Archive - Nov 7, 2012 - Article

The Killing of Sattar Beheshti

Sattar Beheshti died sometime in the last few days. I never met him in person. What I know of him from the times we talked over the phone was that he was a simple young man, a hard worker, a son to a mother to whom he was devoted. I also know that he loved his country. By all accounts Sattar was brutally tortured to death. Word has been trickling out from Iran, and apparently other political prisoners saw him in the week he was in Evin Prison>>>

در فروپاشی نهایی، احمدی‌نژاد درکدام صف؟

احمدی‌نژاد و همراهان او از شرایط بحرانی امروز کشور برای ایجاد یک رودررویی صریح با ولی فقیه بهره گرفته‌اند. این رودررویی، صرف نظر از انگیزه‌های آن که در دو مقاله پیشین اشاره شد، این واقعیت را که احمدی‌نژاد در نظام فکری خود اعتبار چندانی برای ولی فقیه قایل نیست بیش از پیش برملا کرده است>>>

رای دادگاه:‌ جنایت علیه بشریت

قاضی یوهان کریگلر رئیس دادگاه گفت؛ "با توجه به شواهد ارائه شده، به ما ثابت شد که شکنجه و کشتار در تمانی زندان های جمهوری اسلامی وجود داشته و شهود نشان دادند که اعدام های فراقضایی در سراسر ایران صورت گرفته است. این جنایات بوسیله دستگاه مرکزی حکومتی صورت گرفته و جمهوری اسلامی مسئول همه این جنایات است.>>>

Goodbye Iran

I recently published a book, Goodbye Iran which is the true story of two young men, Hossein and Hamid, and a young woman, Afsaneh, who in 1983 decide to escape from the repressive and institutionalized land of their birth in search of a better life. The book follows them on their real-life journey, full of difficult decisions, intense joys, and bitter disappointments as they set sail to say goodbye to Iran forever>>>

Honour

As children, my friends and I had no shortage of inventive, novel, and ingenious obscenities to hurl at each other. However, nothing stung as much as being called a namard (lit. ‘non-man’) or bi-gheyrat (lit. ‘honourless’). Similarly, while one might not have made much of another’s anger or frustration, the minute the word namoos (honour) was uttered, you knew things were going to get ugly. Elif Shafak’s latest novel tells the story of the Toprak family, and the troubles that befall them after an illicit extra-marital affair takes place>>>

Hope

Emily Dickinson calls “hope” a bird
Who has perched in her soul
And without asking for seeds
Sings incessantly.
>>>

Fragility

Say ants.
What made them small is time.
They are old.
They've seen catastrophes
that dwarf all our storms combined,
seen burning heat, bitter cold.
>>>