Arts and Literature

A Kiarostami day

At the Berkeley Art Museum a fan blew at one Kiarostami photograph. The rest of his works remained still--like the audience in a theater-- while this projected video of branches and leaves apparently swayed in the turbulence created by the fan. The famed film director had broadened me forever with awareness of the very air between the projector and the screen. Beware, those who would walk blithely into Abbas Kiarostami‚s mind, the door you entered through will be too small to let you back out.>>>

Crocodile tears

On a short trip near Caspian Sea in 1979 I stopped at an art and craft store that mostly sold wooden bowls, straw hats and dried garlic on strings. But I also noticed an out of place object there; a stuffed body of a baby Persian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) now completely extinct, thank god. The taxidermy job on the baby tiger was done so badly with pieces of fur missing and looked like a homeless outside McDonald's that have not had a shower for six years and of all things the baby tiger had a smile on his face!>>>

Aghdass at impasse

Aghdass dragged her husband’s dead body out of the house, down the wet steps and into the snow-covered back courtyard. It was wrapped in blankets, stuffed in an army sleeping bag and bound around and around with ropes. The Tehran winter night was as cold as ice and Aghdass’s stomach was churning like a stormy sea.>>>

Humble fame

A couple of year have gone by since the The Kite Runner was published, but the book remains a best seller. Those of us who enjoyed Hosseini’s first novel have been eager to read his next book, while, film buffs look forward to the upcoming movie based on his first. >>>

Time

Since I spoke English and my asylum was still in limbo, I was told by one of the embassy workers that I had a very good chance of migrating to Australia. Yet it was going to be months before any official answer came through. Meanwhile, all my daily routines were changing. I couldn't plan my day any more. Meeting people and talking to them, which used to be the bulk of my daily activity, was now on a great downward slope, for I no longer had the desire or the necessary skills to interact with people. Since many of my acquaintances knew where I lived and still came knocking on my door I changed my apartment. That, however, was only one reason to move. The other was the terrible things that happened in that place.>>>

Before the invasion

In an honest narration, Dr. Farrokh (born in Athens, Greece) gives it to both sides equally; he mentions the cruel treatment of captured Arab War Lords by some of the Sassanian kings, while praising Greece for her magnificent accomplishments. And amid countless books giving us the same-old-same-old narrations on Greece and Rome, and warped conceptions of ancient Persia seen recently in fantasy motion pictures such as "300", this book is a refreshing change that aims to balance things a bit. But above all, there are NEW discoveries unraveled by Farrokh himself... >>>