
Why Iran's nomads are fading away - DoreenMichele
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/10/iran-nomad-tribes-fading-away/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=twitter::cmp=editorial::add=twt20181009culture-newngmirannomads::rid=&sf199600032=1
======
neaden
It's sad to see anything this old fade away. At the same time I definitely
understand why the young people there are making the choice to move to cities.
There is a romance to being a nomad, but I'm sure there is a lot of suffering
involved as well.

~~~
lamarpye
I don't see that much sadness in this. These people aren't zoo animals. They
want to enjoy modern life and the things that come from it. Things like rights
for women.

~~~
neaden
We lose knowledge, diversity, skills, and a link to our past. I understand why
the people are leaving, I would probably make the same choice. But we
shouldn't also act like there isn't a loss.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I guess whether this is a big problem depends on what you value. From some
perspectives, knowledge and skills are not ends unto themselves, but only have
utility in a specific context. For example, I care not that the skill of
carving elephant ivory is basically a lost art at this point. Diversity? I
can't say that the presence of nomads in the desert was really moving the
needle on that very much in my daily life. A link to our past? Perhaps, but,
as GP pointed out, only in the sense of a living museum exhibit. It is not
like many people actually go to encounter this link personally, and in any
case, even if they did, these are _people_.

I admit a certain amount of wistful nostalgia, but I personally don't consider
nostalgia to be the same thing as sadness. Nostalgia is most often a delusion,
not a genuine recollection of the good old days.

~~~
pm90
You're taking a very utilitarian view of these things. Nothing wrong with
that. But many people enjoy knowing that there are still those who stick by
their old ways without there being any tangible benefit to themselves or the
rest of society.

------
DoreenMichele
I found the article interesting in part because this is one of the largest
remaining nomadic cultures in the world. It would be a little like if a Native
American tribe were still traveling from summer camp grounds to winter ones
while civilization sprang up around them without relegating them to a
reservation.

I was an American military wife for a couple of decades. That is a form of
modern nomad and the life is vastly different from that of most civilians, so
different that it's hard to quantify and comprehend for those doing it, much
less try to explain it to others.

Enlisted personnel don't have high salaries, but they have a package of rights
and benefits, everything from housing to medical to free legal help and access
to swimming pools and their own stores where no tax is charged. As a wife, I
had those rights too in a way you don't see with civilian jobs and it's really
hard to explain. When I got divorced, my sister made some comment about me
being financially dependent on my ex and how vulnerable I was and what a fool
I was. But it wasn't like that and she simply didn't understand, even though
our father had also been career military. My package of rights made my
situation fundamentally different from her experience of divorce. If my ex
hadn't paid me, I would have written his commander and his pay would have been
garnished. I would have been paid first, before him.

Nomads and settled peoples have a long history of friction. This remains true
of the American military. If you are a military member or dependent, you can
cash a check at any PX/BX because you probably have a bank in another state
and locals don't want to cash your check. Spouses have high rates of
unemployment, in part because locals don't want to hire them, in part because
the benefits are so good that you can afford to live on one income.

Re women's rights and different cultures:

From what I have read, some tribal peoples are more egalitarian when it comes
to sex. In a lot of settled cultures with more material wealth, female
chastity and fidelity is emphasized because wealth is handed from father to
son and men can't be certain it is their child the way women can be. Cultures
that are matrilineal with less material wealth sometimes have traditions that
ensure that children will be provided for in a way that makes paternity matter
a lot less. In such cultures, women sometimes have sexual freedom of a sort
that would be deemed shocking and scandalous to many settled peoples.

I read that there was a Black man that accompanied Lewis and Clark and all the
Native women wanted to sleep with him because they wanted a Black baby. This
is behavior that would be unfathomable for most White women of that era. You
would be disowned, which was a potential death sentence for you and your
child.

The article indicates the nomadic women don't inherit. But it also indicates
they typically ride horses, own firearms and it says their faces are brown
from the sun. It also shows pictures of their faces.

Iran is a Muslim country where women are expected to be veiled. This is not
just a nuisance. Pakistan has high rates of vitamin D deficiency among girls
because of the degree to which women are expected to be covered.

National Geographic is a Western publication. It doesn't mention this detail,
at least not that I noticed. The author of the article probably thought
nothing of the unveiled faces of the nomadic women because unveiled faces are
the norm in Western countries. But women in Iran are still protesting the law
requiring that they wear the veil. So it is something that women experience as
very burdensome and restricting.

An awful lot of things that are normal for your own culture aren't things you
think of as _rights_ and you may not really think too much about the
consequences of losing that option. You may not think it matters until it is
irrevocably gone and has been gone long enough to see some of the consequences
that weren't apparent when you chose to leave X thing for Y thing.

The first week, month or year of wearing a veil may not seem like a big deal
as the price you pay for participating in this other culture. It may not seem
like a big deal until you are diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency and realize
you can't readily fix it because you are required by law to cover everything,
including your face.

I'm not suggesting that the nomadic women have it better than other Iranian
women and will regret leaving this way of life behind. I'm only suggesting it
is likely more complicated than they appreciate at first blush, and something
total outsiders reading HN likely can't begin to fathom. Most of us just don't
know enough about either of the cultures in question.

~~~
ZainRiz
Pretty cool comment overall, though I'd like to offer one correction: Iran
doesn't force women to be veiled.

They say women should wear head scarves, yes, but not a veil that covers their
faces.

In fact, if you go to their capital city many of the women have just as much
of their head covered as the nomadic women you saw in these pictures. (Note,
in other, more religious areas women will tend to cover all of their hair, but
that's the only real difference)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you. I tried to confirm before posting. This was my source:

[https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-relationship-
women...](https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-relationship-women-veil-
iranian-state-739849)

I can't manage to copy and paste the text, but a portion of it indicates that
it is still state law, though it is enforced less strictly than it once was
and not applied to foreign women, and women still protest it.

~~~
kaveh_h
There’s not really a problem of Vitamin D deficiancy for women in Iran, and
that is much more likely if they would move to and live in northern countries
that get little sunlight during long winters.

------
jxub
Global warming might have a hand in that, especially the droughts and
sandstorms part.

Migrations and lifestyle changes will be even more drastic in the decades to
come.

~~~
golemiprague
The same things happened with Beduins in Israel long time ago and in other
countries around the middle east, it has nothing to do with global warming,
they live in the desert anyways. It is just that being locked into a specific
country and modernity in general make them more urbanised.

~~~
kaveh_h
Yes, borders aren’t what they used to be.

------
jtms
I read this title as "Iran's monads..." \- time for sleep!

~~~
geff82
hahaha, everytime there is an article about the Amazon in South America I
wonder when the news about the Cloud service comes.

------
ionforce
And here I thought it was about Iran's use of functional programming.

~~~
Varcht
Yeah, I read it that way too. Been too long since every other article here was
"how to understand nomads"...

