in the first place?
Like, one can say with Christian mysticism, the Christ message is in and of
itself about forgiveness and love, right?
That's what he's saying in the New Testament, and then the church
does whatever it does with that.
What?
What did this Mystic Branch of Islam come from with its love and peace message.
And why was that so radically different from the Shia Sunni stuff that, you
know, what do you know what, was there a mechanism similar to that one, that
Christian one that I just outlined?
Or where, where did, where did Sufism even come from?
Ari Honarvar: I believe it was like around after the death of prophet Muhammad
it, it appeared in in Saudi Arabia.
That was like the, the place where it originated, but it didn't really solidify
until the 12th century and order and and where people were actually practicing it.
Rupert Isaacson: And is Sufism still alive and well, or does it just exist now,
only in the pages of people like Rumi?
Ari Honarvar: No, it definitely is alive and well.
There are several different orders of Sufism.
Rupert Isaacson: And are they, do they find themselves under pressure
or persecution from mainstream Islam?
Ari Honarvar: Yes, they do.
Iran, there, there are crackdowns.
Okay,
Rupert Isaacson: so anything good, anything fun, can't have that.
Well, I, I would hope that the Western perception could begin to include Sufism.
And I think that the work that you do is helpful with that massively.
You talk about the, you know, the word ambassador.
I think we need these ambassadors.
So
you're out there doing that, you're doing that now through dance, you're
doing that through your writing, you're helping refugees, you're running retreats.
Can you tell us a little bit about these retreats?
And then can you also tell us how we can find out more about your work
and how we can support your work?
Ari Honarvar: Yeah.
So when I was working with refugees, there were medical crews or, asylum attorneys
who were present sometimes in the camps to do legal assistance or doing you
know, medical checkups on the refugees.
And when they saw that, it's like, Hey, can you do something for that?
Something like that for us.
So that's kind of how it began me giving workshops to mental
health care workers, health care workers, asylum attorneys and such.
And now I do that for The broader audience as well and basically is that
you know, just going through different ways to stabilize our nervous system.
And what my new series is called deep rest retreats, deep rest reset.
Retreat so we can really fully arrest and do it together so
it can amplify the benefits.
And then we come up with ways to have those kind of mental
emotional hygiene's through the day.
As, as we wake up every day, what can we do?
And we have buddies that we pair up with and support groups that do that.
People can support each other through the journey of rewiring their nervous
system in a way that is beneficial to them and society and mitigates
the effects of vicarious trauma that we're constantly bombarded with,
especially in those kinds of situations.
Rupert Isaacson: How do we join one of your retreats?
Ari Honarvar: I don't have one for the public scheduled.
This Yet but you can look through my sub stack or my roomiewithavew.
com, which is my website under events.
When there are public events, I social I, yeah, I put it there.
Rupert Isaacson: Roomiewithavew.
com.
So if people want to join one of your retreats, they can contact you there.
Ari Honarvar: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And spoiler alert listeners those of you who know, we'll
be moving to Spain next year.
We will be having our own retreat center.
So we're definitely going to be asking Ari to come and lead
one of her retreats there.
So hopefully you'll be able to join up for that too.
I'll, I'll be posting that if Ari agrees, which I hope she will.
Ari Honarvar: It's so funny because I was telling a friend about you know, meeting
or re getting re acquainted with you.
And I was talking about the autistic population and the refugee population.
And they said it's funny because.
All of us are pretty much neurodivergent, and all of us are refugees, so this should
be a really beautiful collaboration, whatever we end up doing together.
I
Rupert Isaacson: can't wait.
I can't wait.
Alright, I know you need to go soon, so I'm just going to ask you to
wrap up with a last verse for us.
If you're going to wish our listeners well as they go home.
Out of this altered state of consciousness of listening to your
amazing story and back into their lives.
What would you like to leave us with?
Maporsid,
Ari Honarvar: maporsid ze ahval haqiqat ke ma bade parastim na peymane shomareen.
Maporsid, maporsid ze ahval haqiqat ke ma bade parastim na peymane
shomareen.
Don't ask us to dissect truth.
We are worshippers of the sacred wine, not accountants of wine cups.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
Thank you.
RumiWithAView.
com, the book, A Girl Called Rumi, garden by it.
We'll be giving more information about the retreats.
Ari, it's been an honor.
Thank you so much for giving us the time.
Ari Honarvar: Oh, it was such a pleasure.
And I was very excited to learn about the European history, medieval history
that you, you generously offered.
So thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, my pleasure.
All right.
Until the next time, I hope you'll come on again.
Ari Honarvar: Thank you.
Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Until then, be well.
Ari Honarvar: You as well.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you for joining us.
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