Arts and Literature

Claim

They say there is nothing like the wind

to tempt you away from here.

They say abandon your ways

haven't you had enough of fear?

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Caramius

Yea…I remember it well. I had wished for him ever since I was incarnated onto earth 68 000 years ago for the first time. But his conception by the ‘Holy’ took a long time and his essence took even a longer time to take form. Caramius was born at the break…at the break of the first light. Just like myself and just about this time. I can still see the flashes and the absolute light surrounding everything. I am not talking about the kind of light that the sun produces…no…it was another kind of light. It had substance…the light was heavy…it had warmth…it even had a smell>>>

Secret Words

Tell me the secret words

The big worlds of walls, people, a desk in a small room

Life hanging from a thread called time

So fragile, so lost

Ticking away your thoughts

Tell me before I go >>>

The Return

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A night at the Oscars

Beating all the odds, it was the 36 year old Iranian born, Pantheon Xeroxes and her 110 minutes documentary called “Iran, the Land of Hydraulic Cranes” that won the Oscar last night for the best foreign language film... Born in Tehran as Zahra Hazrati Islampanah, she fled Iran at the tender age of 25 as a passenger in a British Air Lines flight from Tehran to Stockholm. Upon arrival she dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to Pantheon Xeroxes to better blend with the Swedish crowd>>>

Hollywood’s war on terror

Wouldn’t it be funny if one day, when all our current political concerns have vanished into the mist of time, we are brought back to life and judged by disheveled archaeologists whose faces are layered with dust? How would we fare if they used our filmography to divine our collective mind the way we use cuneiform tablets to guess at the zeitgeist of the ancient Sumerians? The answer to that question would depend on which shelf of footage is exposed in the dig. We would do quite well if our judges relied on Hollywood’s critique of the American posture at the outset of the 21st century >>>

The man who would be King

There was even a Café on Takht-e-Jamshid called the Havarti Café, I believe, which had a fern grotto and waterfall inside it. You could step in out of the heat, the hustle and the bustle of traffic and noise and there inside was this quiet secret little world. There were other magical restaurants like this as well such as Xanadu and Serena. The latter had a big buffet set up indoors and then you carried your plate out into a fairyland of a garden with landscape lighting softly up lighting the bushes and trees and fountains quietly making it dreamlike in the moonlight…. with the tables and chairs sprinkled about on the grass>>>

To Mr. Plasterk

Iranian students are banned
to learn technology
that can
give them the knowledge
of nuclear science.
Discrimination?
"Noooo..." they say!
"It's just precaution"

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Leila and me

We talk about the Shah here all the time but we never talk about Leila. I wrote a poem about Leila once. It was exactly three years ago, at the time when I went under. I went under because of a Persian Male--one of those with eyes of Eternity and kohl, who oozed Hafez from every pore in veiled dank misty rivers. You know the type, but at the time I didn’t, and so I fell in love. And he fell out and I went under. Into a very dark place. And when I came back, I’d written this poem. Or this poem had written me>>>

‫آشنا

چشمام رنگ درخته
رنگ خاکه
‫رنگ همون دیاره
‫که سایه هاش از کهربایه
‫من و تو
‫تو که چشمات رنگ آبه

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Splendour on the roof

Flushed in the spring sunbeams
on the flat roof of their house
three sisters call to each other
frisking, capering
dashing like mad
garlands of jasmine
around their necks.

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چاپار آزاده

قهرمان سازی ایرانی همانا بمانند علم کیمیاگری است، که فقط معدودی از افراد نظر کرده، در پشت پرده های رنگین و با دستهای نامرئی، مطلا و آهن ناچیز را طلا کنند و جاه طلبان را قهرمان. سایرمردم موظفند به تعظیم و فرود آوردن سر و ضمن انتظار برای پلوی نذری، به سر دادن شعارهای حماسی بپردازند، به همان گونه ای که ماکیاولی تجویز کرده است. شعارهائی، که نویسندگان آن اکثرأ علمای اخوان المسلمین ساکن لندن و پاریس و شاهدوستان پراکنده در غرب و یا جانشینان ایشان در حکومت ایران امروزند.>>>