Archive - 2011 - Article

A Book to Devour

In late 2010, at the end of the first decade of the millennium, Shabnam Piryaei – a poet-teacher-filmmaker-born in Iran just after the revolution and raised in California – published her first book, Ode to Fragile. This book is a collection of her poetry and writings that meet at the intersection of prose, poetry, and plays – three of which have been produced as films. Through her voice as a writer and the voices and images espoused by the diverse, magical, realistic, abused, and abusive characters is a powerful reflection of power dynamics in our collective, glittering and scarred, human experience>>>

The Museum that is Luxor

Luxor is where Egypt showcases its antiquities. In what is called the largest outdoor museum in the world, the monuments to life and afterlife in ancient Egypt are on display. There are temples to worship gods, temples to worship pharaohs, and tombs of pharaohs so designed as to enable them to travel after death with gods in the underworld. The monuments were built over many centuries in this long-lasting pharaonic religious capital. Their remaining walls, columns, statutes, and reliefs stand as witness to times long bygone. Even the scars they bear tell tales>>>

A thousand years later

Aswan is a rare place. It’s a living community amidst the ruins of old settlements. It was a strategic gatekeeper at ancient Egypt’s southern frontier. Yet it absorbed the very people it aimed to keep out. The Nubians of the south are now almost indistinguishable from the Egyptians. They were the early Christian converts in this corner of the world who were later integrated by intermarriage with the Egyptian converts to Islam. In this largely Sunni city, the legacy of the Shiite Ismaili rule still competes with those of the Romans and Greeks. All of these relics are ingénues compared with what is left of the Pharaonic age. In the ruins of Abu one finds the magic of this place>>>

Bumpy Road to Freedom

In the summer of 2005, shortly after Ahmadinejad had first been elected President, I visited Iran. I saw with my own eyes the many changes that had taken place. I remember trying to enter Tehran University. A few bassijis (herasat ) were at the gate and would not let me in. I entered from another gate where the guy who was a bit nicer allowed me in on the condition that I would not go into classrooms. I kept to my promise but managed to interview a few students. They had voted for Ahmadinejad>>>

Green Ideas Survive Movement

While the Islamic Republic may have relative advantage over its opponents in the immediate future, its long-term survival is by no means guaranteed given the growing public disillusionment and dissatisfaction. Even if we were to assume the death of the Green Movement, we must not forget that the Iranian people, its upper, middle and base classes, will continue to struggle for their corresponding needs, namely economic development, political reform, and social justice>>>

No Opposition. No Justice.

The Truth is Iran cannot today, nor tomorrow, nor the next day change under this system of insane zealots, that thinks everyone else is crazy. If they think we're crazy, and we think they are crazy, we've a got a bigger problem, than waiting for peaceful reform to change the game. To change the game you have to show the other side that you are equal to the challenge. The challenge is that a real alternative to this form of government exists>>>

زن های مست باردار

کلاه تازه ام رو سرم کردم تا در برابر سرما و باد تندی که رو به صورتم می وزید از من محافظت بکند. باد همه پلاستیک های غذایی را که مست ها به خیابان ریخته بودند را به سمت دریا می برد و کلاه قشنگم از پره ی گوش هایم به گرمی نگهداری می کرد و حس اینکه سوار ماشینم بشوم را از من می گرفت چون دلم می خواست رو به باد بیایستم و تخمم هم نباشد که قرار است چه سرنوشتی در انتظارم باشد>>>

Bougainvillea

You and I planted this flower
And placed it on my balcony
So when you are not here
I find your image
On its paper petals >>>

Forget About 1979

Is Egypt like Iran? It is a comparison that just a month ago would have been unthinkable. During the height of the 2009 protests in Iran, the Washington Post ran an article under the headline, “Arab Activists Watch Iran and Wonder: ‘Why Not Us?’” Now, with Mubarak gone and a resurgent Green Movement again taking to the streets across the Islamic Republic, the question has been unexpectedly reversed: Could Iran become like Egypt? Many Iranians look to Egypt and wonder, why not us?>>>

The New World Order

The Arab and Muslim nations in a short span of time, less than a month proved that for self-governance and real democracy – and not just corporate money-dictated elections – they have no need for a bully like George W. Bush at the head of a group of militarists from Texas and Zionist thieves from Brooklyn, New York to come down seven thousand miles to force the sword of "democracy and civility" down their throat, using bullets, depleted uranium, bombs, drones and the terrorists of Black Water Xe>>>

The Curse of the British Map Maker

Once again, the world has been turned upside down by the Curse of the British Map Maker. Once upon a time, after the British army successfully turned back the scourge of the Ottoman Empire, the British Map Maker went to work. Being English, and naturally anal retentive, he could not stand the irregularities of the borderless Arabia and Northern Africa (and later Sub Saharan Africa but that is another story for another bed-time), and with an extra long ruler and an extra sharp pencil, began drawing straight lines in the sand. For fun and profit>>>

نچکیده

گاهی نور
خسته از تابش
پشت کرکره ابر
آرام در خواب است
و ما صدای هق هق اش را
از ابر می شنویم >>>

Extremism Alongside Moderation

The story of today’s Cairo is writ in the past. It is not just the Pyramids and the Sphinx of ancient times, it is also the monuments of Cairo’s Islamic history that make it so “now”. Here lie the double-tale symbols of the Sunni-Shiite clash and co-existence, as well as the fault lines of both “extremism” and “moderation” in a resurgent Islam that now preoccupies the concerns of much of the world. The visitors who flock to see the likes of Tutankhamun’s jewels are at peril of remaining innocent for ignoring all others that Cairo has to offer>>>

شکستن مرزهای خودی و ناخودی

اگر در هشت ماهه اول پس از انتخابات ریاست جمهوری خرداد ۸۸ شعارهای اصلاحی در حرکت‌های خیابانی وجه غالب را داشت و به تدریج شعارهای ساختارشکن نمود پیدا می‌کرد، در تظاهرات اعتراضی ۲۵ بهمن به وضوح شعارهای اخیر عمومیت یافته بود. این تظاهرات نشان داد که جنبش سبز اکنون از مرحله خواسته‌های اصلاحی در محدوده قانون اساسی جمهوری اسلامی گذشته و با هدف‌گیری شخص خامنه‌ای و ولایت فقیه موجودیت نظام را زیر سؤال برده است>>>

Hengameh in Hell

In a cold, concrete cell at Tehran’s Evin prison sits 36-year Hengameh Shahidi, a single mother to one little girl. The well-respected, award winning journalist and fervent women’s rights advocate was recently sentenced to a 6-year prison term for “conspiring against the Islamic regime.” In the Islamic Republic of Iran, promoting Women Rights and speaking out against violations at the hands of the reigning Ayatollahs is clearly, a grave crime>>>