Arts and Literature

The Newlyweds (7)

Salam Dadash jan, Chetori? I just received your email with all the photographs from Kian’s birthday. You guys all look so happy. Maman especially shone in her new dress. Did my favourite four year old enjoy his gift from Canada? I miss you all so much. I am waiting impatiently for the day when you will write me with the happy words “We are coming for a visit…” Here, on the Northern front, things have been getting a bit frosty and I am not just talking about the weather. Nassim and I had our first fight. Yes, it took almost five months for the blissful, newly-wedded merry-go-round to hit a little snag. It happened last week, when my dearest parents-in-law threw yet another mehmani at their home. You know how those evenings go. This time, though, a couple of things were different right from the start. >>>

The Little Sparrow

There was a little sparrow that was stuck on their porch somehow, having fallen or gotten lost or something, and the boy of nine, whose name was Babak Ghanbari, walked up to it. Something was wrong when a bird did not fly away when he walked up to it, and he called to his father, who was inside reading the newspaper. When his father came outside, the bird flew up to the corner of the glass porch roof. It flew belaboredly, like it took all it had to get up there. The father saw that it was in bad shape. "There is nothing that we can do for it," he said, and he turned and went inside.>>>

ريدن از شما ، بقيه اش با ما

با سلام خدمت آقاي احمدي نژاد. من صنعت كاري هستم كه سالهاست در خدمت اين مرز و بوم مشغول به كارم وبا ساخت انواع آفتابه به چرخش چرخ صنعت اين كشور كمك ميكنم. آقاي احمدي نژاد از شما به عنوان يك رييس جمهور(كه حتما تا به حال مشتري يكي از آفتابه هاي من بوده ايد) تقاضا ميكنم كه به صنعت آفتابه سازي اين كشور كمك كنيد چون آفتابه سازان هم اكنون نيازمند ياري سبز شما هستند. از همه مهمتر اينكه با توجه به شعار دولت مبني بر نوآوري و شكوفايي ملي، شركت ياران آفتابه ما هم براي ايجاد نوآوري، به دست نيروهاي بومي اقدام به ساخت آفتابه هايي به رنگ سبز فسفري كرده>>>

The Story of Mohammad

Mohammad worked for nearly a decade in the Roman trade route and became very familiar with both the Christian and the Jewish traditions of the Near East. As an intelligent young man, although illiterate, he absorbed most of the biblical stories, which put his life in a much more appealing prospective. He found solace in the hardship stories of Job and Moses, but perhaps was most influenced by Abraham, a Semitic prophet who recanted his own town and traditions, to build a new Utopia and create a new way of life. At the age of 40, after marrying a wealthy business woman, Mohammad found some spare time to contemplate his past and future, his beliefs and doubts.>>>

The Newlyweds (6)

Salam Khaleh Joon, I hope this letter finds you and yours well. I wish I could say Shahab and I are doing fine here but this would be far from the truth. We recently got into a major fight and it was much, much worse than the last time, when he punched the wall. But before you get worried, I am okay. I mean, I am not hurt or anything. Not physically at least. As for my emotional state, that is another story. It all started when we were invited to Maryam’s house for a party. Remember the last time, I told you about bumping into Maryam, my old friend from Iran>>>

Agents of change

In Tehran, the Iranian Artists’ Forum (Khaneye Honarmandan-e Iran) is the best location to observe the curiosity of the youth. Weekly courses or lectures are usually packed with young people who come to listen and discuss art and philosophy as well as other cultural and social issues. Moreover statistics show the considerable amount of translations of modern philosophy. For instance, all the books of Friedrich Nietzsche have been translated into Persian and have gone into multiple printings since the 1990s. The same holds true for many of the other philosophers of modernity. There have been more Persian translations of Kant in the past decade than in any other language. This is Sepehr’s and a part of his generation’s expectation of modernity. >>>

«هیچ‌ چیز خطرناک‌تر از زنی نیست که می‌‌نویسد»

اگر به زبان من دقت کرده باشی، می‌بینی چیزی که می‌نویسم، جنسی یا اروتیک نیست. کلمات جنسی که استفاده می‌کنم به‌هیچ‌وجه اروتیک نیست. قصد من از استفاده کس، کون، کیر، کونی، بارونی و کلمه‌هایی از این دست، واژگون کردن معنای منفی و کارکردهای تاریخی این واژه‌ها و آوردن آن‌ها در یک سطح متفاوت است. وقتی این‌ها را می‌نویسم یک اجراگری کلاسیک زنانه نیست. یعنی قصد نوشته‌ من تحریک امیال جنسی مرد دگرجنس‌گرا نیست. بنابراین خطرناک است. این در بالاترین می‌آید. مردم می‌گویند این‌که نوشتی کس، بی‌ادبی است. می‌گویم چرا بی‌ادبی است؟ دارم کلمه را در معنای کاملاً متفاوتی استفاده‌ می‌کنم. دیدن این تفاوت‌ها برای کسی که ذهنش به مردسالاری در زبان، عادت کرده، سخت است. >>>

این قافله عمر عجب میگذرد!

