“Do you love poetry?” Someone asked me. I used to listen to Shamloo citing the poems of Rumi and Khayyam during the nights of war

Betty was my best friend. We were both obsessed with Orhan Pamuk. I have to confess that this obsession didn’t come to our mind naturally.

The war started on the last day of the summer 1980. It changed everything. It destroyed our neighborhoods and brought whoever lived in the lasting

My friend Dolly was the last one who saw P. alive. Peter Rostopovich Stihotvoreniev was Dolly’s boyfriend, but everybody had already forgotten his full name.

It’s a dazzling summer morning. The breeze moves the shining waves of sun with care. Foreign birds fly in the sky with harmony. A masked

Lily Flower had never worked in her life. She was the last member of Flower family, well-known in Hustonville, Tennessee. At ten, her parents called

Waiting had never scared me so much. Waiting for a free shower, for a peaceful moment of loneliness among the crowd, inside those walls made

Spring of 79. I hadn’t yet turned twenty. It was the day of the demonstration against the banning of the last liberal newspaper, Ayandegan, only

It’s hard to be a victim. It is harder to be a witness. Every man in my childhood city — at some point in their

The room went dark. She was still in there. It was the last incident. Unnoticeable and ordinary. Most of the similar incidents that had taken

Flies and mosquitoes. An eagle flies above the trees, above the lake, above the sandy road, above the tent. I zip up the little window.

My boys love video games. They sit for hours in front of the TV set and stare at the screen while their fingers silently move

I love Orhan Pamuk! His prose is pure poetry; magical and timeless. He is my favorite contemporary writer and I am so happy to find

My memories of my childhood are mostly vague but still I can remember being on the playground of my old school; while other children played

Then the guard throws me in the cold room and the metallic sound of the closing door echoes in the darkness. My foot gets stuck

A man was walking at night. He stopped at the middle of the narrow wooden bridge to gaze at the surface of shining water flowing

The carpet on my face is scratchy. It smells like dust and dead spider. I lift it to breathe. I crawl on my back and

I woke up by the morning light. It was still too early, everyone else was sleeping. I panted in silence. Our new cell had long

I had written it as one of my first assignment for Philomene Long. I just made some changes, to make it something special for Mother’s

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.

There is a story behind each myth. Myths are supposed to be about the dead people, but our family’s favorite myth was about me. The

Before I got married, I never wanted to have children. I had my own philosophical reasons. The futility of life, the impossibility of changing the

Last night we heard that Ali was going to be executed in 15 days and today we found out that it was a false alert.

Today I asked my mother why she named me Azarin. My name, Azarin, means a type of volcanic rock similar to granite. When volcanoes erupt,

I was moved beyond imagination, after reading what the Iranians, still living in Iran have expressed about Ali’s ordeal, I realized that I might have