Peripheral Visions

preference to the compromises of those forced to make do with so little. The tenuous adaptations of the poor, order achieved and some pattern of meaning maintained against all odds, have themselves come under attack, and life in the ghetto has worsened. True, the patterns Stack described may not transfer well out of their environment, may hinder emigration or provoke conflict at the boundaries so that outsiders see them as criminal and walk in fear, but the culture of poverty must be understood above all as the achievement of survival.
    Perhaps all those who work for change should study jujitsu, learning in their very bodies to work with the impulses and directions that are already there, rather than opposing them. In Tondo, as in many other places, massive, impersonal housing projects were built to replace squatter shacks. Inside their tiny, bleak apartments, the residents built inner shells of bamboo, and women opened little shops in the doorways, corresponding to the shops along village streets that become focal points of gossip. When I was there the authorities kept closing them down because it was against regulations to do business in public housing, instead of seeing that they had the potential for turning dangerous empty hallways into village streets. In the same way, in schools we accuse children of cheating when they work together instead of seeing that the skills of working together would be worth enhancing and supporting.
    Under most circumstances, human beings persist in their evolutionary business of sustaining and creating order, doing even trivial things in a particular way that feels right to them. A sense of coherence is almost as needful as food and drink. On the streets of Tehran, merchants arrange small goods of various kinds—combs, cigarettes, and so on—on cloths. After a time I realized that these impromptu sidewalk displays reflected an aesthetic of multiplicity that could be seen in the array of items on a traditional haft sin table arranged for the Persian New Year, which must include seven items whose names begin with the letter sin , and in the arrangement of items spread in front of a bride and groom.
    Finally I saw that these “arrays,” as I came to call them, echoed the desired sense of bounteous hospitality in the multiple items in a meal. A festive meal in Iran is not organized around a single climactic pièce de résistance, like a roasted turkey or a beef Wellington, just as the New Year celebration is not focused on one major symbolic item, like a Christmas tree. Multiple dishes are set out, each one divided among several serving containers to be within reach, and ideally the table is still crowded with food at the end of the meal. Waste in the American tradition is reduced by recipes for recycling leftovers in new forms, but in the Iranian tradition it is reduced by the dissemination of portions to servants and neighbors.
    Trying to improve people by interfering with their own preferences often makes things worse. One of the behaviors that is most easily condemned in other communities is drug use, although chemical tinkering with mental states is very nearly a human universal. Almost all human groups have found something to eat or drink, to sniff or smoke, that alters moods and even metaphysics, but these practices are less dangerous when they are regulated by tradition, suddenly more dangerous when suppressed. It is often custom, not chemistry, that determines whether a practice is harmful, and many interferences disrupt custom and leave chemistry to do its worst.
    In Iran, many adults used to use opium much as Americans use alcohol, understanding that smoking opium was dangerous for some but a relatively safe social habit for most. We used to be invited out for a family meal on a Friday: great platters of delicious foods, lamb cooked with quinces, duck with walnuts and pomegranate, rice with currants or shredded orange rind. Afterwards an ornate charcoal brazier would be lit to provide the embers to vaporize crumbs of opium. Whether one chose to smoke or not, there was pleasure in the setting, Persian carpets and cushions, conversation and laughter, multiple cups of tea and varieties of sweets. Smoking too regularly was regarded as risky, but not inappropriate in the very old, those who were sick or arthritic. Others who had abandoned the courtesies of the shared brazier seemed to be the same people, often highly Westernized, who smoked urgently and frequently for