MUSIC

There is something special happening here

Kiosk’s concert in Toronto

13-Sep-2007 (9 comments)
At times, the crowd’s noise overwhelmed the huge amplifiers and the sound system. It was unbelievable! There was a lot of good energy but it seemed that Kiosk didn’t expect such an active crowd and lost focus here and there. Overall, they played very well and performed the songs different from their studio version. There were very good solo performances by almost all of the band members, especially Babak who knocked the socks off the crowd with his guitar solos.>>>

DRAMA

Benedictus

An ambitious international collaboration among artists from Iran, Israel and the United States

13-Sep-2007 (4 comments)
Only 72 hours before a scheduled US attack on Iran. Two estranged childhood friends, one Jewish and one Muslim, born in the same town in Iran, agree to a secret meeting in a Benedictine monastery in Rome to negotiate a price for safety and freedom. The above synopsis is the main plot for the upcoming play Benedictus, an ambitious international collaboration between artists from Iran, Israel and the United States. The collaborators -- Motti Lerner, one of Israel's most provocative contemporary playwrights; Torange Yeghiazarian, Artistic Director of Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco; Iranian-American director Mahmood Karimi-Hakak of Siena College... >>>

FASHION

Style with substance

Style with substance

Spring/Summer 2007 collection

by Bahar_Shahpar
13-Sep-2007 (12 comments)

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FICTION

احضار

فکر کردم، راستی چرا نپرسیدم دلیل احضارم چیست؟

12-Sep-2007

"....فردا ساعت هشت صبح باید دادگاه مستقر در زندان " اوین " باشم. چند دقیقه پیش تلفنی اطلاع دادند. من تنها نمی روم. رئیس توئی، تصمیم گیری های نهائی با توست. فردا با هم می رویم...."

مثل برق گرفته ها تکان خورد. رنگش پرید، و بر عکس همیشه که چکشی حرف می زد تقریبن با ناله گفت:

" ...من چرا؟ تو را احضار کرده اند. آمدن من کمکی نمی کند..."

حرفش را بُریدم...

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BOOK

Life in two nations

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian's meomirs

12-Sep-2007 (4 comments)
While I found myself concerned about this being another nostalgic look back at Iran through the eyes of an Iranian woman’s memoir, instead I encountered A Mirror Garden as a bildungsroman—a tale of growing up and self-realization—and of the ways that a woman’s perseverance, vision, and good fortune, lead not necessarily to a fairy tale ending, but a rather, a clear sense of being and acting in the world. This is a narrative that indeed runs against the notion what has been so regularly drummed into Americans—that women of Middle Eastern cultures — whether Iranian or Arab — are merely being acted upon and have no agency.>>>

POETRY

خیال بهار
12-Sep-2007
اینجا هنوز
زمستان در هوا موج می­زند
دست­ها
سرما را
تا مغز استخوان رسم می­کنند
قاصدک
گویی خیال رساندن پیام بهار را ندارد
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DREAM-NIGHTMARE

هم آغوشی در وقت آمدن ارتش آزادی بخش

احساس بی وزنی داشتم در هوا بوی انتقام پیچیده بود

11-Sep-2007 (16 comments)

خیلی ها داشتند نماز می خواندند.زن بغل دستی ام روسری را در دستانش داشت می پیچید و می گفت آقا تا میدان آزادی خیلی راه مونده .به دست هایش نگاه کردم و روسریش را از پنجره به بیرون انداختم و گفتم تا چند دقیقه دیگر می رسیم خانم !راننده ترانه ی شادی را گذاشته بود و خیلی ها داشتند می رقصیدند . سربازان امریکایی داشتند در خیابان جیجون عده ای را تیر باران می کردند .سربازان انگلیسی و اسرائیلی آن طرف تر داشتند مسجدی را آتش می زدند .دسته های مردم در میدان آزادی جمع شده بودند و خیل عطیمی از روحانی های ریش دار را دار می زدند.

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POETRY

Citizen of the world
10-Sep-2007 (4 comments)
I am a citizen of the world

Yet, I don’t have a passport

Issued by a world government

I have regard for all people

Not only my kinsmen and compatriots

I acknowledge the humanity of all

Without regard to their religion, culture or nationality >>>

ROCK

Saturday night fever

Saturday night fever

Kiosk's September 8th concert at The Opera House in Toronto

by Shadi Yousefian
10-Sep-2007 (one comment)

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LIFE

Nature's oasis

Splendor in the Alps

09-Sep-2007 (5 comments)
"What is so special about your flowers?" I ask. "Je besoin (I need) le nature," she replied eagerly. When I was a small child, I used to visit the Jura (mountains) and I took in the colors of the flowers. They gave me a kind of therapeutic feeling. I tried to bring this organic calmness to this village we call Geneva." Nicole enlightened me with stories of her youth, free in the mountains, surrounded by a bounty of soft flowers. She explained how privileged she was to be able to spend every day these past six years seeing, touching and breathing flowers. >>>

FARROKHZAD

Because we love you

Because we love you

Fereydoun Farrokhzad's grave moved to more prominent spot in Bonn cemetery

by Parsi's Friend
09-Sep-2007 (12 comments)

