The Iranian Features
Jan 18-22, 1999 / Dey 28 - Bahman 2, 1377
Today
* Television: The Sohrab
Syndrome
Recent
* World Cup 98: So lucky
* Fiction : All Roads Merged
* Economy: Pretent we have no oil
* Cover story:
Two-colored lollipop
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Friday,
January 22, 1998
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
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Thursday
January 21, 1998
World Cup 98
So lucky
... to have seen Our Boys play in World Cup 98
By xAle
I can hardly contain my joy! It has been a few months since I returned
home from a trip to France to see Our Boys play. My pictures have been
developed, thank-you letters have been posted and I have shared the details
of my trip with friends many times.Yet, each time as I talk about my experiences,
my feeling of pride and joy brings tears of happiness to my eyes. (Read about FIFA award)
So lucky to have had a chance to see Our Boys play a friendly match
with a local team in Yssingeaux. To be so close as to hear them call out
their next move, to see their faces light up to find a group of Iranian
fans calling out their names.
So lucky to be able to ask them for pictures and to see them come over
with smiles and appreciation. To answer questions warmly and oblige requests
for signatures so graciously.
So lucky to have had a chance to get so close and to talk to so many
of them individually and to hear their plans for the World Cup games. To
see their handsome faces full of smiles when I told them how cute they
are! ... GO TO FEATURE
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Wednesday
January 20, 1998
Fiction
All Roads Merged
Follow the stream, Arash thought
By Babak Morvarid
The bakery had three workers, all three looking very much alike. They
had white aprons on with a white cloth over their heads so as to keep the
hair from the dough. It didn't matter if it did, but they wore them anyway.
To the back was the oven, made of brick and its fire visible through the
hole where the dough entered and bread came out. Two of the men made the
bread. One would pound and spread the dough and the other would slap it
onto the pebbly stone walls of the oven. The shape of the dough before
entering the oven was pointed at the top and inwardly curved at the bottom,
extended along its length as a hyperbolic curve.
The third baker was the one who greeted the customers with a toothy
smile, over a thick mustache. They all had mustaches, whitened by flour.
"Salaam-aleikom," he said to Arash. "Salaam," said
Arash. "I want two, please." "Chashm, aziz," said the
baker, "Yes, of course." ... GO TO FEATURE
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Tuesday
January 19, 1998
Economy
Pretend we have no oil
An economy based on taxes instead of oil
By Guive Mirfendereski
There is nothing national or self-reliant about an economy whose national
budget has to look to receipts from international sale of a precious and
nonrenewable resource at cut-throat international prices in order to finance,
year after year, a huge governmental bureaucracy and its affiliated enterprises.
In the long term, the continued dependence by the government on oil revenues
does harm to the future economic and political health of the country for
two reasons. First, the international price of oil will remain for the
foreseeable future out of control of oil exporting countries. So, Iran's
national budgetary priorities will remain hostage to outside factors. Second,
what will the government and the economy rely on when the oil runs out
or production costs exceed the price of oil on the international market?
... GO TO FEATURE
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Monday
January 18, 1998
Cover story
Two-colored lollipop
Reflections on life in Iran and the U.S.
By Tara Bahrampour
"Are you Japanese?"
I laugh, and the [Iranian] shopkeeper realizes he is wrong. My wavy
brown hair, light skin, and slightly flat-lidded eyes are a mix of a lot
of things, but I'm not Japanese. On my mother's side I am English, Irish,
Scottish, Swedish, and German. My father's side is harder. Agha Jan's family
is said to have come from the Qashqais, a nomadic tribe that moves between
the mountains and the plains of the southern province of Fars. Baba says
that is why even the old ladies in our family go out every evening for
a brisk stride around the block, with the blood of the nomads pumping through
their legs...
"I'm half Iranian and half American," I answer in Farsi.
"Ah, do-rageh," he says, nodding. Do-rageh means
two-veined, or two kinds of blood in one vein, and whenever people say
it I think of my two bloods swirling together like a two-colored lollipop
... GO TO FEATURE
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