On Blog-Searching "Baha'i": From the Absurd to the Disturbingly Real

Prospecting for references to "Baha'i" on the web can take us from the absurd to the disturbing in a heart beat. Here is an example from the absurd category, a posting from The Impromptunist, which defines itself as: a blog for dilettantes, the professional amateurs. It's a very haphazard accumulation of whims, diversions, irrational and erratic assocations, coin pocket-sized descriptions, incomplete thoughts, lost objects, forgotten interests, and other observations, fragmentary and unsound, that have neither a root in reality nor any practical applications, at least anywhere that I've been able to find.

To commemorate forgetting to celebrate the anniversary of John Calvin's death on May 27, I offer the following personal information, most likely a made-up memory, leftover from an obsolete résumé: I was brought up, or rather brought sideways, by staunch Presbyterians who took the death of John Calvin - in 1564 - personally. My grandfather, until the day he died, looked around, peering vindictively over the top of his Wall Street Journal, for someone to blame. The Vatican, after passing me over, filled the library position with the youngest nephew of a placid Albanian Baha'i.

D. Varè, "References," The Impromptunist
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There are Albanian Baha'is, of course, in Albania and in Kosovo, the former republic of Yugoslavia next to Albania that was the site of a war in the mid-1990s, as we learn with a few clicks of the mouse. From the absurd we move to the disturbingly real.

a Baha'i youth dance workshop
We get an intense picture of the experience of youth in Kosovo by reading the blog of Bahia, an 18 year-old Baha'i who is presently Living in Kosovo, the name of her blog. Her first post back in March covered her application to serve as a Baha'i youth dance workshop leader. Today's post is, "THIS is the world we live in. what are we going to do about it?":

Bahia

Yesterday Rabie came back from her sister’s show. She had taken a kombi with 2 other girls. There was a gang of 6 guys in it, but she wasn’t aware it was a gang. There was a mad guy sitting next to one of the girls, he seemed normal but then would start talking to himself abnormally. Rabie leaned over to the driver and asked him if he’s mad, he said yeah. Then [the mad guy]started swearing and saying horrible dirty things to the girl next to him. Nobody did anything, and [the girl next to him] freaked out and said things like how can you say this to me, what’s wrong with you etc. An old guy in the back said, “shut up, bitch”. Rabie started freaking out, asking the driver what’s wrong with him for letting this guy in, he has to be responsible. The [driver] said “I didn’t know” to which Rabie replied that he did because she just asked him. Then the mad guy started hitting the girl!!!! AND STILL NO ONE DID ANYTHING! The girl was crying and shaking, nobody was moving and Rabie was freaking out.

Finally a guy sitting next to her told her that she should get out there, he seemed pretty persistent so she took the girls out, and he came too. The mad guy was saying that he’ll remember the girl's face and he's going to find her and rape her. She was so freaked out she didn’t know what to do.

The first thing the guy told her when they got out of the kombi was that he had killed a man. They froze in their tracks, but he said no, don’t worry. He was put in jail for 5 years. He said that he had been going home in a kombi with his girlfriend. After he got out, [men] stopped the kombi and raped her. He went to the police, and the police said “oh it’s no big deal, it happens all the time”. He was so angry, he couldn’t control himself, he took the policeman’s gun and shot the driver then and there, in front of the policeman.

He said that he knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t calm himself down or control himself. He told the girls to never take a kombi by themselves, especially from xxxx xxx…where this happened to his girlfriend, and where they had been.

He said these things happen all the time, but no one ever talks about it. And then he took them home.

Bahia, "THIS is the world we live in. what are we going to do about it?" Living In Kosovo