نزدیکیهای صبح بود که رسیدیم شیراز، «ساک در دست و پتو زیر بغل». همگی رفتیم سراغ یکی از این هتلهای بی ستاره همان دور و بر دروازه اصفهان که لامپهای مهتابیش دم به دم باز و بسته میشد و اسفالت را رنگ میزد. هوا سوز داشت گرسنه هم بودیم و بیخوابی توی اتوبوس ایرانپیما هم رویش. دیروز عصر که از اهواز راه افتادیم تا خود بهبهان شرجی توی هوا موج میزد و حالا سرمای اول صبح شیراز ما را که پیراهن آستین کوتاه تنمان بود بد جوری غافلگیر کرده بود. من بودم، مهدی بود، عزیز، شهرام، منصور، پرویز و خیلی های دیگه که قیافه شان از یادم نرفته اما اسمشان چرا. همه بچه های خوزستان بودیم که حالا بعد از شیش ماه تعلیماتی توی پادگان زرهی اهواز، برای خدمت به شیراز آمده بودیم. با مهدی همان توی پادگان آشنا شدم. گاهی گپ و گفتی توی نهارخوری و بعضی وقتها هم سالن ورزش. اندامی ورزیده، صورتی آفتاب سوخته و نگاه گرمی داشت.>>>

Mi vida es como un Tango

I surrender to my destiny like the way I surrender to her, and let her decide the next move . Just as in life, when it only seems that we are in charge, in Tango it is the woman deciding the next step … not the man. The man is merely executing those moves … despite its reputation of being so macho - both the man and the dance itself. And so I let my destiny to carve out my path and if I encounter adversaries on that journey, I now know how to dance them away … instead of grabbing them by their hair flooring them, putting my foot on their throat as I used to do>>>

Eminent Persians

As the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approached, Abbas Milani realized that very little, if any, attention had been given to the entire prerevolutionary generation. Political upheavals and a tradition of neglecting the history of past regimes have resulted in a cultural memory loss, erasing the contributions of a generation of individuals. Eminent Persians seeks to rectify that loss. Consisting of 150 profiles of the most important innovators in Iran between World War II and the Islamic Revolution, the book includes politicians, entrepreneurs, poets, artists, and thinkers who brought Iran into the modern era with brilliant success and sometimes terrible consequences>>>

Transit Tehran

Things are never what they seem in the art of Sadegh Tirafkan, the new feminist journalism of Asieh Amini, and the romance Shi'a-style by new fiction talent Alireza Mahmoodi- Iranmehr. Other contributors include Newsha Tavakolian, named Best Young Photographer of 2006 by National Geographic, Abbas Kowsari, Javad Montazeri and Omid Salehi, who have continued to document the social transformation of their country in the face of mass closures of newspapers and magazines by the government. Above all, Transit Tehran celebrates the country's long tradition of artistic and cultural resistance that has influenced young Iranians, noticeably in the work of veteran editor and journalist Masoud Behnoud, photojournalist Kaveh Golestan, premier satirist and illustrator Ardeshir Mohassess, and photographer Mohsen Rastani.>>>

The Newlyweds (5)

Dear Khaleh Joon, I hope this letter finds you, Amir Khan and my dear cousins, all well. Forgive me if I always seem nervous and cut our telephone conversations short. I am so paranoid that Shahab is going to walk in on us or that he will somehow find out just by looking at me or by a slip of my tongue that I have been in contact with you. Also, when you pose me all your questions so fast, one after the other, I can’t gather my thoughts to answer them properly on the spot. It is as if Shahab is sitting in front of me, his eyes fixed on me, repeating the cardinal rule that he loves to repeat so much: >>>

راه گلشیفته را باز نگه داریم

من کی باشم که بخواهم برای یک دختر بالغ و عاقل و باهوش مثل گلشیفته‌ی فراهانی تکلیف تعیین کنم که چه کند یا نکند، چه بپوشد یا نپوشد، موهایش را چکار کند یا چکار نکند. ولی می‌خواهم به همه‌مان یادآوری کنم که ذوق‌زدگی‌مان از اینکه یک هنرپیشه‌ی جوان و با استعداد ایرانی در یک فیلم متوسط و در یک نقش درجه سه‌ی کلیشه‌ای اورینتالیستی (بقول گایاتری اسپیواک، زن سبزه و مومشکی‌ای که توسط یک مرد فداکار سفید چشم آبی از دست مردان مو‌مشکی وحشی نجات پیدا می‌کند، یا هر ورسیون دیگری از آن) کمی زیادی است. هالیوود مگر چه گهی است جز اینکه ۹۵ درصد محصولاتش مزخرفاتی است که برای سن عقلی ۱۲ تا ۱۶ سال ساخته می‌شود؟ یا دی کاپریو مگر کدام خری است که قرار است همبازی بودن با او به من یا شما یا گلشیفته افتخاری بدهد؟>>>

خلاصی

امروز سرانجام کوچه و آفتاب
و کوههای نامحرم البرز
سلطنت خانم را می بینند
بهشت زهرایی ها آمده اند مادربزرگم را ببرند
 و او درختها را خواهد دید
مغازه ها را، خانه اش را از بیرون
و یگانه فرصتی را که دارد
تا محو شود بین در حیاط و آمبولانس >>>