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Sa'di
Shahnameh
The Sohrab Syndrome
Iran's children today aren't faring much better
From Jerome W. Clinton's introduction to The Tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam. Mage Publishers
will also be publishing Clinton's translation of Rostam and Esfandiyar,
another portion of Ferdowsi's epic Shahnameh, in the near future.
The death of Sohrab at his father's hands seems especially wrong to
those of us raised in the West because we have grown up thinking that the
normal order of things is for sons to kill fathers, either symbolically
or in fact. Since Freud and Frazer's The Golden Bough, we have even
developed a certain soft spot in our hearts for patricides. However frightening
and appalling patricide is, it has the sanction of natural process. The
story of Sohrab fascinates us in part at least because it violates our
sense of the natural order of things and adds a nightmarish element to
a confrontation that is already heavily freighted with meaning... GO
TO FEATURE
Outlook
FILM REVIEW
'The Children of Heaven': For a Pair of Sneakers, Longing,
Lies and a Plan
By JANET MASLIN
The New York Times
January 22, 1999
The young hero of Majid Majidi's "Children of Heaven" is played
by Mir Farrokh Hashemian, a desolate-looking boy with huge brown eyes and
a way of sending tears suddenly rolling down his cheeks. Those tears well
up with some regularity during this film about 9-year-old Ali, his younger
sister Zahra (Bahareh Seddiqui) and their scheme for sharing a pair of
his tattered sneakers. The children want to hide the fact that Zahra's
shoes have been lost because this will be a hardship for their parents.
The family's carefully detailed poverty, which reflects the filmmaker's
own childhood experience, colors everything that happens in this story.
Events in the film are seen through the children's ingenuous eyes, as
is so often and artfully the case in Iranian films. (A child's-eye view
is, among other things, helpful in circumventing government censors.) ...
FULL
TEXT
Jannati warns of Internet threat
TEHRAN, Jan 22 (Reuters) - A top Iranian cleric warned on Friday against
the ``threat'' of the Internet and satellite television to Iranian society
and called for counteracting such influence with films on the history of
Islam.
``The danger of the Internet and satellites that broadcast from a close
range threatens us...They broadcast disgraceful, immoral pictures and threaten
all humanity and morality and chastity,'' said Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati,
the secretary of the powerful Guardian Council.
Speaking at a Friday prayers gathering at the Tehran University campus,
the conservative cleric said it would not be enough to tell people not
to tune in to foreign media, and that active reaction was necessary ...
FULL TEXT
More Letters
* Not Without My Daughter II
Ataollah Togha writes: It seems like the pictures
you choose for the cover of The Iranian ["Two-colored lollipop"] do
not necessarily tell something about your favors for or against the subject
of the picture, but they have more to do with being somehow related to
Iran.
Therefore, let me suggest that you have a photo
of Betty Mahmoody ready for the next cover; I think she, too, has once
written something about Iran.
* Film: "Children of Heaven"
in U.S.
Majid Majidi's "Children of Heaven" opens January 22 in select
theatres across the U.S. A video clip in Quicktime or AVI is available
for download at the Miramax site: //www.miramax.com
Thanks to Payman Arabshahi
Book of the Week
The Tragedy of Sohrab and Rostam
From the Persian National Epic, the Shahname of Ferdowsi
By Jerome W. Clinton (Translator)
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U.S. senator calls for end to food embargo
on Iran
WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The chairman
of the Senate Agriculture Committee has called on President Bill Clinton
to approve a possible sale of more than $500 million of U.S. farm goods
to Iran and to end a unilateral U.S. food embargo on that country. ``Lifting
or modifying the prohibition'' on U.S. food sales to Iran could encourage
leaders in that country ``to respond by modifying its international behaviour
in ways more compatible with our interests,'' said Sen. Richard Lugar, an
Indiana Republican, in a letter to National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
... FULL TEXT
Albright: Iran should not be in isolation
forever
WASHINGTON, January 22 (Itar-Tass) - US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright believes that such a country as Iran should not be in isolation
forever. She said this in a speech to the Centre for National Policy on
Thursday, motivating this view by Iran's size, importance and geographic
position ... FULL TEXT
US: Caspian oil pipeline deal near
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Negotiations involving
Azerbaijan, Turkey and major oil companies on building a pipeline to carry
Caspian Sea oil to the West are progressing and may soon bear fruit, a senior
U.S. official said Thursday. Richard Morningstar, the Clinton administration's
special adviser on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy, also said that despite
a growing number of dry wells drilled in the Caspian, he believed there
was sufficient oil to make it a productive region ... FULL TEXT
Russia to continue Iran cooperation, minister
says
MOSCOW, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Foreign Minister
Igor Ivanov said on Friday that Russia would continue to cooperate with
Iran in peaceful areas despite U.S. concerns that Moscow is helping Tehran's
missile and nuclear programmes. ``We will develop cooperation with Iran
in all peaceful spheres, while strictly maintaining a policy of non-proliferation,''
Ivanov told a news conference ... FULL TEXT
Parvin's advice on youth soccer team
Tehran (Iran) - Ali Parvin lends his two rials on the under 21
(Omid) olympic soccer team and gives some advice to the new German headcoach
... FULL TEXT IN PERSIAN
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Quote Unquote
(Few) good kings
The list of bad kings in the Shahnameh is a very long one, and
that of good kings is depressingly short. What Ferdowsi knew was that the
alternative to absolute rule by a divinely chosen shahanshah was
not, of course, some better system, but the endless conflict of lesser rulers.
Jerome W. Clinton
"The Sohrab Syndrome"
The Iranian
January 22, 1999
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