Archive - Mar 8, 2010 - Article

Oil Man

One of the tragedies for this generation of Iranians is that there are no structures in place to capture and house a record of their contributions for posterity. Under present conditions the meaning of the words "the past" and "posterity" has unfortunately become subjected to politics. In 1965 he was the first Iranian to be promoted to become General Refinery Manager. In 1971 he was appointed as an alternate Member of the Board of Directors of the National Iranian Oil Company (N.I.O.C) and the Head of Engineering and Projects Group where he worked until his self initiated retirement in November of 1974>>>

This is for You

To mark international women's day I decided I should write about three Iranian women whom I came to know well when living in Iran just before Ahmadinejad's first term. The three of them worked for me as housekeepers/babysitters and my knowledge of their lives is limited to our employer/employee relationship and class differences. But we spent a lot of time together and often our talks and interactions were more intimate than those I had with women I knew socially. For whatever it is worth I thought that I should expose the lives of three very ordinary Iranian women from different backgrounds and different sensibilities. This is for them>>>

راه های طی شده (1)

در تاریخ اندیشۀ ما نیز پرآوازه ترین سخنگویان معنویت جهانشمول که امروز شهرت جهانی دارند یعنی بزرگانی مانند عطار، مولوی، و حافظ نیز از درون سنت فکری اسلامی و با نقد کوته فکری های مدعیان و مفسرین آن آغاز کردند نه از موضع نفی مطلق سنت و فرهنگ دینی. و این همان راهی است در تاریخ معاصر ما نیز نو اندیشان و احیا گرانی مانند سید جمال اسد آبادی، احمد آقایف، اقبال لاهوری، و علی شریعتی دنبال کردند>>>

That's Funny

TISSA: I was never the class clown. I was always the quiet kid in the back who made the occasional wisecrack that made the few students around me laugh. The first time I realized I was funny was in 8th grade, in an American History class. It was one of those days right before school vacation, when the teacher knows there's no point in teaching anything because everybody's brain is already on vacation. So, she thought up a fun game for us where we learned American proverbs>>>

Augustine

My daughter often asks me why I talk to strangers -- the answer is, that is how I get a chance to meet my loved-ones-to-be. One of my dear friends, found completely randomly, is a woman by the name of Sarah D. I met Sarah in 2006. At the time, she sold lettuce at the Burbank Farmer's Market and we struck up a conversation over arugula and dill. One particular morning, Sarah was positively beaming. She showed me a picture of a little girl named Augustine whom she had just met in Haiti. Her love for Augustine was contagious especially when she shared her pictures ... but let me get out of the way, and let you hear Sarah's story directly from her>>>

Hayedeh

A year after the overthrow of the Shah, the Islamic Revolutionary Court issued a subpoena with a list of singers and actors who were ordered to surrender to Evin authorities. Second on the list was Massoumeh Dadeh-Baalaa, known to the music world as Hayedeh. The ominous document, scribbled in course handwriting, can be seen in Pejman Akbarzadeh’s encyclopedic video biography of the legendary Iranian diva. Akbarzadeh chronicles Hayedeh’s life with such detail and insight that by the sad end we realize the storyteller has covered territory beyond the life of one artist; he has shed light on the world of the Iranian exile>>>

A New Day

in a moment of pause
you had gone
I walked away wondering
how I could not see you leave
Now whispers in me
words of regrets
longing to begin a new day >>>