Peyvand Khorsandi's blog

Caspian Makan

Peyvand Khorsandi — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:57:13 +0000

The Neda 'dokoon' fashions her as a 'martyr' and in this regard, it's better she's a virgin. A man we suspect has had carnal relations with our 'virgin' is bound to be envied and attacked, whether he visits Israel or not ("He's lying, he can't have had sex with her, I am Neda. We are all Neda, Neda was mine.)

Friedman's beliefs

Peyvand Khorsandi — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:36:25 +0000

New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman is not a fan of Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan: “I’d prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place,” he writes.

(Grease the palms of a few warlords, a colonial tradition.)

Do not lend Cyrus Cylinder to Iran

Peyvand Khorsandi — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:05:28 +0000

To Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State for Foreigh and Commonwealth Affairs

From Peyvand Khorsandi

Dear Mr Miliband

I am writing to express my concern at the British Museum's decision to lend the 2,500-year-old Cyrus Cylinder to Iran.

The Cyrus Cylinder is an icon of human rights -- as you will know it is inscribed with one of the world's first declarations of human rights.

For this reason, it is a source of national pride to millions of Iranians.

What Israel and Josef Fritz have in common

Peyvand Khorsandi — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:31:17 +0000

The BBC and pretty much every outlet has, in reporting the Amstetten incest story, consistently used the word ‘fathered’ — as in Josef Fritzl has fathered seven children with his daughter. The word has irritated me all week but I thought if all of the English-language media can’t think of a better word how can I? Then I came across this story in Der Spiegel’s English service. It had found the word that eluded both the BBC and me: Fritzl sired children with his daughter. Ah, doesn’t that feel better.

Wipe Iran off the Map

Peyvand Khorsandi — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:11:19 +0000

From the office of Hilary Clinton: "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

Eggs for Benedict

Peyvand Khorsandi — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:37:40 +0000

From teaspoon verse dept, soul bean cafe.

Pope-mobile, pope-mobile, to me your car is hope-mobile
That's how bad thing are.
What do you do back there, sitting on that chair?
A poo, perhaps, through the robes -- plop!

Plop-mobile, plop-mobile, to me your car is a sop-mobile
That's how sad things are.

What you doing waving there, you're a museum, people stare.
Or a zoo-perhaps, behind the glass, like a hippo -- poo, plop-plop... ahh!

Hand signals

Peyvand Khorsandi — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:07:32 +0000

Yesterday I caught sight of a driver, travelling in the opposite direction, giving the finger to another motorist. Such was his emphasis that his knuckle was challenged to keep the finger from shooting off. ‘How pathetic,’ I thought — until this morning when I extended my own finger into the imaginary bottom of a trucker who’d honked me out of his way. I slowed to make sure he saw my wrist swoop to take a hefty dig up in the air.

West London afternoon

Peyvand Khorsandi — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:47:13 +0000

1.30pm I'm in Hanger Hill park in Ealing. A cyclist brushes past an old couple. They huff and puff. He stops and confronts them, American accent. 'In England you can't cycle in parks' they say. 'That's just racialist,' he says. (Though he's white.) They exchange words. Then as he's about to make off, he says: 'You're lucky you're not my age or i'd beat the shit out of you.'

At this point I step in and say: 'You're out of order mate, they're right, you don't cycle in parks.' He looks surprised and gets off his bike -- 'You ARE my age' -- and offers me out.

Saffron Daze

Peyvand Khorsandi — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:49:10 +0000

Iranian women’s memoir is a growing genre and i am thinking of writing one. Here’s an opener.

When I was growing up as a little girl in Iran, the scent of saffron was curiously absent from our kitchen. The kitchen was curiously absent from our home. And our home curiously, y’know, from our neighbourhood. Because my family didn’t occupy the Iran of my childhood so much as it occupied us.

When war starts

Peyvand Khorsandi — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:27:09 +0000

AP news: Last night Israeli jets flying sorties around Natanz, Iran, accidentally targeted an orphanage, killing 30 people, 25 of whom were children. Hours later, an Israeli spokesman said that the incident was ‘regrettable’ and a consequence of the threat that the Islamic Republic posed to “both the region and the world”.