Archive - Feb 19, 2008 - Article

Vis & Ramin

Vis & Ramin is one of the world’s great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. The plot, complex yet powerfully dramatic, revolves around royal marital customs unfamiliar to us today. Shahru, the married queen of Mah, refuses an offer of marriage from King Mobad of Marv but promises that if she bears a daughter she will give the child to him as a bride. Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later. The plot, complex yet powerfully dramatic, revolves around royal marital customs unfamiliar to us today >>>

Winning without popularity

The Guardian Council and the military have been working under Khamenei's direct supervision to paralyze and manipulate the upcoming elections, all in an effort to make Khamenei the undisputed winner. The council has until now been the Supreme Leader's main instrument for controlling electoral outcomes. In recent years, however, the military has increased its role in the voting process tremendously. The Interior Ministry, which administers the elections, is in the hands of military and intelligence officers. The interior minister himself, Mostafa Poor-Muhammdai, was deputy minister of intelligence under Rafsanjani and is widely thought to have had a role in killing dozens of intellectuals and political activists>>>

The New Man

The New Man sat over the proceedings like a kind and friendly ghost, like somebody who was not only new but also old, because of how the people were like children before him. And maybe he was old, because the thing they were there to talk about fighting, the thing that the man whose face was on the tee-shirts had fought, the face that was staring at all of beauty and tragedy at once, which everybody in the room was staring at too, even if they didn't do it all the time like he did - that thing that they were all against could seem like it was what was new sometimes. It had been growing over their lives, for one thing, or trying to at least>>>

گل یخ

آمدم
با تنی زخمی
از قمه های نزده
از زنجیرهائی
فرونیامده بر شانه هایم،
و سینه ای که
از داغ کربلا سُرخ نبود.
>>>