گرگ بیابان

از وقتی امید تصمیم گرفت مینی بوس قسطی بخرد، دل تو دل زنش، الهام نبود. احساس بدی داشت. با وجود آنکه امید هزاران بار نقشه را برایش توضیح داده و گفته بود که با کار سخت می تواند در ظرف حد اکثر 5 سال قسط ماشین را بدهد و آن وقت می شوند ارباب خودشان باز دل تو دلش نبود. اصلاً به دلش برات شده بود که این کار برایشان آمد ندارد. الهام بیشتر ترجیح میداد که امید بر روی ماشین دیگران کار کند و مزد بگیرد. اینجوری فرصت بیشتری داشتند با هم باشند و هر دو بچه از اینکه پدرشان را سرحال میدیدند خوشحال تر بودند. آنها می توانستند شب جمعه ها به منزل مادر بزرگشان بروند و خودشان را برای بزرگترها لوس کنند. امید دیگر تصمیم خود را گرفته بود و شمر هم جلودارش نبود چه برسد به الهام. همه چیز در چشم به هم زدنی انجام یافت و مینی بوس 21 نفره جدید امید خیلی سریع دم در خانه آفتابی شد.>>>

تو دلي

توي دلت مونسم تا به حال گريه كردي ؟
اشكها قظار شده ، پنهان از چشم ديگران كردي؟
گريه با آهي پر از سكوت در دل شب
گريه با حس درد با دل خالي در نيمه شب
گريه ترس و بي هق هقه كنار معشوق
گريه سرد و پر صدا در كنار سكوت درياچه عشق
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The Mindlessness is Total

The Republicans will get us into more wars. Indeed, they live for war. McCain is preaching war for 100 years. For these warmongers, it is like cheering for your home team. Win at all costs. They get a vicarious pleasure out of war. If the US has to tell lies in order to attack countries, what's wrong with that? "If we don't kill them over there, they will kill us over here." The mindlessness is total. Nothing real issues from the American press, which is about demonizing Russia and Iran, about the vice presidential choices as if it matters, about whether Obama being on vacation let McCain score too many points. The mindlessness of the news reflects the mindlessness of the government, for which it is a spokesperson>>>

Can They Come Too?

I live in a dangerously thin, long, and deep stretch of space, which is my identity. I live in America, taking daily pains to practice what I know well—being an Iranian. On good days I think I have the best of both worlds. I am free to live, to be, to think, and to talk, because I am in America. I am surrounded by wonderful friends that Americans are, loving and supportive and respectful of me. I am free to love Iran, to follow its news, and to appreciate its music, poetry, and art, among all the other cultural elements I follow. On bad days, though, I feel lost, belonging to this land never, and belonging to the old world no more. When I lose my balance and fall off my thin stretch of identity, I am lost for I am neither Iranian nor American>>>

My Eastern Promise

As the summer draws to a close, I look back and reflect at how zanily hectic the last few months have been. Probably one of the busiest summers I’ve ever had with visitors flying in out from overseas, my own holidays and business trips and far too many commitments, for a girl to have to juggle! So does that mean that my travelling is coming to an end? (Sigh…) Well not exactly. Having just come back from the South of France, I’m being sent back there for a work event, followed by a few days in Paris, also at an event. But real holiday time, it is not, so the traveller in me remains unsatisfied. I have now decided to venture beyond the safer Euro-destinations and fulfil one of my greatest ambitions… to travel around the Far East as much as possible, or certainly as much as my boss will allow me!>>>

Counter-Narration from the Borderlands

Long before, and especially after 9/11 we have been bombarded with perverted and sinister images and ideas of the Middle East: the region, the peoples, the history, and the cultures. How do people who identify as Middle Eastern realize these images and ideas on which popular consciousness has been built, and how do we understand ourselves with or without them? Whether through the Axis of Evils’ comic relief, Suheir Hammad’s poetics, or the Philistines’ beats and rhymes, Middle Eastern communities have addressed the deep understanding of what it has meant to be Middle Eastern according to imperial eyes in creative and commanding ways.>>>

Diaries & Jallad

"Valley of Lepers," K. whispered under his lips the title of his next story before entering the living room; to his own surprise, he found little difficulty in sitting next to his sister and watching television, perhaps because the content of the program, a round table on urban problems, interested him, or perhaps because he was plain curious about the identity of the female caller, who was hammering in the importance of a rail connection from Shiraz to Isphahan over the proposed national east-west highway system to connect Shiraz not only to Ahwaz but also to Baghdad and Karachi. "This will connect with the existing railway system by the proposed extension from Qom through Yezd, to kerman, to Zahedan, as well as with the existing rail facilities to Karachi," the caller said>>>

Five days in Tehran

Tehran is a very large and beautifully picturesque city with many hidden worlds within worlds to discover, which runs downhill from the foothills of the Alborz Mountains in the north all the way down to the edges of the Dasht Kavir desert in the south. Never far from the skyline is the immense Mount Damavand whose snow capped peak can often be seen rising above the clouds like the Mount Fuji of Iran. Since the revolution, 30,000 trees have been planted in Tehran and it is one of the greenest cities you will ever see anywhere on the planet. The traffic is jammed like L.A. or NYC but there is a subway system which is clean and efficient and like NYC or Paris, the city never sleeps>>>

Russia Strikes Back

After a long time being used as a leverage to extract greater concessions from Russia, finally on August 14, 2008 with great fanfare and at a much higher price, Poland conceded to letting the U.S. use part of its territory for establishing a sizeable military base in northern Poland run by American military personnel and armed with 10 U.S. global interceptor rockets. Among the most crucial factors that spurned the binding of the agreement at this moment in time were the extremely tense relations between Russia and the U.S. over the crisis in Georgia, which in turn motivated Washington to upgrade the terms of the deal with Poland. Apparently the White House was in such a hurry in the early days of the Georgian crisis to wrest the Polish accord that it was ready to pay practically any price to entice the pro-imperialist Polish ruling elite>>>

لطیفه ای که دیگر ما را نمی خنداند

در گویا نیوز خبری دیدم مبنی بر بهایی بودن هادی خرسندی، کلیک کردم و سر از اصغرآقا در آوردم. رفتن به اصغرآقا آسان است ولی بیرون آمدن از سایت خرسندی، که همواره با خرسندی همراه است، مکافات دارد. سخت است از آن همه مطالب دلچسب و طبع روان و قلم شیرین و بانمک دل بکنی! به هر حال، شایعه برای ایرانی جماعت صنار خرج برنمی دارد. هر کسی بنابه نحوه ی تفکر خود، به دیگری تهمت می زند و در سایت اینترنتی و یا در روزنامه و یا مجله ای منتشر می کند و قانون هم در آن کشور گل و بلبل، فقط جیب وکلا را پر می کند و لطیفه ایست که دیگر ما را نمی خنداند.>>>

Repercussions far and wide

As Israel contemplates military action to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, it is essential to take a closer look at Iran's most powerful man - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - and his views toward the Jewish state. A clearer understanding of the precise challenge Iran poses should disabuse Israeli leaders of the idea that force is the best way to neutralize it. Although Khamenei was an underwhelming compromise choice to be succeed Ayatollah Khomeini when he died in 1989, a confluence of factors has made him more confident and powerful now than ever. Externally, these include soaring oil prices, together with Iranian leverage in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine>>>