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DAYI HAMID

به امید دیدار!
09-Sep-2007 (3 comments)
جدّی میگی نیما ؟

بالأخره حمید جان؟
رفتی؟
باشه.
ما هم دیر یا زود میایم! >>>

MEMOIR

A path to nowhere

A book of first Persian Gulf War (Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988)

08-Sep-2007 (3 comments)
It was the second day of winter 1986. The sun had already set and the snow-spotted Alborz Mountains to the north of Tehran were still visible behind a haze of smoke hovering the city. Two nights earlier I had toasted the birth of the Iranian god of Mehr (Mithra: god of the Sun) in a cave in the Alborz with some fruits and nuts along the longest night of the year in an inn in the City of Mashhad; and now I was at Khazaneh Bus Terminal in south of Tehran taken a seat by the window of a bus full of uniformed men like myself bound for Khuzestan in southwest of Iran wondering whether that would be my last trip from that terminal or it was just the beginning of a series of such trips that I had to take to the war fields in the south and west to fight an endless war regarded holy by many, unholy by many.>>>

ROCK

Watch out, here they come!

PART 1: “it’s not the music. Kiosk is more about the poetry"

07-Sep-2007 (2 comments)
"We’re not Pink Floyd" he says. "Why do they expect us to be Pink Floyd?" Those are words from Arash Sobhani, singer/songwriter of Kiosk, the Iranian rock band that has been making quite a name for itself in the past two years. Since the days I wrote and published the conversation we had on Orkut in November 2005, the band has made a major leap in making itself known to the general public, and quite successfully, I might add. As I also run the Kiosk fan community on Orkut, the release of their second album a few months ago gave me the opportunity to have a second conversation with not only Arash, but also with Babak Khiavchi, head of Bamahang Productions (Kiosk’s record label) and Ahmad Kiarostami, the director of the now famed Eshghe Sorat video. >>>

POETRY

So close
07-Sep-2007
She comes so close
From behind the hope
Wearing an ordinary t-shirt
Which says;
an old friend of mine, once said to me, ...
the escape perfume screams. >>>

POETRY

In tomorrow
07-Sep-2007

It wouldn't be too far fetched
to say that you'll need
everything you got to face
your blue tomorrow.

I've looked into this for years,
through thick dusty books
filled with alchemy
and theatre of absurd,

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TORONTO

کیوسک در زیر زمین خانه ما

بند کیوسک آمده اند تا کنسرت تورنتو را در تاریخ هشت سپتامبردر اپرا هاس تورنتو برگزار کنند

06-Sep-2007 (2 comments)
من از گوشه جاز کیوسک به کیوسک وصل شدم. شهروز مولایی ، جازیست گروه کیوسک در یک پیشنهاد بی شرمانه از من خواست که برای ترانه "افسوس" هلهله بزنم. مساله هلهله خدا را شکر منتفی شدم و جایش هلهله عروسی علی کمالی (بیسیت گروه)را جایگزین کردند. ولی من دیگر درگیر شده بودم و این درگیری یعنی بعنوان مثال چند آخر هفته تمام خزیدن در خانه و سیفون نکشیدن برای جلوگیری از ایجاد صدای زاید در هنگام ضبط جاز " تو کجایی " و یا در یک روز منفی چهل و سه درجه کانادایی ، ساعت سه صبح با شهروز کیوسک تا اتاوا رفتن برای اخذ ویزا برای اولین کنسرت کیوسک در سانفرانسیکو . آلبوم عشق سرعت از نظر من یک آلبوم کاملن زیر زمینی است. همه آلبوم در زیر زمین دو خانه در تورنتو ضبط شده است. یک خانه در شمال تورنتو و خانه ما. >>>

BOOK

Three's company

Israel, Iran and the U.S.

06-Sep-2007 (10 comments)
There are few Western cities where Persian pop music blasts at full volume in shopping malls. Yet this is a daily, natural occurrence at Jerusalem’s high-security downtown bus terminal. Here, in the equivalent of New York’s Penn Station, eighteen-year-old Israeli soldiers wait for their rides home, assault rifles slung over their shoulders, Persian pop legends Moin and Ebi pounding in their ears. Most of the CD stores here are owned by Iranian Jews, and over the past twenty years they have created a market for Persian pop in the very heart of the Jewish State.>>>

EXPERIMENTAL

Ramazan cards

Ramazan cards

Can chastity be one's virtue without a veil?

by Amir Normandi
06-Sep-2007 (42 comments)

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FICTION

The ballad of Howard Baskerville

"My mind is set, there is no going back"

05-Sep-2007

I sought him at the Karachi office of London Times and was directed to a raggedy, third class hotel near Prince’s market filled with beggars and found him still sleep in his cluttered little room – at 2 pm, unshaved and with a heavy breath of alcohol permeating him, looking considerably older than the photo attached to his foreign dispatches from Persia, India, and elsewhere . He offered a bit of his left over rum and I sipped it in a tea cup, wondering if that was the right moment to indulge him in his splendid Persian story.

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