Arts and Literature

Coffee and Conversation (3)

There is a red phone that sits on the countertop in my small kitchen. There are, precisely, three people who have access to the number. When it rings; which is not that often, I generally go into an immediate panic for the loud and rude bell can mean only one thing – an emergency. On this fateful Saturday morning; when I had hoped to lie in for a while; the red phone rings. I cover the space between my bed and the kitchen in a few seconds, all the while imagining the absolute worst. I pick up the phone to hear Mira’s jovial voice>>>

The Ultimate Freedom

The two couldn’t have been more
different, even if they were attached
like the stem of a plant
that grows two distinct
flowers; no, they were more
like a double-hipped cherry—
two pits with the fleshy mass joining
them at the center. >>>

Beyond the Old and the New

Sadeq Hedayat was born on 17 February 1903 and died on 9 April 1951. He was descended from Rezaqoli Khan Hedayat, a notable 19^th century poet, historian, and historian of Persian literature, and author of Majm‘ al-Fosaha, Riyaz al-‘Arefin and Rawza al-Safa-e Naseri. Many members of his extended family were important state officials, political leaders and army generals, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Mokhber al-Dawleh, Nayyer al-Molk I (Hedayat’s grand-father), Sani‘ al-Dawleh, and Mokhber al-Saltaneh, who was prime minister between 1928 and 1933>>>

Revealed... part one

Don't ask me for tender touch,
Passionate kiss or tempting looks
I am done with all those games
As this heart never had interest
In earthly, hurtful, selfish plays
A Random face with no boundaries
A thought with no Time and no space
A spirit joyful filled with love
A heart thirsty to learn and grow
Is what my soul will now embrace >>>

The Ascension (2)

This rare creature used to hang out at our house a lot. He wasn’t welcome anywhere else because he made other parents uncomfortable. And for good reason. When children played with him, someone always lost a shoe, fell off a bicycle, broke a tooth, or was stung by a scorpion. But my mother was impractically softhearted and couldn’t bear to see the child rejected like this. She felt sad to see Nader placed in the social outhouse from the very moment of his birth. I was born in a hospital, so instead of the outhouse, I was taken to a nursery. Yet even that wasn’t good enough for my mother>>>

درسهای استانیسلاوسکی

مشدی عباد اندکی در خود فرو رفت. 15 میلیون پول زیادی بود. ولی وقتی به یاد گل چهره افتاد، دوباره سینه اش آتش گرفت. سرش را پائین انداخت و چشمانش را بست. قباد منتظر ایستاد. مشدی عباد به روی خودش نیاورد. قباد این بار با متانت خاصی قدم پیش گذاشت و گفت: میروم با گل چهره بر گردم. یک تاکسی برایمان بگیر تا برویم منزل تو. البته من وسط راه پیاده می شوم. ولی ... سکوتی برقرار شد. مشدی خوب میدانست که قباد میخواهد موضوع پول حل و فصل شود. مشدی عباد با مهارت یک بازاری مکار از صحبت در باره پول واهمه داشت. خودش را به کوچه علی چپ زد>>>

Jen

My ominous association with ghosts goes back to my early childhood years. Aunt Sedighe my father’s youngest sister lived in Shoushtar, one of the oldest cities in the world, dating back to Achaemenian dynasty (400 BC). Shoushtar used to be the winter capital of Sassanian dynasty and it was built by the Karoun River. The river was channeled to form a trench around the city. A subterranean system called ghanats connected the river to the private reservoirs of houses and buildings, supplied water during times of war when the main gates were closed. The ruins of these ghanats still exist and one was connected to Aunt Sedighe’s house where my cousins and I explored if we dared to>>>

ازدواج کیکاوس و سودابه - بخش دو

در بخش اول از دو بخش این داستان به این جا رسیدیم که شاه هاماوران (یمن) راضی به ازدواج دخترش سودابه با کیکاوس پادشاه قدرتمند ایران نیست چون با این ازدواج دختر یکدانه اش برای همیشه از پیش او دور خواهد شد. ابتدا این دو نفر را با هم روبرو می کند به این امید که سودابه کاوس را نپسندد و راضی به ازدواج با او نشود ولی بر خلاف میل او سودابه و کاوس شاه یکدیگر را می پسندند و شاه هاماور کینه جویانه نقشهء شومی می کشد. پس از مراسم ازدواج این دو، شاه یمن از کیکاوس می خواهد تا برای تفریح و شکار هفته ای به صحرا و کوهستان بروند>>>

Empty nest

Humor and practicality have been my safety net through life’s ups and downs, especially the downs. Years ago, I used my imaginative mind to change those wasted summers of youth at my father’s farms into an education. While my older sister nagged incessantly about the unfairness of missing the city fun, I took the three months of life in Abbas Abad as a learning experience and tried my hands on a few native skills: field work, tending to livestock and weaving baskets. During school, whenever I came across a subject too difficult to memorize, I made lyrics out of such subjects as the table of elements, names of fossils, or human nerve passages>>>

A sight for granted, never...

To unlock the lock, I must endure this pain,
To harness the journey’s craft, I must negotiate with
The stones on this path,
To kill the monsters, I must be willing to die first
And then watch how my ashes shall rise against
Another day's sunrise. >>>

كودتاي مخملي كار من است

در كمال صحت و عقل و شعور
خالي از هرگونه جبر و ضرب و زور

مي نمايم نزد مردم اعتراف
تا شوم از درد وجدانم معاف

عامل اخراج آدم از بهشت
كشتن هابيل وصدها كار زشت >>>

Coffee and Conversation (2)

As soon as a nice coffee shop opens up around here, hordes of Gucci knock-offs and disaster nose jobs descend and take away the ambiance. August in LA is stifling. I need to get out. If you drive west on Highway 101 towards Santa Barbara and take the State Street exit, the road twists and turns through the mountains and eventually brings you, in the middle of nowhere, to a slice of Scandinavia – a place that goes by the name of Solvang. Patisseries, ice cream parlors and cafés abound. Once there, it is quite possible to think that one has died and gone to java heaven>>>

The Ascension

Aunt Tahmineh somehow knew she would remain barren until she had found a name for her future child. So for the first fifteen years of her marriage, she and her husband fought over what they would call their unconceived offspring. She liked authentic Iranian names, while her husband, a religious man, insisted on a character from the Koran. Finally they came to an agreement. If the child were a girl, they would name her Farangis, an ancient Iranian heroine. If it were a boy, they would name him Esma’il, a Koranic name which also appears in the Bible as Ishmael, the son of Abraham. Esma’il means “God listens.” Presumably, “God listens to us and has answered our prayer for a child.”>>>

چلیپا

رخسار تو در ظلمت گیسوی چلیپا
صبح دل‌ عشاق بود در شب یلدا

پیمانه صهبای نگاه تو در آن صبح
خود مست و دو صد مست بر آن واله و شیدا

و آن موی که نخجیر گه گله دلهاست
در هر خم او کرده دلی‌ مسکن و ماوا >>>

Lost Game

To the wind I look
standing outside
awaiting you
impatiently
awaiting you with dreamy eyes
here behind all that is next to lost, I stand hopeless
awaiting for the wind to leave
without you
playing a lost game >>>