Diaspora

The Reed flute

It was a summer day year 2000(I think it was 2000). I was in New York City to visit some relatives and enjoyed the stay. A cousin of mine who was interested in Sufism told me about a Rumi conference that was going to be held in the Columbia University. I have had read little about Rumi and remembered some famous lines of his poetry and his love for Shams Tabrizi, but I really did not know so much about him. Also, the only thing about sufism I knew was the paintings of old dervishes with their axe. Back at my parental home we used to have a very elegant copy of the Omar Khayyams Rubaiyat. I enjoyed reading its poems so much that I made my high school special assignment about Khayyam>>>

Our blended imagination

In my eighth year as a child growing up in Iran, I spontaneously composed a stanza, a poem, observing the falling of snow, when something took over and I knew it was poetry I was jotting down in a nylon-covered notebook. That notebook remained in the piles of things left behind. This was the country in which I recited over and over again “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep” for our fifth-grade English class. In the fourth grade, the entire class would stand up from our wooden benches and recite an homage poem to mothers. At home, it was Sohrab Sepehri, “Wherever I am, let me be / The sky is mine / … Our work is perhaps / To run after the song of truth/in the distance between the lotus and the century.”>>>

Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?

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Watching the West

While some of the most important topics of debate among the Iranian net addicts, and the blogsphere, seem to be about democracy (where it is not about treason and conspiracy) the real changes are taking place not among the Iranians, or in Iran, but in Turkey and in parts of the Arab world. Unfortunately, we as Iranians, did our bit a while ago, and Khomeini was just ready enough to decapitate whatever intelligentsia was truly, excitingly, capable of having any seriously positive effect on the Iranian community probably for more than a couple of generations. And Khomeini's acts are still shadowing the opportunities that the Iranian community can take>>>

In the comfort of New York strangers

The guy was Arnold Schwarzeneger look-alike, all muscles and towering over me, obviously a red neck who wasn’t used to dealing with a Spanish detective before. “Sit down, will you?” I ordered and he obeyed, casting a half-inquisitive, half-demeaning stare at me. I pulled a chair and sat across the table in the interrogation room staring back at him until he buckled. “So what’s your question?” ”Why did you have to kill him?” I asked. He laughed and said, “what the hell was I supposed to do, invite him to dinner, Mr. burglar?” >>>

Seasonal writers

Non-political writers seem to be more of a seasonal type for this matter, and most of them seem to disappear before reaching their true peak because they are usually too busy with their daily lives. Professional quality journalism and writing needs money, and the Internet has so far failed to come up with free truly quality material to match commercial publications (with mostly paid journalists). The job of the unpaid blogger becomes even more hazardous when he is constantly faced with the frustrated and untalented commentator whose best inspiration is at best a jackass, or other phrases in excusable 'French'. What a blogger had hoped to be a pleasant hobby turns out to be a choice between extreme politicisation at best, or too often simply an unpleasant encounter with the anonymous>>>

The Mandamus Actions

A mandamus is a writ that is used to compel an administrative agency to act. For instance if your adjustment of status or your citizenship is pending for a long period of time, you can opt to file such an action. The Mandamus Act authorizes the court to order a remedy. It does not provide independent, substantive grounds for a suit. In other words, what the court is going to determine the reasons why the decisions are pending not the outcome of the decision. Therefore by forcing the agency to make a decision can also result in a denial. At that point appeals or motions to reopen can be timely filed. >>>

Those days

If Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world and Nigeria the most religious, our community was like Afghanistan inhabited by white Nigerians! With the exception of a few, our neighbors were not monetarily any better off than we were. Most other houses were not any fancier than ours. Privacy had no safeguard in our community, personal and confidential information could be disclosed routinely. We used to know almost everything about our immediate neighbors from garlic to onion so to speak. At the other side of our house lived two families in the same house, a brother, Mashdi Esmaeel, in his sixties, with his wife and many kids in one side and his sister, Fatemeh Sultan with her kids on the other. >>>