The Iranian Features
August 21-25, 2000 / Mordad 31-Shahrivar 4, 1379
Today
* Politics:
Man in the shadows
* Trade:
Nutty tariffs
Recent
* Film:
Not THAT good
* Responsibility:
Over and over again
* Marriage:
Zan gereftan
* Islands:
Snake island
* Iran:
Maah va man
* Iran:
Poignant disorder
* Fiction:
The city of two hundred roses
* Cover
story: Tastes of paradise
* Eyewitness:
Tamaashaachi
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Friday
August 25, 2000
Politics
Man in the shadows
Rafsanjani eyeing the presidency
By Dariush Sajjadi
August 25, 2000
The Iranian
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's letter to the Majlis to remove the press
law amendment from its agenda pitted him against public opinion, as the
amendment had huge popular support. He openly confronted the reformists
for the first time since President Khatami's election and elicited the
wrath of Iranians and world public opinion.
Given that all Majlis bills have to go through the conservative Council
of Guardians and, on occasion, the Expediency Council, for final approval,
Khamenei's direct intervention was not necessary. But the fact that he
has could be interpreted as a measure tactfully orchestrated by the chairman
of the Expediency Council, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is a
master of covert diplomacy in Iranian politics >>>
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Trade
Nutty tariffs
Iranian pistachio blocked by high tariffs
By Mehdi Ardalan
August 25, 2000
The Iranian
When Madeleine Albright announced a partial lifting of U.S. sanctions
on Iran in March, the State Department was not aware of the 300 percent
tariff imposed on Iranian pistachios, according to official U.S. sources...
September 7 is the U.S. Commerce Department deadline for filing comments
about the tariffs. Those interested in the resumption of Iranian pistachio
sales in the U.S., including Iranian exporters and American importers as
well as American consumer advocates, should join forces and launch a coordinated
public relations and legal campaign to end the Californian pistachio monopoly.
>>>
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Thursday
August 24, 2000
Film
Not THAT good
Patronizing adoration for Iranian cinema
By Naghmeh Sohrabi
August 24, 2000
The Iranian
My uncle often likes to say with pride that in the old days, during
the Shah's time, when Iranians would travel to Paris or London, everywhere
they went, people kept asking them "how many oil wells do you own?"
In educated, cosmopolitan American circles these days, no one would ask
such a question. Instead, what I am often asked as an Iranian-American
is "have you seen [enter here name of Iran's newest cinematic export]?
What do you think about Iranian cinema? It's so great. It's so unlike Hollywood."
I find the uncritical attention given to Iranian cinema by the Western
press patronizing and the adoration showered upon it by Iranians living
outside of Iran uncritically patriotic >>>
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Responsibility
Over and over again
Never stopped to see where we went wrong
By Najmeh Fakhraie
August 24, 2000
The Iranian
How many times have I heard my mother talk about her days in Golestan
School as if it was the best place on earth? How many times have I heard
my grandmother talk about all the things they used to do then as if they
could not be done anywhere else or any other time ever again? And how they
would have given all that up for the promise of a better future is definitely
unimaginable. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't"
goes the saying. So if they had heaven right in front of them how did they
lose it so easily? What went wrong along the way? What big, unforgivable
crime was committed? >>>
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Marriage
By dAyi Hamid
August 23, 2000
The Iranian >>>
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Wednesday
August 23, 2000
Islands
Snake island
Great Tonb and the zoological evidence
August 23, 2000
The Iranian
At 06:15 of November 30, 1971, the Iranian marine commandos, the takavaran,
stormed the beachhead at the Great Tonb and put an end to sixty-eight years
of Anglo-Qassimi usurpation of this island at the entrance to the Persian
Gulf. As the gunship IIS Bayandor watched over the operation, the
IIS Artemis was busy landing troops on Abu Musa. All the while, the
Iranian jets flew overhead. On Tonb, the landing party used a blow horn
to say that they had come not to wage war, but to reclaim their land. "We
will respect your rights, protect you, and assume responsibility for your
progress and development," the announcement said >>>
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Iran
By Sadaf Kiani Abbassian
August 23, 2000
The Iranian >>>
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Tuesday
August 22, 2000
Iran
Poignant disorder
Iran's infinite risks and possibilities
By Gelareh Asayesh
August 22, 2000
The Iranian
I think of Iran as primitive in a different sense, in the sense of being
closer to God, man and nature. Here in Iran, everything is broken pavement,
weeds growing in an atmosphere of infinite risk and possibility. Faith
and myth are part of the fabric of daily living. Simple people stop in
their tracks to pray when the muazzin's call to prayer drifts from the
mosques. Sophisticated people believe in miracles. ("Have you heard
of the Blind Shaykh?" a beautifully coiffed relative asks a country
acquaintance over tea one afternoon. "I hear he can divine where stolen
jewelry is hidden.")
Such innocence is rare in the country where I make my home. I must bring
my daughter halfway across the world to experience it >>>
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Fiction
City of two hundred roses
"This is where you sleep"
By Farnoosh Moshiri
August 22, 2000
The Iranian
Khan-Baba had let one of his rooms to this high school girl -- a girl
whose face I never saw. She was alone by her own in the city of Raz. The
old couple said she was from the capital, where I was from. She had lost
her virginity there. She had taken a lover, as young as she was. Her parents
banished her, sent her to Raz to die, to become a prostitute, or to survive.
So far she had survived, they said. Good people hoped she would survive
the rest. Mean people hoped she would end up on the dirt road of the gas
city, the alley of the prostitutes. She used the back door of the house.
She went to school until four o'clock and sang the rest of the time >>>
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Monday
August 21, 2000
Cover story
Tastes of paradise
Ode to forgotten flavors
By Laleh Kahlili
August 21, 2000
The Iranian
There are at moments of respite in Iran,when the three jobs most ordinary
Iranians have to take to put bread on the table are momentarily forgotten
at the end of the work-day (or night), and pleasures of the sense take
over. And there are so many simple things upon which the senses can feast.
Our voluptuous music seduces and our language dances on the tongue. The
cool oceanic tiled surfaces of our public buildings invite the eyes to
linger. We love to touch: from the tactile feast that is the bas-relief
of Persepolis on silky black stone to the indulgence of vintage "termeh"
fabrics handed down from family to family >>>
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Eyewitness
What happened in Tehran Saturday?
By Masoud Bahrami
August 19, 2000
The Iranian >>>
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