Life

Do we need hemayat?

It might be worth our while to pay closer and for once unbiased attention to the United States and its policy toward Iran. We’d see that as with the Mossadeq episode, as with the pre- and post-Islamic Revolution of 1979, as with the turmoil following the fraudulent presidential elections of June 2009, this policy, when it exists at all, is muddled and pulling in different directions. The White House, State Department, CIA, experts and analysts inside and outside the government, all come up with different and contradictory conclusions>>>

Eid Didani ba Skype

In October 2003, I wrote an article about how the world is changing, how the information era is making what we perceived as normal life become obsolete. No more walks to the grocery store, online shopping has taken over Mr Petal shops and Amazon is the way to go, (oh hell where I am they deliver a can of coke with a phone call…for Free!). The change is so vast that we are seeing classic symptoms; regimes collapsing; Old orders retreating; Essential commodity costs rocketing, and earthquakes telling us as men we are certainly not the super power. By the time we reach the equinox, on March 21 god knows where we maybe!>>>

The Master

When I first heard Tara Kamangar perform with the Oakland Symphony Orchestra I had a feeling that she would soon be invited back on the same stage. As it turned out, the next time I heard her perform, Kamangar was not a behind a grand piano locked in a precise and passionate embrace with a Rachmaninoff piece; the versatile concert musician was improvising gypsy-jazz with a fiddle tucked under her chin, accompanying the group Kiosk. This March 18, Kamangar will be back on the Oakland Symphony stage, this time the young master has a Beethoven concerto under her piano fingers>>>

Not property, live-stock or slaves

Despite the knowledge that breaking the law might lead to execution, women have been noticeable at the forefront of the movement for democratic change in Iran. These activists have faced harassment, torture, travel bans and detention. The most inconceivable types of torture are inflicted on female prisoners who are only provided with the minimum of health services behind prison walls, if any>>>

زن، بزرگترین قربانی انقلاب اسلامی ایران

هنوز برای مرد ایرانی این نکته کاملا جا نیفتاده است که به زن به عنوان یک انسان نگاه کند و نه به عنوان کسی که به انسان دیگری متعلق است. پذیرش زن به عنوان یک انسان مستقل شرط اولیه نگاه به او به عنوان یک انسان هم‌تراز و برابر با مرد است، و تا وقتی این مفهوم در فرهنگ جامعه ما شیوع پیدا نکند و مرد ایرانی با آن خو نگیرد، تبعیض سازمان یافته علیه زنان هم چنان ادامه خواهد یافت>>>

Saving Farsi

It is hard to understand why in a community that prides itself for its wealth and knowledge; no one has stepped forward to help those who are desperately trying to resuscitate this “dying language.” When our children are small, we spend part of the weekend to drag them to community schools to teach them a little Persian, but when a university offers it, which would in turn train our future teachers, we don’t seem to grasp its importance. If these students are denied further studies in Persian education, then who is going to teach the children of our children? >>>

Women on the Frontline

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Locked Away

Over the past 32 years, Iranian security forces have widely relied on “house arrests,” detention in a “safe houses,” or in a “secret prison,” of prominent opponents who enjoy a wide social base, or who enjoy religious or partisan backing. Reviewing the evidence it becomes evident that Islamic Republic rulers have taken advantage of these methods for cracking down on critics and dissidents. But while the two methods share many similarities, their implementation and objectives differ>>>

زنان لیدری می کنند

فائزه هاشمی را از پنجره ی یوتیوپ دیدم که هنوز و مثل سالهای بر باد رفته لیدری می کند. می توانست این دو سال را که از زمین و آسمان بر او تهمت می بندند، توی پر قو در سرزمینی بهشتی بیاساید و کاری به کار آن جهنم سوزان که در آن می گدازد نداشته باشد. می توانست شبانه روز عیش و نوش کند و تن نازک به ضربات پلشتی های زبان دیوان حکومتی نسپارد. اما فائزه پشت پول و عیاشی پنهان نشد. سینه سپر کرد.>>>

زنان، تخت جمشید، گوگل

بنا بر اسناد تاریخی می بینیم که اجتماع ایران هخامنشی آن زمان تا چه اندازه نسبت به حقوق اجتماعی زنان پیشرفته بوده و چه برخورد مترقیّانه ای با آنها داشته است. چیزی که در قیاس با موقعیّت کنونی زنان نه تنها در کشورهای در حال پیشرفت بلکه در کشورهای پیشرفته هم کمتر نظیر دارد. آنچه که اخیراً از طرف شرکت های های گوگل و اپل در مورد دادن مزایا و بوجود آوردن تسهیلاتی برای زنان کارمندی که باردارند انجام گرفته باعث بحث و گفتگو در رسانه های جمعی آمریکا و تحسین و بزرگداشت این شرکت ها شده است>>>

Thank God you are God

I used to read what is claimed to be your last holy book written in Arabic, the Quran, because Mullahs have told us, and still do, that Quran cannot be translated into any other language. Although prohibition against translation seems to be more of a theological matter rather than a translational issue, I believe it is more a political concern. The Islamic clergymen believe that Quran is your word, God, and if it is translated into another language, it then becomes the word of human beings>>>

Part of the Family

A month ago, I had never had a boos. I was just a Berkeley guy, an English teacher of all things, who didn’t know a single Persian word, who was missing out on a huge Persian world. Those days are shadowy to me now, almost as though I was a different person, an outsider. In the few weeks since I have joined the staff at Golestan, in Berkeley, California, I have listened to the sounds of the school—the students, Yalda joun, the teachers—and, I think I have learned something. Now, I think I’m part of the family>>>

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>>>