I have a particular fondness for Lebanon, not having spent any time there personally. Father attended the law faculty at College Saint Joseph. Grandfather

   This is the latest sequel to [The game will go on], [], [] and [Is this anything?]. As the jeers of Iran’s quest of

   I am deeply disappointed in President Bush’s manners. He was already ugly enough as a rude caricature of a wannabe statesman. Now this week

     Last time I wrote on this subject [“”] Iran was ahead 2 to nil. In less than two weeks Iran has managed to bag

                                                                                                                     An hour before today’s game, I thought about the reason why I was willing to give up a day in the sun, after so

Last time I wrote on this subject it was March [“The game will go on”]. Iran had managed to secure a one-goal shutout advantage over

The nocturnal fare called Late Night with David Letterman often features a shtick called “Is this anything?” The curtain rises and a person or two

The exhortations in the piece “Unsettled” lack rationality and foundation. Here are examples of some of the statements that pass supposedly for enlightened polemics. Notice how the title

In the Indo-European Family of Languages, the Indian branch evolved into Sanskrit, then into Middle Indian and from it derived the sub-branch that included Bengali

This past week I was amused most by the complete absence of haya (shame) in Iran's self-congratulatory attainment of uranium enrichment. Bravo, the sons and

The first of this series about beesharmi [See: “Haya”] deserves a supplemental comment about one of the endearing characteristics of America’s diplomatic culture, that is,

The [Islamic] Republic of Iran gained a momentous diplomatic victory the other day at the UN Security Council. After much “wrangling” by the 15-member Council,

Last August, I wrote a piece “Lovely word” in which I discussed the origins of the English word “love.” Following the trail shown in Oxford

One of the joys of writing is to string a number of disparate beads along a common thread and then round it all by clasping

I am not that vain to think that you have clicked to read more of this essay because of some innate connection between my name

In the piece entitled “The Ahmadinejad in us” I intimated by means of a question mark in parenthesis that Ahasuerus might have been Cyrus. I

I am not sure what exactly is it about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s recent anti-Jewish pronouncements that grate on me. Is it his courage that speaks truth

In Persian, kesh is a simple word and yet without it a huge part of Farsi will shut down. Okay, may be that is stretching

It is autumn. It is the season of hozn-e khazan – the melancholic time of the falling leaves. It is time for goodbyes – some

To be able to stand in the public square for any extended period of time and express oneself requires that one be poust-koloft (thick-skinned) and

When my newly born son had begun to utter his first sounds, I constantly marveled at the variety of sounds that he garbled. Some sounded

President: Thank you, Mr. Al-Baradei. I now call upon the Iranian delegate to take his seat at the Council table and address this body. Iranian

The essay “Lovely word” on the Persian origin of the word love keeps on giving. A few more comments on the substance of that essay