You'll Never Walk Alone to Yazd

You'll Never Walk Alone to Yazd

The song "You'll Never Walk Alone" has been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Yet, You'll Never Walk Alone is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. And as a great football (soccer) fan, I was first introduced to the song by the Liverpool Football Club faithful. They began to sing it in the 1960s and the song later spread to other clubs around the world. Win, lose, or draw, the Liverpool fans touchingly belt out You'll Never Walk Alone before the match begins. It creates an electric atmosphere in the stadium for players and fans alike! Here are the goose-bump, inspiring lyrics:

When you walk through a storm
Keep your chin up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
When you walk through a storm
Keep your chin up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet, silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.

When You'll Never Walk Alone is sung by the Liverpool fans, it literally sends chills throughout my body! I am obviously a Liverpool fan! Here is a rendition of You'll Never walk Alone by the Liverpool fans, who have the motto "You'll Never Walk Alone" inscribed at the entrance to the Shankly Gates of their beloved Anfield stadium:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nfFi-_Hb2A

This particular rendition was sung in the 2005 Champion League quarter-finals against Italian club Juventus. 2005 was the year Liverpool won the Champion League. In the finals, they were down 3-0 to another Italian club, AC Milan, at half-time. They amazingly won 4-3! The spirit of You'll Never Walk Alone prevailed!

What I really appreciate about You'll Never Walk Alone is that the message is universal: Your dreams may seem distant and shattered, but keep your head held high. Walk this life with dignity. There are others that walk in your path. There are others willing to make community with you. There are others that believe and belief can sometimes make mountains move! So whether you are at a Liverpool FC match and your team is down badly, or in Yazd (Iran) in the face of an autocratic, theocratic regime, you must know that you do not walk alone. There are others like you, and your spirit is more powerful than you will ever know.

Yazd is a city in Iran with an estimated population of about 500,000. Historically, Yazd was a Zoroastrian city, before the Islamic conquest of Persia. Today Zoroastrians make up only 5 to 10 per cent of the population. Yazd is a city with a unique architectural heritage. The city is situated in an oasis between deserts. On the top left, see one example of desert architecture: A wind-catcher from Yazd. Its Zoroastrian history is alive with the Tower of Silence (top right) and Fire Temple, which has a fire blazing since 470 AD! The city also has gorgeous mosques such as the Kabir Jaame (top middle).

And Yazd has produced some interesting people too: Moshe Katsav (the former Israeli President), Mohammed Khatami (the former President of Iran), Mohammed Reza Aref (the former Vice President of Iran from 2001 to 2005), Mohammed Jafar Pouyandeh (an Iranian human rights dissident murdered by the regime in 1998), and Moe Arman (the Iranian-American scientist and inventor). What a diverse collection of figures!

So today I want to tell the people of Yazd and the people of Iran that we are with you. You'll Never Walk Alone. I am an Israeli and a Canadian, and I am with you. Your rulers are not with you, or for you. They walk against you. My rulers also sometimes walk against me, but I can speak out against their indignities. There are millions like me in Iran, Israel, Palestine, Canada, and around the globe that understand that we can walk together. That know that the clash of civilizations peddled by the mullahs is a fiction. Fundamentalist Islam is a charade because it attacks the diversity that produced all those great figures of various faiths and political outlooks from Yazd. It attacks the right of people to speak out openly in civil society and not be silenced or killed. The right of gays and lesbians to be as they are. The right of Jews not to be accused of being traitors, or Mossad agents, because they are Jews. The right to remember the painful history of the Holocaust, which is not merely a sympathy card to draw away from real Palestinian suffering. Conflicts are never so simple as we imagine them, the way the theocrats in Iran want to make us believe. Israel will not be wiped out and there must be a legitimate Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.

The people of Iran know better. They have produced a great cultural heritage for all times. They must know they will never walk alone. They must know that peace is closer than we think. And the wars and the rumours of war will, in the end, divide us, all of us, all children of the same God, whether we believe, believe sometimes, or believe not at all.

Tamir Bar-On