Archive - Dec 2008 - Article

The perfect home

“The Woman of Willendorf”, is the oldest human figurine known to the mankind. The 11-centimeter statute shows a faceless female body with out-of-proportionally large breasts, large tummy and accentuated reproductive organ. This ornament that was made in Austria about 30,000 years ago is neither a representation of a typical prehistoric female body nor comparable to Roman and Greek art in which women are subject to the wild fantasies. You might ask what the heck is it then? One of the strongest theories suggests that it is the symbol of Earth. Having this in mind makes it easier to understand that the large body parts are strictly symbolizing the concept of fertility. From Willendorf village 30,000 years ago to Las Vegas metro in 2006, we hear one voice. The mother earth for thousands of years has provided us with an infinite amount of resources>>>

Reading Kafka at Harvard (4)

On January 27, 1996, the Boston Herald featured a rather unusual article that, its title alone – Harvard professor’s galpal accuses his rival of extortion – must have given serious shivers to Henry James in his grave. Times have surely changed for the worse at Harvard and, sitting in jail like one of Becket’s clowns waiting for a just and expedient end to the horror leveled on me and my family, I concentrated on the necessary antidotes that would keep me from being fated like another Joseph K. The article is worth quoting at length: “A muddied case of alleged extortion, spiced with Middle East intrigue and Harvard prestige grew even murkier yesterday when the only real witness did not pick out the alleged bad guy in court…Shobhana Rana claims she twice turned over $250 payments of her professor-boyfriend’s cash to a death-threatening Iranian last Fall>>>

بیقراریِ عمر

گفتم ببین:
«سالهاست بیقرارم.
تلخیِ این سرما
بیدار نخواهد کرد
آرامشِ گرمِ مهرم را.»
«این که می خروشد،
آن که می تپد
قرنهاست، در من است.» >>>

Twin Adventures

...>>>

For young readers

This project started more than a decade ago when I was searching the public libraries for books for children on Iranian culture and history. While there was ample information on many ancient civilizations like Egypt, China, India, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, there was virtually nothing to be found on Iran. I was saddened by the lack of material and always dreamed of the day all kinds of books on Iran would be available for all young readers around the world. My dream was realized mainly because of the revolutionary new technology that has emerged with digital photography and new advances in book publishing. Thirty years ago publishing a pictorial history with 264 high quality images would have been the task for professional and established publishers with resources and lots of money>>>

The Riddle of Natanz

I have always been drawn to those who are dangerous in some way: those who love too passionately, who think (and act) too radically, whose imaginations are easily heated to incandescence. So I should not complain when I get burned and lose everything. We need to experience the “Grand Passions” at least once in our lives. We need to live life at white-hot heat to feel that we are truly alive and human. “I am alive, therefore I bleed. I am human, therefore I weep”. But what I value more than the “grand passions” of Life is a subtler form of emotion that is paradoxically more potent than passion. I hesitate to call it “tenderness” because that word has other implications, but I have no other word large or clean enough to describe it. Physical consummation is no more than a crude metaphor for this Love. It flows from the most vulnerable places in us, those of least resistance which, I suppose, we have to call the “soul”.>>>

Forbidden Love

The Persian romance of Vis and Ramin, which has influenced the European legend of Tristan and Isolde and the Georgian tale of Visramiani, was composed in 1050's by Fakhraddin Asa'd Gorgani in Isfahan, Iran. It is one of the oldest examples of forbidden love in Persian literature in which a man passionately falls in love with his sister-in-law. For this reason, Vis and Ramin has not been welcome by the Persian literati in the past and present. Nezami Ganjavi (1141-1209), who wrote his romance Khosrow and Shirin, more than one century after Vis and Ramin tries to distance himself from Gorgani as follows>>>

اتو کاری

این روزها کار و بارم شده
که کابوسهایم را اتو کنم
خوابهایی که در آنها قوز کرده روی زمین
اتو می کنم چینهای صورت مادرم را
شب تا صبح، و قلب مچاله ی خودم
و نقشه ی چروک دنیا را
>>>