Life

Who do you hate the most?

I always knew so well how to hate. I hated being a child and being ignored. I hated being a teen and waiting, wondering, doubting. I hated Shah, I hated Khomeini, I hated Saddam the way their ideological differences changed all of us for the worse. The way the war locked me in my room, listening to the silence, listening to the noise, missing joy or temerity, missing the light seeping through sheer curtains. I hated missing one small volume of space in time when opening my window or listening to loud music, or painting red on my bloodless lips and nails wouldn’t have been called an act of bravery>>>

کاشکی...

نامه ای است تلخ و غم انگیز.......نمی توانم خودم را نگاه دارم.... یعنی کسی که این همه عاشق بهار و نوروز بود می بایستی در آن روز به خاک سپرده شود؟ نه ، بر عکِس برادرم من نمی خواهم که هر شب چهارشنبه سوری و هر روز نو روز باشد. اصلا می خواهم بهار را پاره کنم و بریزم دور... و باز فکر میکنم که آیا ثمین این را می خواهد؟ او که آرزویش زنده نگهداشتن چهارشنبه سوری و نوروز است این را از ما می خواهد؟>>>

Vote Malihe! Vote Hillary!

I am not a politician, but I have decided to run for a seat in the Democratic National Convention in Denver. While Iranian-Americans have been successful in academia and in business, they have not focused on politics. I seek to fill this gap and work towards giving a voice to the Iranian community in the Bay Area. As a loyal supporter of Senator Clinton, who has traveled to campaign for her in Nevada, Texas and soon in Pennsylvania, and helped to raise campaign money, I have been a dedicated volunteer in the coordinated effort to elect a Democrat to the White House>>>

This is where I call home

"I don't wanna go there! It looks too ethnic. I don't like this! It tastes too strange." I have heard these sayings before and their hundreds of variations, putting down whatever that is out of the ordinary, whatever that does not line up with the mainstream. I am bored with the mainstream. It is a light cream color over white. It is lifeless. You look and probe but you find nothing to excite your senses. Boredom weighs over your entire being and you feel deader than a dead man, being busy to be dead, while you, being bored to be alive, if you catch my wandering drift>>>

چوب حراج بر مهمترين اثر تاريخ

به دنبال تخريب های هر دم افزاينده ی ميراث های فرهنگی، تاريخی و طبيعی ايران، و به خصوص آثار غير مذهبی آن، اکنون خبر فرود آمدن بلايی تازه بر سر اين آثار به گوش می رسد. خبر در مورد فروش و واگذاری محوطه های فرهنگي، تاريخی، و طبيعی برای استفاده هتل دارها، کارخانه دارها، و ديگر مراکز تجاری خصوصی است. در واقع روند خصوصی سازی خودسرانه ی ميراث های فرهنگي، تاريخی، و طبيعی مردمان اين سرزمين، که دير زمانی است صحبت آن اينجا و آنجا پيش می آمده اکنون شکلی واقعی به خود می گيرد.>>>

Family fun in Florida

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Integration

This is a view of our building which is a small part of our social housing block. The apartment where my wife Michelle and I live, is situated on the ground floor in the middle, living on our right is Shaikh Ahmed and his wife Rahima from Somalia, their son Mokri and their daughter Shokri. To our left, until 11 o'clock Friday, was A.Gabrielle, indisputably Italian. On top of him, until last Wednesday, was Tara who is (was) a Finish-Hungarian lady. Next to her, above us, is Gallagher the Scott and next to him, right above Shaikh Ahmed’s family lives Morad, his wife Amina and their children, from the former Yugoslavia. Above Morad lives Jens (chairman of the board) with his twin children and on top of Tara lives 55 years old Mo’tamed and between him and Jens, in no. 8, lives Irene a lonely divorced woman>>>

Camp Ashraf

When the regime of Saddam Hussein came to an end, 3,800 members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation were bombarded, captured and disarmed by US Special Forces in Iraq and confined to Camp Ashraf. Five years on the American military must be given full credit for the excellent job it has performed in containing the MKO in Iraq and keeping the people secure. Dealing with a dangerous, destructive cult is not an easy task. It is widely acknowledged that the American forces are perhaps the only ones who could do this, particularly in the violent and chaotic conditions of Iraq. But the situation has now developed to the point at which urgent action must be taken to deal with the group>>>

Women=Men

For nearly three decades now, we have been struggling to achieve the right to divorce and equal rights in marriage for women. We have repeatedly claimed that polygamy rights for men create an unbearable and disgraceful reality for women. But these patriarchal laws have sustained. For years, we have objected to unequal diyeh, or compensation for bodily injury, and have wondered why it is that being a man or a woman determines the amount of compensation to be paid to accident victims? We ask why our laws recognize men as full human beings, setting them as the standard, and value women at half the male standard, and sometimes even less>>>