The city bears the mark of incompletion, and you don't know whether
it's because everything has been disassembled or because it is being reconstructed.
The city looks and feels poor, but is alive, stubbornly so. There are children
playing football in the streets, there are peddlers selling their ware,
shops selling spare parts, kababis selling their ubiquitous food. Life
seems to go on relentlessly bolstered by a willed forgetfulness, a need
for survival disturbed only by nightmares or visits to the cemetery...
Abadan was never under Iraqi occupation, but sitting so close to the
border (one can see the Iraqi land across the wide muddy and calm Arvand
River or Shatt-al-Arab), it was the target of relentless bullets, mortars
and missiles... The corrugated metal walls surrounding the National Iranian
Oil Company's refinery are all a puzzle-work of holes with burnt edges,
forceful reminder of wars that never end ... GO
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Wednesday
June 16, 1999
Society
Son, don't ever do that again
Just mind your own business
By Sia M.
June 16, 1999
The Iranian
As a boy living in northern Iran, I loved the beautiful nature surrounding
me. The green pastures, the tea fields and the cows roaming in them. I
had everything that a boy my age would want. Every day after school my
friend Ali (who still lives in Iran) and I would go deep into the countryside
riding his motorcycle. There, we were all alone listening to birds sing.
We ate the fruits of many different trees. Some of which we were not sure
were poisonous or not. Natural is how we preferred everything.
One afternoon Ali and I started a conversation about the people who
lived in the rural areas. We thought about how the villagers with very
few paved roads and inadequate transportation would get to the doctor in
town if they got poisoned or sick. Then we both talked about how we could
do something to help the poor and less fortunate people. We realized then
how fortunate we were and how much we took for granted ... GO TO FEATURE
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Tuesday
June 15, 1999
Opinion
War no more
The lessons of Kosovo
By Majid Tehranian
June 15, 1999
The Iranian
Violence always introduces a new cycle of violence. Complex problems
cannot be resolved except through dialogue, negotiation, mutual accommodation,
and political and economic pressures other than the use of force.
In the case of Yugoslavia, for instance, the break-up of the Federation
with the encouragement of Western powers, led to ethnic blood letting in
Bosnia and Kosovo. The breakup of any other multi-ethnic country cannot
but have similar consequences.
Why not turn Kosvo into a multiethnic international zone of peace under
the United Nations Trusteeship Council? Except for a police force, no military
force would be allowed, Serbs and Kosovars would live side by side ...
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Monday
June 14, 1999
Cover story
From Khomein
A biography of the Ayatollah
By Baqer Moin
June 14, 1999
The Iranian
I.B. Tauris has published a second major biography of an Iranian
leader in less than a year. Last fall, we ran an excerpt from the first:
Cyrus Ghani's Iran
and the Rise of Reza Shah. The following are excerpts from Baqer
Moin's Khomeini:
Life of an Ayatollah. Moin is a specialist on Iran and Islam and
is Head of the BBC's Persian Service. Also see related
photos by Jahanshah Javid.
Khomeini's family are Musavi seyyeds; that is they claim descent from
the Prophet through his daughter's line and the line of the seventh Imam
of the Shi'a, Musa al-Kazem. They are believed to have come originally
from Neishabur, a town near Mashhad in northeastern Iran.
In the early eighteenth century the family migrated to India where they
settled in the small town of Kintur near Lucknow in the Kingdom of Oudh
whose rulers were Twelver Shi'a - the branch of Islam which became the
official state religion in Iran under the Safavids and to which the majority
of Iranians adhere today... GO
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