Archive - Nov 2008 - Article

Los Olivos – A Day

How is it that I find myself seated across from him in a romantic setting such as this, on a warm sunny August day, alone and allowed to soak in the moment? It takes a good bit of practice for me to gather my thoughts and release them to the passing breeze. I want to be wholly at this table – it is hard though. I have to chase the stubborn thoughts; which refuse to leave, insisting that they be witness to this. I will to focus on the mere pleasure of a simple fare with a person who happens to have slithered his way into my heart. Who is he? Do we ever know? Well, I have only shared a handful of days with this man and fewer nights even. This time around, I don’t have to ask ‘who am I’ – a much more pertinent milestone. So I settle to enjoy this “familiar stranger”>>>

Reading Kafka at Harvard (2)

At day break on Wednesday, January 17, 1996. A tremor shaking the old house to the roots I thought, but the surge of sounds drilling into my peaceful sleep bespoke of an impending crisis of a different kind, one that would instantly transform my life for years to come by imposing on me all the existential horror of a Kafkasque nightmare. Luckily, that night my wife Sylvia and our little Sabrina were staying with my mother-in law who was recuperating from an ice-related car accident. Winter had arrived in full force that January. Lying in bed with the bedside lamp on, I didn’t move but tried to grasp what was happening. A luminous fresco of clouds was gazing through the bay windows; expectant mother nature had found an empty theater to mount a small absurdist play. The heavy knocks on the door sounded as if I had been hit in the head.>>>

Deliciously complicated

The love affair with the story in the game of Prince of Persia led the creator to explore areas of the story that he had always wanted to do, but never got around to it. Until now. The adaptation of his story in the form of the Graphic Novel, enabled him to flesh out some of the more dramatic details as well as to do some research into the culture and it's vast and rich history. It has resulted in an outstanding new story, which is a unique adaptation taking various elements of both ancient Persia, as well as the more important inclusion of our traditional character and culture. But as in the story, all is not what it seems and there are mysteriously provident strings being pulled from afar.>>>

The Newlyweds (20, Conclusion)

It's over. She is gone. I am left behind. I went to her and tried to stop her, plead with her, convince her that I had not betrayed her. Geraldine told me she had already left. She took my wrist and placed her other hand on my heart and told me it's over. I lost Kati like I lost my "other friend", the one who "is in the dark." I blanched. I had not told her or anyone here about Leili. I came home, crazed. I felt like I was the one stuck under the rubble, the rubble of a sham marriage, an unwanted child, a pretend-life. I had dug and dug until I caught a glimpse of sunlight and now it had been taken away from me. This will be the last of my correspondence to you dear brother. I thought when I saw Kati that first day that Leili had come back from the dead>>>

توهم

"گل شبدر چه کم از لالهء قرمز دارد؟"
تو اینرا می خوانی
تو اینرا می دانی
و باز هم در دست
چاقوی تیز قضاوت داری!
تو اگر پیش آید
گل شبدر را به لالهء قرمز می فروشی روزی >>>

The Newlyweds (19)

Dear Maryam: I decided that the very first person that I will write to inaugurate my new email account is you, doosste aziz. Of course, no letter or email or telegram could put into mere words my gratitude to you, your husband and your team for helping me in my most trying time. I hope that you send my warmest and most heartfelt regards to all of them for now until I can somehow find a way to honor them properly for what they have done for me. Strange to think it has been more than a month since I have said good-bye to you. I know your first questions will be on my life in Iran and how my family has taken the news of the failure of my marriage and my return home. Well, as you can expect, Papa was not thrilled at all but I think it was less to do with the fact that I am back than ... >>>

يقين به آزادی عين آزادی است!

انتقاد از آمريکا فقط کار کسی می تواند باشد که نخست بپذيرد که سيستمی بهتر از سيستم اجتماعی زنده و کارآيند در آمريکا هنوز در هيچ کجای تاريخ و جغرافيا بوجود نيامده است. انتقاد چنين کسی به آمريکا البته که قابل شنودن و فکر کردن و پذيرفتن است. اما اگر کسی فکر می کند که، مثلاً، سيستم مسلط بر شوروی و اروپای شرقی سابق بهتر، انسانی تر، قانونمند تر و سالم تر از سيستم حاکم بر آمريکا است، يا کوبا را ـ بعنوان مدل و آلترناتيو ـ بر امريکا ترجيح دهد و يا در جستجوی آن باشد که در دل احکام اسلامی پيچ و مهره های ساختن اجتماعی بهتر از آمريکا را بيرون کشد، به گمان من دچار خيال و ماليخوليا شده و بايد خود را به روانپزشک نشان دهد. باور کنيد که قصد من دفاع از آمريکا نيست، که آمريکا به دفاع من نياز ندارد. من اين نکته ها را از آن بابت مطرح می کنم که می بينم اکنون نيز جريانی قوی، که از سنت های گذشتۀ چپ و ملی و اسلامی آب می خورد، در کار آمده است تا ذهن نسلی ديگر از جوانان ايران را مشوب و خراب کند.>>>

«آه، ای روشنی...»

آه، ای روشنی

مگر چه می شد

اگر که می آمدی

تا بر سینه ریز سادگی،

معنای خورشید را

سریر سرودی سازی؟ >>>

Can we forgive and forget?

