Dear Iranian men in the USA, I've heard and read many bad things said about you by Western-educated Iranian women. They have valid points, however.

Israel never lets you forget you are in Beirut, “the only Arab capital occupied by Israel.” They “buzz” the city quite frequently. “Buzzing” is a

He says to me from the roof on this sunny crisp day, “there's been a bomb or something at the World Trade Center,” and I

But I forgot that your hands fed the roots, watering the tangled roses, till your fingerprints bloomed full, in a natural peace. Like pets, your

And there it is: on the table, at the summer's equator, a tomato – an earthen sphere, a fertile and repeated star – reveals its

Transcendence is the moment when you step inside a space surrounded by those eternal high walls of Iran and suddenly you find a small version

Before I begin, I shall say that I am not an Isfahani. I introduce myself as Shirazi, my allegiances are to Shiraz, my fondest memories

What I want to write about is quite pedestrian: the universality of humanity as demonstrated by the absurdity and exhilaration of the game of politics.

I have fallen in love. Head-over-heels, utterly, magnificently. With the desert city of Yazd. Shiraz and Isfahan may be the glittering jewels of Iran, drawing

I have two favorite cafes in Tehran. They belong to different times, different epochs even. They are in geo-socially distant, absolutely disparate parts of town.

After being away from Iran for more than twenty years, I didn't expect to return to the U.S. with a husband. However, everyone seemed to

Kuhsar Restaurant in Darband, in the clean, clear northern suburbs of Tehran at the foot of the magnificent Alborz mountains, has a reservation policy rivaling

What seems like centuries ago, I wrote an essay on love and loss in which – in a fit of generalizing – I stated that

It is recommended that there be a difference in age between men and women, favoring men by – oh, say – five years. Men (or

Twenty years ago, I remember we all defied Shah's nightly curfews to climb on top of the roofs and sing revolutionary songs and give revolutionary

Southern Tehran is humbling. In Tehran, class is defined by latitude and altitude: the further north and the higher up one goes, so one does

A few weeks ago, the sophisticated scene in New York was in an uproar over the conduct of the conductor of the symphony orchestra —

Recently in the course of preparing a proposal for a documentary, I ventured into the local Iranian community in my city and conducted informational interviews.

Iran teeters on the edge of war. On Thursday September 10, the country deployed military troops (in addition to the already present Revolutionary Guard divisions)

I have no voice, and although I have a perverse penchant for flowery metaphors, this statement is emphatically not a metaphor. I literary lost my