BERLIN
Photo essay: Out and about town
by
Jahanshah Javid >>>
CHRISTMAS
Turkey wasn’t always the meat of choice
The wreaths are up, the tree is decorated to perfection and the big day is a week away! Whether your main family meal is dinner on Christmas Eve or lunch on Christmas Day, it’s going to be a long one. But I’m not going to re-invent the wheel for you and tell you how to cook a turkey. If you want to know about cooking times for turkey, read my Thanksgiving article. But stay with me if you want to do something DIFFERENT and a little more original this year. I used to make turkey, every single year, in fact. Until one year I confronted the family because I grew sick and tired of slaving for 7 hours preparing a big turkey feast and begged them to perhaps consider beef instead.
>>>
SARZAMIN
A strong mystical connection exists between the soul and soil
Ancestral soil – I don’t mean “the fatherland”, the nation-state, the racial or linguistic group to which a person belongs. I mean the dirt and soil upon which you walk, composed of the blood and pulverized bones of your ancestors. Our forebears (those who supported themselves by agriculture) had an intimate and spiritual relationship with the land about them. Living in mainly settled communities, they rarely strayed far from their villages. Houses and farmsteads were passed down from father to son; generations of the same family came to be buried in the same earth, eventually dissolving and becoming a part of it.
>>>
SANCTIONS
Preparation for massive bombing of Iran
Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) held a successful launch conference on earlier this month. Nearly 90 members and observers packed the Somerstown
Community Centre in central London. Comrades from many different political organisations and persuasions ensured that the conference was lively, with a wide range of views expressed and amendments and motions voted on. Iranian comrades played an active role in the discussions, helping provide the basic understanding of the situation to enable informed debates.
>>>
HEAVEN
... -- not an apple -- depicted in the biblical Garden of Eden (Part I)
Pomegranate fruit has a fascinating history of traditional use as a food, as a medicine, and as a cultural icon, which dates back thousands of years. The pomegranate originated from Persia and has been cultivated in Georgia, Armenia and the Mediterranean region for several millennia. Pomegranates were one of the earliest fruits to be domesticated and their range now includes the Far East, India, the Mediterranean, and the Americas. The wild pomegranate did not grow natively it originated in eastern Iran and came to the Aegean world along the same cultural pathways that brought the goddess whom the Anatolians worshipped as Cybele and the Mesopotamians as Ishtar
>>>
YALDA
تا تو را نمی شناختم پاييز را دوست نداشتم.
آتشکده ام برفراز بلندايي بود؛ همانجا که گلِشاه مهربان هر روز می نشست و ساعت ها با خاک و آب و هوا گِل درست می کرد و آدم می ساخت، نيلوفر آبی می ساخت، گاو بزرگ می ساخت و پرنده هايی با بال های زرد و سبز و سرخ. آدم ها دو تا که می شدند برمی خاستند و رقص کنان می دويدند، نيلوفرها به رنگ زر می شدند و بر آب های آسمان حرکت می کردند، و گاو بزرگ از عشق بارور می شد و به تنهايي همه ی گندم های جهان را می زاييد تا پرنده ها از ازل تا به ابد بر سر گندم ها پرواز کنند.
>>>
RIGHTS
The highlight of repression in the Islamic Republic starts with the Bill of Retribution
Justice must correspond to the necessities of our time. The penal system of the Islamic Republic of Iran is not in compliance with our society’s expectations. Our Iranian norms of morality and Islamic jurisdiction cannot complement each other. To describe how this system was mechanically imposed on our society, we must go back to the first years after the revolution of 1979 in Iran to see how the IRI steadily developed an ever greater repression with a growth in the number of executions and increasing violence throughout the country
>>>
CHEAP
Chat and telephony technology
Most of us are familiar with those cheap 10-10 numbers we can all use to call friends or family members during those holiday times of year. And if you're more technically advanced, you've probably even used such things as Skype or instant messaging to stay connected. Today I've discovered an even better option for staying connected, not only during the busy holiday season, but for any time of year. It's called goober
>>>
INNOCENT
My instincts tell me that at the end of this black night, a warm sun is going to shine in the sky
by Ali Mahin Torabi
Walls, only walls. I am surrounded by walls. I cannot forget any of the terrifying moments of these last few days. I don't want to think about how time is running out. Only a few more days... From the first day of my arrest, five years ago, until now, the sky is all I can see. During all these unbearable moments, I can only stare at the endless fences of my prison. I can only see its towers and its barbed-wires which pierce my heart. Do you hear the bleeding of my wounded heart?
