1. There is a very short interval of 1 or 2 seconds between the green light changing for the cars on this side of the crossroads and the red light changing for the cars on the other side. The drivers must anticipate the change before they go, because if the two lights switch simultaneously the driver who has not noticed the change from green to red at the moment he wanted to cross will collide into a swarm of oncoming cars. Apparently this is a way the law attempts to correct itself. Nevertheless, in that very I to 2 second interval the law reveals one of its internal contradictions.
For a moment the law is suspended when an exceptional situation occurs: the light is red on both sides. Nobody has the right to go, otherwise there would be a series of spectacular collisions. It as if the “red” colour of the traffic light has become something more than simply a sign, it is now a symbol, a symbol of disaster and blood that the law has restrained since the emergence of civilization. But in that same transient moment, the law reveals an aspect of its contradictory nature. The moment of the two red lights represents an exception to the rule of “normal traffic.” Now, at this crossroads in Tehran, motorists wait for the other light to turn red instead of waiting for their own light to turn green.
They start off when the “red” has transformed from a sign to a symbol. Their cars scrape against the pedestrian crosswalk like the horns of mad bulls, taking off the split-second the law is suspended. At this moment the exception becomes a rule and in that fleeting interval of 1 to 2-seconds becomes part of the flowing public time of the metropolis.
2. The rule controlling Tehran’s traffic is this very exception. It is a rule by which the present order benefits by deploying thousands of policemen who issue thousands of tickets. To use the terms “the violation of the law” and “ a breach of regulations” are totally irrelevant here. Actually, no law is violated and no regulations are breached. It is rather the hidden and mythical violence of the law itself that has been activated. The massive presence of the traffic police serve as a “warning sign” of the presence of “law,” a ghostly and unseen presence. It is exactly this kind of presence that turns exceptions into rules.
The law transmutes into a wandering, “omnipresent” spirit. It doesn’t manifest itself in any particular place or arena of normal social life. Nevertheless it is present and commands obedience and “respect.” The force of law is dispersed in the air like ether in which the shapeless bulk of wandering cars, the mobile private domains move within the chaotic context of the public domain. A kind of ether that every time and in every moment manifests itself in a particular normal form. The law evades manifestation and this is why it generates fear in the minds of citizens. This is particularly true for passengers-carrying motorcyclists; it is as if they have discovered the ghostliness of the presence of the law.
Heedless to any traffic norms, they rush madly through the flowing ether, keeping a careful lookout for the traffic police, because at any moment the law might manifest itself in the form of a policeman’s order. The term is apt: “hooked up by the officer”. The officer is a partial manifestation of the ghost of law, a man who enforces the vague force of law in the nick of time. The policemen hiding at the exits of the freeways, hoping to unexpectedly “hook up” a driver for not having the traffic pass in a restricted area, symbolically confirms the “ghostliness” of the law. In the same symbolic way, the drivers, whose safety belts are often out of order, put the belts on their shoulders for a few moments when they pass a policeman so that the formality of the law is observed.
3. The transformation of the law into a ghost-form means the full dominance over the law and free manipulation of it. In every system of rules, there is a hidden tendency towards martial law, a kind of rule that does not annul the law but temporarily suspends it, making it absolute and turning it into an omnipresent ghost that is out of the reach and judgement of the public. Formerly, before the installation of the digital counters, during those 1 to 2 seconds between the shift of lights the light turned yellow, a colour that indicates an “emergency state.” Tehran’s traffic, which is under a kind of martial law, tends to make all the lights yellow. In the heart of this traffic and its dominant ether, motorcyclists continue their mad rush until they are crushed against the asphalt of the metropolis in the “emergency state” of some crossroads.