Archive - Jun 15, 2011 - Article

مسئول جنایت فجیع خمینی‌شهر کیست؟

در جمهوری اسلامی تنها افرادی که شبانه به یک مهمانی خصوصی در خمینی‌شهر ریخته و جنایات فجیع جنسی را مرتکب شده‌اند مقصر نبوده‌اند. تقصیر عمده را باید متوجه فرهنگ و قوانینی دانست که سنگ‌های دفاع و دادخواهی زنان ستم‌دیده را بسته‌اند و سگ‌های شهوت و تجاوز و سرکوب جنسی و حلال کردن جان و مال و بدن دگرباشان را رها کرده‌اند. فرهنگ مردسالار جامعه ما سابقه‌ای ریشه‌دارتر از جمهوری اسلامی دارد، ولی این نظام با قوانین زن‌ستیز و ظالمانه خود به تقویت منحط‌ترین و خشن‌ترین عناصر این فرهنگ دست زده و به شدت از آن‌ها حراست می‌کند>>>

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Chez Nous

Yesterday my mom invited me to see a film in French that she’d heard good things about. Little did I know as I settled into my seat I was facing, not a screen, but a mirror. It’s one thing to watch a mother-child film with your mother. But it takes it to another level to watch the tale of a Middle Eastern mother’s experience with your mother -- who happens to be an immigrant from said region herself. Specifically, Incendies is about a woman whose death prompts her children to realize that maybe they didn’t know her at all>>>

You’ll be fine

The day began like any other day. I woke to the voice of the muezzin calling people to prayers, Allah o Akbar. After Maryam finished praying we had our usual breakfast-- sangag bread still warm from the stone oven it was baked in, jam that Maryam made herself with pears and plums, mint-scented tea. On the way to Tehrani Elementary School I stopped at my friend Batul’s house, at the mouth of the alley, to pick her up. We passed the public baths and the mosques, sights visible on practically every street in the Khanat Abad neighborhood>>>

Bread

Loghman-e-Adham
was newly paved, I suspect,
for its American class.
Running to get our bread,
I would see blonde heads
under concave glass
>>>