Archive - Apr 2008 - Article

The Presence

God has no desires. I do. I, who makes love with her flesh and writes by hand so that you read me and recount the neon lights alongside Vakil Bazaar: the courtyards, old shops, and late night summer breeze through the mosquito nets. After all what is life but a wretched mirror if I don't write for you and you don't read me? Beloved! Your presence may be a swelled pulse, a modern consumption, or a collectible antique to possessive souls but to me it is the manifestation and the revealing compassion>>>

Freedom of hate speech

Hey people...you want to become famous and get attention? Well, it seems that one of the easiest way to fame in 2008 is Islam bashing. Recent attempts at fear mongering, hate, and uneducated characterizations of Islam include the newly released Dutch films, "Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' film about the Quran" and the cartoon, "The life of Mohammad," by Iranian-Dutch politician Ehsan Jami. Both of these directors are public figures in the Netherlands. It seems that anyone who once dreamed of gaining fame can simply generalize Islam as a hateful religion and make negative and offensive comments>>>

چوب حراج بر مهمترين اثر تاريخ

به دنبال تخريب های هر دم افزاينده ی ميراث های فرهنگی، تاريخی و طبيعی ايران، و به خصوص آثار غير مذهبی آن، اکنون خبر فرود آمدن بلايی تازه بر سر اين آثار به گوش می رسد. خبر در مورد فروش و واگذاری محوطه های فرهنگي، تاريخی، و طبيعی برای استفاده هتل دارها، کارخانه دارها، و ديگر مراکز تجاری خصوصی است. در واقع روند خصوصی سازی خودسرانه ی ميراث های فرهنگي، تاريخی، و طبيعی مردمان اين سرزمين، که دير زمانی است صحبت آن اينجا و آنجا پيش می آمده اکنون شکلی واقعی به خود می گيرد.>>>

Family fun in Florida

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Integration

This is a view of our building which is a small part of our social housing block. The apartment where my wife Michelle and I live, is situated on the ground floor in the middle, living on our right is Shaikh Ahmed and his wife Rahima from Somalia, their son Mokri and their daughter Shokri. To our left, until 11 o'clock Friday, was A.Gabrielle, indisputably Italian. On top of him, until last Wednesday, was Tara who is (was) a Finish-Hungarian lady. Next to her, above us, is Gallagher the Scott and next to him, right above Shaikh Ahmed’s family lives Morad, his wife Amina and their children, from the former Yugoslavia. Above Morad lives Jens (chairman of the board) with his twin children and on top of Tara lives 55 years old Mo’tamed and between him and Jens, in no. 8, lives Irene a lonely divorced woman>>>

Camp Ashraf

When the regime of Saddam Hussein came to an end, 3,800 members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation were bombarded, captured and disarmed by US Special Forces in Iraq and confined to Camp Ashraf. Five years on the American military must be given full credit for the excellent job it has performed in containing the MKO in Iraq and keeping the people secure. Dealing with a dangerous, destructive cult is not an easy task. It is widely acknowledged that the American forces are perhaps the only ones who could do this, particularly in the violent and chaotic conditions of Iraq. But the situation has now developed to the point at which urgent action must be taken to deal with the group>>>

Collateral damage

This phenomenon of suicide among the soldiers has its deep roots in the fact that the U.S. war on the people of Iraq is an unjust and brutal war of subjugation of the nation, regardless of the maniacal claims of George W. Bush and some Iraqi mercenaries chained inside the Green Zone. It is this savage character of the war which is responsible for the heightened rate of suicide among returning American soldiers. This rate has had a 500 percent increase since the start of the open war on Iraq, hitting levels not seen in more than a quarter century. Every day five U.S. soldiers attempt to take their own precious lives in the U.S. army, while before the war on Iraq, the number was less than one suicide attempt per day>>>

Springtime

Spring is like young people
It is not thinking of winter or fall
It is thinking of life, here and now
So don’t be sad or angry
Instead be forgiving and kind
Not only for their sake
The ones who may have hurt you
But also for your own >>>

Women=Men

For nearly three decades now, we have been struggling to achieve the right to divorce and equal rights in marriage for women. We have repeatedly claimed that polygamy rights for men create an unbearable and disgraceful reality for women. But these patriarchal laws have sustained. For years, we have objected to unequal diyeh, or compensation for bodily injury, and have wondered why it is that being a man or a woman determines the amount of compensation to be paid to accident victims? We ask why our laws recognize men as full human beings, setting them as the standard, and value women at half the male standard, and sometimes even less>>>

Being Bullied

It is very belittling to me to see how some of the western countries are trying to force their power to stop Iran from having nuclear power. Iran not only should be able to utilize nuclear technology to produce electrical energy, she should also be able to produce its own nuclear fuel to run these plants. We should not be at the mercy of some superpower deciding whether or not we can have our quota of fuel to run these plants and produce electricity. Iran is a sovereign country and needs to be able to decide independently much nuclear energy she wishes to produce, in as many power plants as she wishes to build >>>

The Spider Killings (12)

A while ago, Yassi had been arrested by a group of officers. Before they had taken her to the station house, they had gang raped her. When she came home after weeks of detention peppered with beatings, lashes, and other mistreatment, the young girl was hysterical. For the first day, she couldn’t stop laughing. It wasn’t laughter actually. More like a giggle. Not a light hearted giggle that you would hear at the end of a punchline. Something else. Something wild and ... not... sane. It chilled Azadeh to the bone to hear her friend giggle like that for no reason when she should have been crying or screaming, anything but that. Had she lost her mind for good?>>>

بازیچه گردون شدن

ای خوشا چون لاله های کوهها
در بهاران سبز و دامن خون شدن
از نسیم دامن افشان سحر
واله و شیدا و دیگرگون شدن
سی تماشای رخ خورشید خود
بر سر بام جهان بیرون شدن
یا ز انوار رخ دلدار خود
مست گشتن و ز پی اش مفتون شدن
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Moon after Moon

I need you to say you love me. I want your words to touch me again. Look, who knows maybe I will break into a thousand pieces soon. Perhaps morning tempers and letters burn, but I want my body to learn new words, a fistful of words as sweet and sour candy that happens to be in my mouth; words that stem from the heart and soul, making rich feathery sensation on the back of my neck; words that tantalize like the tip of your tongue finding its path to my lips. These are simple adventures that fill, pant, and pour the depth of my body where I let natural forces find fever at every beat, every beat that is as strong as my desires>>>

Flowing with Forugh

Although a number of English translations of Forugh Farrokhzad's work have been published, many fail to capture the nuances of the Persian language, the incisive and edgy aspects of her mind, and her unique and powerful experience as a woman living through the turbulence of Iran’s 20th century modern history. I had the opportunity to interview Iranian-American poet-translator, Sholeh Wolpe and asked her about her role as the translator of the most recent collection of Forugh’s poetry, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad and the way Forugh’s life and legacy has personally touched her. >>>

The world cannot help

The Islamic Republic is not our entire problem. I would argue that with or without the IR, little or no significant difference would be felt by those who truly dream of a free and independent Iran. The major part of the equation I believe has not been fixed. The people of Iran need to define what are acceptable social norms in the Iranian society. The simplest solution is what the IR is enforcing. To take the Rights of all so no one would argue for the acceptable norms. IR agrees that we need to go back to Islam to find a common ground.>>>