Arts and Literature

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
>>>

The End of Racism

The end of racism that I have seen has been a piece of paper and a group of white men in suits announcing that the end of racism is hereby decreed. The end of racism that I haven't seen has been those same white men looking at each other with tears in their eyes. The end of racism that I have seen has been let me tell you about the end of racism. The end of racism that I haven't seen has been let me listen to the years and years of it. The end of racism that I have seen has been Martin Luther King Day. The end of racism that I haven't seen has been What in the hell is really happening, I mean really happening, and why does one more child have to be born into this Day>>>

"زن ها فقط یه بدن اند"؟

اون زمونا که ما یه الف بچه بودیم و کله مون مثلن بوی قورمه سبزی می داد، به آمریکایا فحش می دادیم که نژادپرست اند، سیاها را قبول ندارن و اینا. یه روز یه آدم بیکار، پرسید؛ حاضری آبجی ت زن یه سیاه بشه؟ خب، راستیاتش فکرشو نکرده بودیم. آبجی مونا دوست داشتیم! چطوری می شد بدیمش دست یه سیاه؟ حالام نقل ما جماعته، حرف که مالیات نداره، آدما می زنن. یعنی بس به حرف، حالا خیلیا یه پا "فمینیست" شده اند! ولی خب، از یه طرفم اگه شومام که یه خانوم حسابی هستی، قبول کنی که این "بدن" کله روش نیست، دیگه حَرَجی به آقایون نیست، هست؟ یعنی شوما میگی آقایون باید فکرشون را عوض کنند؟ خب اونا که نزائیده اند، نسابیده اند، نشُسته اند، نروفته اند، خیلی که حالیشون باشه و بخوان طرف ما را بگیرن، یه چیزای می نویسند مث "آزاده خانوم ..." با چه میدونم دکتر چی چی... یه روضه آبگوشتی با ادویه ی روشنفکرانه! خداوکیلی باس قبول کرد که یه چیکه شم تقصیر خودمونه، قبول نداری؟>>>

Bread and Cheese Poems

The person who has a roof over his head
And enough for subsistence living
He is a king without a crown
So is the person who does not worry about dinner
While she is having her breakfast
When the stomach is full
It matters little whether
You have eaten bread and cheese
Or steak and lobster >>>

Booseh

The first time he kissed her by the elevator in the hotel lobby, she trembled inside. Short of breath, a bolt of lightning pierced through her, head to toe, throwing her off balance. She had to hold on to him. She was 40 – hardly an age to be taken aback by a mere kiss, let alone experience an electric jolt. It was a loving and sweet kiss – not a passionate one. His lips brushed hers apart as he lazily sought to hold her surprised gaze. He held her lips in between his, and then, ever so gently, closed his mouth over hers; and willed her to close her eyes and to melt into the kiss, daringly, deftly, kindly. Time stood still. It was 8 in the morning. They had just come back from a walk by the lake and had shared breakfast. The smell of coffee, the taste of the eggs still lingered in his mouth.>>>

Reading Kafka at Harvard (3)

If Kafka’s The Trial is about the estrangement of man from his liberty and the de-humanization and criminalization of human spirit by the fiat of modern system of criminal justice, then the lesson to be drawn from my similar story of false arrest and imprisonment on purely fictitious and trumped up charges by the campus police at Harvard University is, indeed, how the net of this system has expanded since Kafka’s days, enveloping the larger institutions of civil society, including the academic institutions that, nominally, ought to reflect and nurture the essence of human spirit and, yet, as my case vividly demonstrates, are also apt to clamp down, oppress and repress it, by various methods, often through more subtle, softer and more gentle manners than the outright criminalization of dissent and the resort to vile, naked, and unbounded cruelty>>>

Los Olivos – A Day

How is it that I find myself seated across from him in a romantic setting such as this, on a warm sunny August day, alone and allowed to soak in the moment? It takes a good bit of practice for me to gather my thoughts and release them to the passing breeze. I want to be wholly at this table – it is hard though. I have to chase the stubborn thoughts; which refuse to leave, insisting that they be witness to this. I will to focus on the mere pleasure of a simple fare with a person who happens to have slithered his way into my heart. Who is he? Do we ever know? Well, I have only shared a handful of days with this man and fewer nights even. This time around, I don’t have to ask ‘who am I’ – a much more pertinent milestone. So I settle to enjoy this “familiar stranger”>>>

Reading Kafka at Harvard (2)

At day break on Wednesday, January 17, 1996. A tremor shaking the old house to the roots I thought, but the surge of sounds drilling into my peaceful sleep bespoke of an impending crisis of a different kind, one that would instantly transform my life for years to come by imposing on me all the existential horror of a Kafkasque nightmare. Luckily, that night my wife Sylvia and our little Sabrina were staying with my mother-in law who was recuperating from an ice-related car accident. Winter had arrived in full force that January. Lying in bed with the bedside lamp on, I didn’t move but tried to grasp what was happening. A luminous fresco of clouds was gazing through the bay windows; expectant mother nature had found an empty theater to mount a small absurdist play. The heavy knocks on the door sounded as if I had been hit in the head.>>>

Deliciously complicated

The love affair with the story in the game of Prince of Persia led the creator to explore areas of the story that he had always wanted to do, but never got around to it. Until now. The adaptation of his story in the form of the Graphic Novel, enabled him to flesh out some of the more dramatic details as well as to do some research into the culture and it's vast and rich history. It has resulted in an outstanding new story, which is a unique adaptation taking various elements of both ancient Persia, as well as the more important inclusion of our traditional character and culture. But as in the story, all is not what it seems and there are mysteriously provident strings being pulled from afar.>>>

The Newlyweds (20, Conclusion)

It's over. She is gone. I am left behind. I went to her and tried to stop her, plead with her, convince her that I had not betrayed her. Geraldine told me she had already left. She took my wrist and placed her other hand on my heart and told me it's over. I lost Kati like I lost my "other friend", the one who "is in the dark." I blanched. I had not told her or anyone here about Leili. I came home, crazed. I felt like I was the one stuck under the rubble, the rubble of a sham marriage, an unwanted child, a pretend-life. I had dug and dug until I caught a glimpse of sunlight and now it had been taken away from me. This will be the last of my correspondence to you dear brother. I thought when I saw Kati that first day that Leili had come back from the dead>>>