>>>
ART
Photo essay: Finding shape and purpose in ceramics
by
Nazy Kaviani >>>
HYPOTHETICAL
Innocent question for you Iranians, who happen to be Muslim
"I am 35 years old, and live in Iran," he tells you. OK. 35? This is not IranianSingles.com. The guy looks at least 55 for God's sake. But fine, you let it go.
"Ehhhhhhh iroonee hasteed? Pas cheraa zoodtar nemeegeed? Cheh lahjatoon khoobeh. Taazeh oomadeed? Kojaa veezaaa gerefteed?"
Ignoring you, he continuous: "Life is not bad, although it could be
better. There's a corrupt group of individuals that are powerful and
run the show, and the central government has not been very stable, but,
personally, I can't complain too much. I want to see my country
prosperous, Iranians good to each other, and world peace."
>>>
ART
It was as though all my life I had been longing for the way clay feels in my hands
Quite by accident, I came to know an accomplished Iranian artist in our community in Berkeley. His name is Farrokh Shehabi, and he is a ceramics artist. Though he is an engineer by education and profession and managed his construction business for many years, for the past ten years he has found his lost love and passion, pottery. He says about that passion: “It was as though all my life I had been longing for the way clay feels in my hands, as it finds shape and purpose, each piece telling its own story.”
>>>
LOVE
شیفته و بی قرار جلوی درب خانه می نشینم تا که تو بیایی
برایم نوشتی که مرز رویا و واقعیت را گم کرده ای و این چه خوب است و دلت می خواهد در این مرز توهم بمانی نه برای همیشه که چند گاهی ! اسامی فراوانی برای خواندن تو هر روز تمرین می کنم هر روز به تنم آب می زنم خوش بو ترین عطر ها را به پوستم می زنم لباس جدیدی برای خودم می خرم هر روز جلوی آینه می ایستم و خودم را برانداز می کنم تا غبار زمانه را از خودم بر چینم.
>>>
MMM
Christmas is coming… (And its not just the ‘Goose’ that’s going to get fat!)
Even before the Christmas period falls upon us, we are already recovering from the holiday aftermath of Thanksgiving. Greed has once again, gotten the better of us and some of us are paying the price in the form of fatigue, sluggishness and weight gain. So what on earth are we supposed to do when we haven’t yet reached the ‘Mother’ of all holidays, Christmas? Well, I don’t know about you, but barely a week into December and I’m feeling lethargic, heavier and generally not at my peak. In anticipation of the Christmas season, I have decided to eat sensibly to prevent any needless weight gain even before the Christmas and New Year is upon us.
>>>
LIFE
What right do I have to complain about life?
The pain we are all feeling is real and devastating. It is true that our dear little Lauren is finally free of pain. Her suffering is finally over. How we all wish her life story would not have ended here prematurely, two months short of her 14th birthday. This is so unbelievably unfair. Lauren was denied the chance to fully experience life. Just as she was blossoming as an intelligent, beautiful young lady, her body was viciously attacked for the third time by Cancer, one of the worst enemies of the mankind
>>>
PEOPLE
Stories of Muslims in post-9/11 America
Lounging contentedly on the bed in her apartment some thirty-five stories directly above the FDR, Roxana looks at me standing over her and proclaims, "Interview me," as though she were Julia Roberts promoting her next blockbuster. I know this is going to be difficult. I have known Roxana for over eight years now. We met in college at Wesleyan when she was a senior and I was a freshman, and within days, we were inseparable. She was the only other Iranian girl I had heard of at Wesleyan, and she seemed to know everything and everyone there was to know there. We were both loud,opinionated, sarcastic, and naive.We were also both virgins and agreed that men were useful almost solely for opening unyielding jars of pickles and hooking up electronic equipment
>>>
RIGHTS
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains as relevant today and it was 59 years ago
December 10 we not only celebrated Human Rights Day, but also the launch of the year long campaign leading to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The theme for 2008, the year long campaign is “Dignity and justice for all of us”. As we reflect today, there are many reasons to celebrate how far human community has come since 1948, in it’s journey of protecting and ensuring fundamental freedoms for each member of human race. The life of the declaration, conceived as an outcome of the soul of a world severely injured by the horrors of the Second World War has been a very dynamic life.
>>>