Archive - 2007 - Article

My favorite sport

I have to say that football (or soccer, as it is called here) was definitely my favorite team sports. I played the game, along with my classmates, during most of our school years. I would not be exaggerating if I said that we played over 250 days a year! I have many good memories of playing; not only with my classmates, but also joining an impromptu game with people I would meet during my travels around the country. For instance, playing with locals on Kish Island, our in an Air Force base in Ahvaz, or some village kids in Kalardasht. The best memories are from the practice sessions we used to have in Sa’ad Abbad with members of the Iranian National Team!>>>

Love at first site

I had waited for this moment for a long time - ever since I was a little boy, my father would take me to construction sites. I have vivid memories of the slender, brown, glazed tiles in the stairwell of the seven story office building my father built in Tehran more than thirty years ago. I have vague recollections of him and his architect trying to figure out how to add a second basement after the building was nearly completed - something which they did while everyone held their breath. I remember going to pick out land with my parents and my sister for a house in a new development west of the city - Tract 103. I remember going to the Design Architect’s office with my dad. >>>

Infinity

Writers often talk about the urge to write their sudden inspirations on whatever comes handy, and frankly, I don’t really care to know how many bestsellers were conceived on a roll of toilet paper. I never experienced such urge, at least not until 4:00 a.m. this morning. Amid allergies that made breathing impossible and reminded me of imminent mortality, a sudden discovery flashed in my mind. Millions of visions of what may come once we die appeared before me, none of which had to do with sorrow, fear, or even regret. In fact, it was a most optimistic moment, so uplifting that by 4:11 I was out of bed and at my computer.>>>

Sexual code of conduct

Bluntly; in response to an Iranian female friend of mine, who the other night at length discussed her point of view on relationship, sexuality and intercourse without giving me a chance to breath I then promised to make my point clear by writing about it, even broadcasting it to a broad spectrum of audience perhaps to provoke a few “logical” feedbacks from our countrywomen. Ladies please put your emotions aside for a moment and read on. Let me start with my lady friend’s point of view about American (Western) women tendency to experiment with sexuality without considering rules of ethics, without framework of understanding and love, without a mental or emotional connection with someone >>>

The wall

We will break a wall

To open a window

To Change everything

We will break a wall >>>

زشت و زيبای ملی گرائی

تکيه کردن بر يک مذهب، يک زبان، و يک قوميت، و کوشش برای ملت سازی بر حول اين محورهای منفرد، به لحاظ اينکه اينگونه نهادها بر بنياد همسان پنداری و گريز از تنوع اجتماعی عمل می کنند، خودبخود داری ماهيتی ايدئولوژيک است و، در نتيجه، برای سلامت جهان آدمی خطرناک بشمار می آيد. >>>

Newton's 3rd Law

It was somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow
When I heard a sound
I turned and saw
My zealous goal approaching

How? I wondered,
Was I pushing the carriage,
But moving in an opposite direction?
>>>

Farsad and Farnam

Generally speaking, the reaction from the Iranian community at large falls into two camps: those who feel that organizational activity and resistance by the Iranian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community would provoke a strong government reaction, which in turn could lead to an international reaction against Iran as a whole, and those who seek a return of their full civil rights. The difference between the first and second group is that the second is not under pressure from the government due to their sexual orientation. I believe they can be asked to demonstrate for our full civil rights, as well.>>>

To go or not to go

I don’t know maybe I have some serious mental problems, I mean, there are other young Iranians here who are all too bikhiyaal and haven’t been to Iran for years. When I ask them if they miss it at all they shrug and say the old “I miss my family I guess”. Or maybe it’s because everytime I go back, I have such a good time with baahaal people and then come back here to this boring, soccer-crazy, whisky-drinking freckled-faced, freak of a country. I don’t know. I asked my mamman about it a couple of days ago and she said the same old “you just think it’s like that because you were there for a short time” crap. Which may be true for some people but not me.>>>

Xena's gone

One day three weeks ago our favorite cat disappeared. She was the most beautiful cat we have ever owned. She was smaller than a full size cat but she had a very leonine profile, grey with black tiger stripes, a bushy tail and yellow eyes. She could do a higher standing jump than any creature I have ever seen. She could launch from the ground to the roof of our house or a neighbor’s house in a single bound. At night I could hear the wooden gate rattling outside my bedroom window when she would jump up on it... that is the only sound she would make as she stalked through the night but it was enough to let me know that she was there. She spent a great deal of her time high above the ground walking along fence tops or roofs in the darkness and shadows like a Ninja.>>>

پس از شنیدن صدای بوق

پیغام گیر شاملو :

بر آبگینه ای از جیوه ء سکوت
سنگواره ای از دستان آدمی
تا آتشی و چرخی که آفرید
تا کلید واژه ای از دور شنوا
در آن با من سخن بگو
که با همان جوابی گویمت
آنگاه که توانستن سرودی است
>>>

Anbar Republic

It is now painfully obvious that U.S. administration has given up on any chance of the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds ever burrying the hatchet(s) and settling in peace under the unbrella of one country (Iraq). Sadly, this may be the only viable way forward. Just as it was the case in the Balkans, the roots of hatred and mistrust go too deep to ever be resolved peacefully. This is not, however, a new option for Iraq. Many politicians, generals and pondits, including the Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, have advocated the "partitioning" of Iraq along the secterian and ethnic lines.>>>

Common grounds

As similar as Israelis and Iranians are, recent Iranian immigrants to Israel experience difficulty in overcoming the cultural shock. The contrast between the traditional values of Iranian society and the liberal currents of Israeli society -- defined by the norms and culture of its European immigrants rather than by its Middle Eastern geography--could not be greater. I once had a conversation with an elderly Iranian Jew whom I sat next to during the bus ride from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Ehsaq (Isaac), as he was called, spared no love for the clerics in Tehran, but he liked to reminisce about the country in which he had spent most of his life. >>>

Neo-coms

Of all the alternatives that are out there the one that has a special attraction to some diehard Communists-who by the way mostly like to be called Socialist nowadays- is of all things, militant Islam in general, and its poster boy Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) version of it in particular. Just to give some evidentiary weight to this proposition lets take the old axiom of birds of a feather flock together as a road map and see where it leads to. Students of Communism’s history know well that one of the initially widely appreciated arguments of that nascent ideology was its antagonism towards capitalism and the despicable exploitation of the workers, proletariats in Communist lingo, which in varying degree is part and parcel of it.>>>

آه، کلادیوسِ ایرانی، کجایی؟!

هنگام خواندن صفحات زرین زندگی کالیگولا، بعضی تشبهاتِ او و دکترِ عزیزمان احمدی نژاد، توجه ام را جلب نمود! هر دو مدت زمانی را در ارتش (سپاه) گذراندند. هر دو در آغاز قدرت، قول رفاه و عدالت دادند. هر دو در آغاز سخاوتمندی بسیاری (به خصوص به نیروهای نظامی) نشان دادند. هر دو بعد از مدت کوتاهی، نشانه هایی از ضعف و عدم تعادل روانی نشان دادند (اعمالی که به سادگی قابلِ توجیهِ منطقی نبود)! و بالاخره، به نظر می رسد که احمدی نژاد جان هم، مثل کالیگولا، فقط چهار سال در قدرت بماند! جالب تر از همه اینکه، احمدی نژاد هم در تلاش دادن درجۀ کنسول به اسبهاست >>>