Subtitle: Strangeness in the LoopThere has been a widespread story making its way on blogs. & guess what?? I have firsthand knowledge of the story! The Richard J. Daley Center is a 30 story building over 400 ft. tall and is the site of civil litigation in Cook County (not all of it but most of it). Several of the floors are dedicated to divorces and child custody. I am a paralegal that occasionally files documents at the Law Division so I walk by the strange sight above of this man who stays motionless and expressionless for hours on end.
A married couple by the name of Farhad Khoiee-Abassi and Shabnam Vahabinazhad had kids and are now getting a divorce. The divorce is very bitter and has been going on over 2 years. There have been custody fights over the kids and Ms. Vahabinazhad has needed protection orders to protect herself against her upset husband. Since Mr. Khoiee-Abassi is Arabic could there be an honor killing afoot? Maybe, maybe not, but his estranged wife doesn't feel very safe.
Mr. Khoiee-Abassi has been, of course, very frustrated with the whole process. So to vent his frustration he has done the following, with the sign above, "FBI Agent Chris Saviano stop raping my wife" Why are so many bloggers grasping at straws regarding this story? Because no one really knows who "Chris Saviano" is. The records of those who work at the FBI are understandably hard to get access to so the FBI is obviously not going to help unwrap this mystery. Mr. Khoiee-Abassi is very mute and talks only rarely so he doesn't explain why he singled out the supposed "Chris Saviano". The only concrete part of this story is the fact that the above couple is in a very bitter divorce.
There is a fairly decent discussion about this event on http://hyalineskies.com/2006/08/the-chris-saviano-effect/
Oh, & get this! He's been at the Daley Ctr. on such a regular basis that he's become a tourist attraction. Now people come up next to him, turn to their friend's camera and give a big wave, like they're next to the Sears Tower or Lake Michigan or something! Predictably he just stands there and ignores the posing and cameras.
As you may have noticed, I subtitled this post "Strangeness in the Loop" The Loop is a part of downtown Chicago so named because the El CTA train tracks form a loop with a rectangle of streets which they are above (Wells, Van Buren, Wabash, & Lake Sts.) Mr. Khoiee-Abassi is not the only strange part of the Loop. You have a myriad of beggars and homeless people. Today, I saw a young woman advertise that she found out on the ultrasound that she was pregnant, and he will be a boy. So she, of course, needed your cash. Another woman with sunglasses (to show that she was hiding bruises), advertised that she was beat up and assaulted so she also needed money. Man, the lady I admire most, Jean Teasdale, would be extremely busy trying to help them!
The homeless even have their own newspaper, Streetwise. Much of the money goes to the homeless person selling the paper (which is only a dollar). They paper is professionally done and some of the homeless have actually used the money to advance themselves and no longer be homeless. I've bought it numerous times. It's a good paper.
But I really do like working in the Loop, and I'm only 2 blocks away from the Daley Center and the very stoic, mute Mr. Khoiee-Abassi. Poor guy.
3 comments:
JEAN! I agree with you concerning this guy on the corner. I can't remember the exact quote but some reporter was in Pakhistan. He was with a group of men and one of them posed the question (I am paraphrasing, not quoting), "What do you call a guy who listens to his wife?" Answering his own question, he said, "A man with no dick!" Now, we can't say that all Pakhistani guys think like this, but you're right, something about that religion about that culture treats women rather poorly. It's really pretty obscene.
What to do with the panhandlers is another situation entirely and 1000s of pages could be written about it. If you try one solution then all these unintended consequences crop up, I think you need to go for the root causes, better education in depressed neighborhoods, good family planning, jobs, opportunities, but coming up with all that is like moving heaven and earth.
Oh, and here's something to add. Since the problem of helping the poor is very nettlesome and doesn't often produce clear, beneficial results, you get certain Republicans who state loudly, "The WAR ON POVERTY HAS BEEN LOST!" Then they slash nearly all types of assistance (even programs that work) and then you get more dramatic, more dire instances of "The Curse of the Starving Class"
Nice. Commenters slandering Pakistanis (and mispelling "Pakistan"), mixing up Persians with Arabs, and conflating the mentally unsound with pandhandlers, all the while despising immigrants for their work ethics and their attitudes towards women.
It really does seem to me like America is far more interested in presenting itself (and therefore, most Americans) with anecdotal information that makes everyone feel better about themselves, rather than ever taking the tiny bit of time necessary to understand a situation.
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