In a few days, 10 years will have passed since the brutal death of Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar. Later Mohammad Mokthari, Ja’far Pouyandeh and Majid Sharif were abducted and strangled by rogue agents of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic. To this day, the case of all the murdered victims remains unsolved. No one has really been charged and no one has been imprisoned. Yet, the best and the brightest of our young journalists, women activists and even some of their lawyers have been incarcerated, and the saga continues. The lucky ones get to leave but they, too, have to struggle. The other day, Mr. Abbas Amir Entezam in an e-mail message said that he may have to go back to prison after a furlough. The date is set for the 30th of Aban>>>

Reading Kafka At Harvard

In March 2006, the Harvard Gazette featured a story about a symposium on Iran and the future of non-proliferation regime at Harvard Law School, adorned by a color photo of three of the four speakers. They were, Matthew Bunn, the director of Kennedy School of Government’s program on “Managing the Atom,” an M.I.T. political science professor, Barry Posen, and Flynt Leverett, a former White House national security advisor. Somehow missing from the photo was the speaker identified by the event’s oversized poster as Director of NGO, Global Interfaith Peace, and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, Kaveh Afrasiabi, me. Any one else may have taken issue with the Harvard paper, perhaps wondering if this were a mere case of pure neglect, or photographer’s or editor’s unfriendly choice to exclude me, but by then I was rather used to such discrepant treatments at Harvard>>>

Berkeley Rep Does Arabs

Shahrazad entered and she had the whitest porcelain skin and the lightest blond hair. Dark-haired and dark-skinned actresses surrounded her, playing her sister and slaves but this future queen, the rescuer of Moslem virgins looked eastern European not Middle Eastern! And gone was her self-assertion, the will to decide her own destiny. In Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights, King Shahryar explicitly asks the Wazir for her. When the father brings news of this fate, Shahrazad weeps and finally acquiesces, reminding herself and the audience that she might be able to save other lives. Her wedding night encounter with the king is screechy, almost whiny. The sexual act is barely implied; yet the gleaming dagger at Shahrazad’s throat is real. It dominates the first act as the unhinged king, ferocious in his desperate pain, keeps it there and presses it into her flesh in every bit of conversation between them >>>

آخرین روزها

روز یازدهم فروردین ماه سال 1361 (31 مارس 1982) با سبیل تراشیده و ریش نتراشیده، با چهره ای خسته و درهم "پای آبله و خسته، غریبه و دلمرده، با ترس كبود، راه گم كرده، متحیر و عاجز، خسته و ناتوان، آشنا به هویت خویش، ولی درمانده، اشكی به یك چشم و خونی به چشم دیگر، در حالی كه نمیداند به كجا خواهد رسید؟ به زمهریر هاویه؟ یا به كنار حوض كوثر؟" با كیف دستی كوچكی از فرودگاه "شارل دوگل" بیرون آمد. در اتوبوسی كه از فرودگاه به شهر میرفت، نگران و پریشان، در ردیف آخر نشسته بود. برای دوستانش از ایران تعریف میكند و از تیرباران بیرحمانه، دوست نزدیكش سعید سلطانپور حرف میزند و از اینكه پس از آن مجبور شده به زندگی مخفی پناه ببرد و بالاخره از آپارتمان كوچك و دخمه مانندی كه در تهران داشته است حرف میزند اما لبهایش میلرزند. >>>

Change in Regime Change

First of all my dear campaign leader for regime change in Iran, please give poor Machiavelli a break and beware of applying his ideas to your activities. ‘The Prince’ is not a recipe book for concocting fast political food. Instead of looking for some self-serving quick fix, invest in the loyalty of the people you are working with. Earn their respect and rely on the kindness and sympathy of those you are trying to liberate. Remember that the art of leadership does not consist of setting man against man. If you think of people as numbers, pawns and vehicles, this attitude sooner or later becomes evident in the conduct of your campaign and the way you organize and direct your regime change activities. Instead of bringing people together you then have the opposite effect of tearing them asunder and making yourself despised by everyone>>>

Drill (somewhere else) baby! Drill!

Ok, there is this old dude, T. Boone Pickens. He’s an old oil dude, or as they say it in Texas, “ole” to replace “oil” not “old”. He’s been yapping about alternative energy, dependency on “foren” oil, which is actually “foreign” oil, solar energy, natural gas…blah blah blah... He started this fine concern about our air and dependency just last year. He is 80 years old, mind you, and just last year, after 54 years of being in the oil business, he just realized that we should look for alternative energy. After years of producing, oil and knowing what it does to the environment he had an epiphany in 2007 and started talking. Couple of years, few months, or even a few days from meeting his maker he became an environmentalist>>>

The Newlyweds (18)

Dear Brother: I never thought that I could be so happy. Kati and I have made our decision. We are going to be together. Together forever like we were always meant to be. I can’t stop grinning these days and it is all I can do to stop myself from packing up this very minute and saying good-bye to my former life, if one can even call it a “life.” It was more like existing without purpose, breathing under water, forever suffocating, dying little by little. It didn’t come easily of course. At first, Kati refused to see me, to heed my calls. When I finally saw her face to face for the first time after the kiss we shared, she put up the resistance that I expected from her. She tried to deny it at first, saying it was a mistake, we got carried away, etc. But every time I touched her, she recoiled like she had been struck by lightning. She kept trying to turn from me, avoid my gaze>>>