Arts and Literature

Green Skies (3)

Colonel Nazemi is standing in the falling snow.With his right hand, he is holding the collar of his navy blue coat tight against his freezing neck.He is holding a radio in his left hand.Standing next to him are the military police major and lieutenant who had shown up at his office earlier.There are about a dozen other men, officers and maintenance men, standing behind him.They are all gazing at the sky.Lt. Parsaa has radioed in, and they are awaiting his arrival.They know that his aircraft has been hit and is severely damaged>>>

هفت سین کوچک

هفت سین کوچک من
بگو کجاست ریشه من
در خاک یا آتش و باد
هستی،  نبرد
در انتظار عیدی شاد
هفت سین کوچک من >>>

در انتظار بهار

در سکوتی سنگین
که نفس در تنگنای سینه حبس میشد
و نبض
که بیتابانه میزد
بر رگ
چونبی‌دادرسی بر زنجیر >>>

خانم معلم 6

مردم ما برعکس همه جای دنیا تغییرات را گلچین کرده اند. یاد گرفته اند رانندگی کنند و با کامپیوتر کار کنند اما هنوز که هنوز است حاضر نیستند در مزخرفات فکری و عقیدتی خود تجدید نظر کنند. هنوز هم برای درمان سرطان در ته دلشان ترجیح می دهند بجای سر زدن به پزشکان ماهر و استفاده از تکنولوژی درمانی نوین به یک به اصطلاح امامزاده در پرت ترین جای کشور بروند و خودشان را به ضریح پر برکت مقبره اش ببندند و آبی که کاغذهای چرک آلود رمالها را در آن تلیت کرده اند بخورند>>>

Toro Yadam Miyareh

...>>>

The first Nowruz

The first Nowruz was not when a king lit a fire.
Nowruz is not when day is equal to night.
It is not when earth does a full circle.
It ain't when the calenders change.
Nowruz does not launch with a fish startling a turtle.
The first Nowruz is ... >>>

Barbad, the Lute Player

In the Spring
Come back with Barbad (*)
Carrying a lute
And wearing a green cape.
Sneak into the royal garden and straddle the brook
Pass with haste from behind the hedges
Look from the corners of your eyes at the suspended apple
>>>

باربد

بهاران  
با باربد بازآ  
با بربطی در بر
و شولای سبزی بر دوش
از جویبار باغ شاه ، شبانه به درون رو
شتابان از پشت شمشاد ها بگذر
به سیب چرخان روی فواره ازگوشه ی چشم نگاه کن >>>

Hagh Koshi

...>>>

Bibi’s Rainbow

The most significant clash between the two opposing cultures and their civilizations―Persian and American―as foretold by Professor Samuel Harrington in his well-known non-fiction book, The Clash of Civilizations, didn’t really happen on or around the fault lines somewhere in Eastern Europe and spread around the globe as he had predicted. Instead, unpredictably, it occurred, right smack in the middle of Elm Street in, of all God forsaken places, Beverly Hills. Over two-hunderd-seventy millions of Persian-speaking inhabitants in various countries in Asia: Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan>>>

معمار عشق

راز محبّت بمن آموختی
شعله زدی جان مرا سوختی

حکمت گفتن به زبانم زدی
قفل تکلم به دهانم زدی

‌ای تو همه من سخن اغاز کن
قفل سکوت از لب من باز کن
>>>

A child

No longer longing for
My mother’s milk,
Cutting off this umbilical cord.
No need for my father’s
Confirming gazes as this
Child is standing on its own >>>

خانم معلم 5

ناجی آداب دان و مودب بود اما نشان داده بود شخصی معاشرتی نیست و در ارتباط برقرار کردن با دخترها و مردهای زنباز و بی غم استعداد خوبی ندارد. سولماز خودش نیز نگاهی ویژه و غیر طبیعی نسبت به او داشت. می دانست ناجی دیوانه وار عاشقش است اما او مردی نیست که در ابراز عشق پیشقدم شود. این را هم می دانست که خودش ابداً عاشق ناجی نیست اما او را دوست دارد. رفتار ناجی برایش جذابیت خاصی داشت. ناجی از آن نوع مردهایی بود که شاید هیچ دختری به او اظهار عشق نمی کرد اما کمتر دختری هم وجود داشت که او را ببیند و شب بدون رویای او بخواب برود>>>

A New Year For All

Each Norooz, I journey in my mind back to the home of my childhood. There, as the shield of ice on the small pond began to disappear, clay pots of hyacinth, cinerarias and cyclamens were brought out of the greenhouse, and the flowerbeds along the driveway displayed purple and yellow pansies. But I soon realize that that was in Iran, a life that seems more and more like a distant dream. Chicago winters were colder than in Mashad, and its Norooz isolated, if not lonely. Still, overlooking the fact that only a few thousand Iranians were scattered throughout a city of seven million>>>

Hayedeh

A year after the overthrow of the Shah, the Islamic Revolutionary Court issued a subpoena with a list of singers and actors who were ordered to surrender to Evin authorities. Second on the list was Massoumeh Dadeh-Baalaa, known to the music world as Hayedeh. The ominous document, scribbled in course handwriting, can be seen in Pejman Akbarzadeh’s encyclopedic video biography of the legendary Iranian diva. Akbarzadeh chronicles Hayedeh’s life with such detail and insight that by the sad end we realize the storyteller has covered territory beyond the life of one artist; he has shed light on the world of the Iranian exile>>>

A New Day

in a moment of pause
you had gone
I walked away wondering
how I could not see you leave
Now whispers in me
words of regrets
longing to begin a new day >>>

Green Skies (2)

Inside the cockpit of an Iran Air Boeing 727, two pilots are quietly maneuvering the passenger plane through the night sky. Captain Shahram Nasseri and his copilot Payman Izadi try to busy themselves with routine cockpit chores, but their tension is clearly visible. They exchange nervous glances at one another. Every few seconds, one of the men looks at his window to look at the two fighter escorts that are flanking them on both sides. Izadi’s headset is lowered and is hanging lose around his neck. A voice can be heard trying to repeatedly hail the flight. It’s an airport tower>>>

Maman

A girl with a basket of onions on my hip. That is how they find me. I walk alone beside the field, under the skies of late summer, my shawl slipping to my shoulders. They come, two men on two horses, at full gallop. When they see my skin tanned from the sun and my eyes greener than the onions stalks in my arms, they slow and stop, one to stare and the other to ask. Are you Agha Barzani’s girl? I nod. Just as much as these onions are his onions I am the Agha’s girl I want to say. >>>