The Persia Within

I’ll always be your fan,

Whatever you decide to do I wish you the best.

I’ll always be your fan,

Replies

Thanks to all the new posters, especially Mehman and Anonymouse.  Mouse, I never realized how complex it is with the URL. .  Thanks for going to all the trouble.  I just hope I can manage it when the time comes.  If I can't, hope it's okay to hunt you down on one of your submissions and ask you a couple of questions.

Anonymous, I don't critque artwork publicly on this site and I have advised others who do so to contact the writer privately at their blogspot with criticism. Even if I HATED the work.  Art is a gift, you accept it or you don't, but why dissect it publicly and spoil it for those who may wish to accept it whole?  Especially here.  This is not Cahiers du Cinema.  When I publish the article, I would expect everyone to critique both the "facts" and the theories contained, but this heartfelt little will o'wisp of a paragraph....why? Having said that of course you are free to say whatever you like and you are free to do so anonymously.  Yup, as you say, anonymity is a sign of the times, and what times they are... what times...PS I don't read books like Daughter of Persia.   But I'm glad they exist.  They help some people to grasp the culture in terms they can understand.  . 

a child of Persia

"For me the Persia Within came to have a different meaning. .For the more I studied Iran, the more I began to suspect that Persia and the West perhaps formed part of one great civilization, as lovers, though separate, are one. And that this history had been hidden from me to justify the rape of Iran for her oil. So that to be a child of the West was on a deep level to be also a child of Persia. And so I began to imagine a history of the West far different from the one I’d known."

I liked that paragraph! Excellent vision!

Yes i think i can take a

Yes i think i can take a critique (or as you put it, criticism). Without wishing to start a debate, but only in the interest of civil discourse and exchange of ideas, let me briefly respond. My comment was *obviously* only on the portion that was posted as i hadn't and haven't seen the full post. So, no, i wasn't commenting on you or the full piece, only on what you posted.

"This is definitely one case where if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. "

Does this mean you only accept and expect "nice" comments? Perhaps JJ should add a check box in the comment form next to the math question: "is this a nice comment?"

Seriously. As Hillary keeps saying a lot these days, if you can't stand the heat, don't post in a public forum. I feel iranian.com is as much mine as it is yours and if you post or write an article on iranian.com, please be gracious enough to accept all sort of comments. And anonymity is a sign of the times. So get used to it!

Are you thinking of writing a book? YAIFJOOH (yet another iranian female's journey out of hell!) amazon.com is full of them, some of them actually good (eg, journey from the land of no, funny in farsi, daughter of persia). Sounds like you're looking for your unique voice to write just such a book. Nothing wrong with that of course. I hope you search long and hard to find the right voice and theme!

Best to you, and i'll keep my not "nice" comments to myself from now on, and only shower you with high praise and ceremonious adulations.

Welcome Back!!

Good to hear from you again.

Rosie

Glad to see you back! Take care!

Changing URL links to words

Rosie look at the tool bar under the same box where you type in your comment.  You can find doheekeys for bold, italics, underline, etc.

One of them is a chain link picture and one is a broken chain link.  Highlight the word you want to change to a hyperlink and then click on the chain link picture.  A dialogue box will open and you can put your URL in the space identified.

You'll have 2 options to make the link open in the same window or in a separate window. If you want people to continue reading the same article and listen to music per se, choose open in a new window option.

Sometimes the tool bar doesn't appear and then you have to follow directions in the "More information about formatting options" hyperlink provided below the box where you type in your comments.

Anonymous, Thank you for your kind comments

Hope you can take some criticism.  You can't possibly make a determination about the content or quality of that paragraph without seeing it in the context of the whole I just posted it because of the FEELING and the THOUGHT behind it since I was afraid many people won't read the long piece.  I did not post it as a piece of literature.   This is definitely one case where if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all.  Especially not anonymously.  It is extraordinarily rude.

And I am not talking about a COUNTRY, I am talking about a civilization which has had fluid borders and a sphere of influence over the course of history which have extended from Europe to China with the metaphor of a LOVER regarding its rarely discussed interdependence with the West. .

I don't care about cliches.  Blood, veins, river are as much cliches as child and beloved.  There is nothing new under the sun.  The whole paragraph is a cliche, as are wine, rose, nightengale...correct, it echoes the medieval Sufi poets.  So what?  It lies outside of time where cliches don't matter much.  Flamboyant..Cher, Liberace, Marilyn Manson are flamboyant.  The paragraph is not.

As far as brevity goes, it only counts on the Internet which causes people to have the attention span of chickens. Which has made this article MUCH MORE difficult to write than it should be. To speak of brevity as a virtue in general regarding an article about 2500 years of history between two civilizations.... well...

I'm sure I missed you more than you did me. / Azarin-text

I left for serious personal reasons.  It has nothing to do with the fighting, which I found invigorating. Azarin, here is the introduction to the piece: ------------------

Kommagene (Approaching the Persia Within) 

For JR, Jamshid, Omid and Shaer  Sepaas.     

Kommagene was a kingdom once, two thousand years ago.  But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.     

                          *               *           *    

The website is booming.. There are so many new people here.  We live in such a fast-paced world.   

But some of you may possibly recall I wrote once about an Iranian man who had eyes, I said, of eternity and kohl.   Canadai didn’t like it.  Nadia tried to explain it t to her.  Perhaps I should have said coal, eyes of burning coal.  I said it all rather tongue in cheek but in fact such eyes are no laughing matter.  They are only to be found amongst the Iranians, and sometimes one cannot help but fall in them.  And falling in eyes can be a dangerous business. But no matter. 

Anyway.  He spoke—the coal-eyed one—of a place he called the Persia Within, which for him was a place in the mind.  The place of all our hidden fears which, once faced, would be recognized and then vanish.  In retrospect I’m not quite sure why he made that connection.  Perhaps because his family was Kurdish, he could see a dark side to Persia.  I don’t really know.

For me the Persia Within came to have a different meaning.  .For the more I studied Iran, the more I began to suspect that Persia and the West perhaps formed part of one great civilization, as lovers, though separate, are one.   And that this history had been hidden from me to justify the rape of Iran for her oil. So that to be a child of the West was on a deep level to be also a child of Persia.  And so I began to imagine a history of the West far different from the one I’d known.   

But history articles aren’t popular here, there isn’t even a place to file them.  This is such a fast-paced website.  So I just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to think of this as history, it can be anything you like--Literature, Life, News and Opinions, Music, “Stuff”…even an ad, whatever makes you most comfortable.  I myself intend to file it wherever I can. But it is probably best considered a love poem.

Perhaps everything I ever wrote here was a love poem.  I don’t really know.

---------------

Here is a link to Kommagene:

//youtube.com/watch?v=Ijk7a8dpeUU

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW TO CHANGE URL LINKS INTO WORDS? Thanks,
Robin 

hmm... hope you can take

hmm... hope you can take some critique. sounds a little transcendental, rumi-esque, flagrant and flamboyant. and a little 20th cen. leninesque to be talking about a country as one might of a lover! might as well be talking about one's ipod or guccis. "a child of" is way to cliche. i like some of the imagery (river , blood, mirror), but "beloved" is overused. in sum, you've got a nice looking arrow that has potential to go far. just gotta refine the message and aim at the right target.

and yes, brevity and length do count!!

Rosie

Good to see you back. After witnessing how you endured much abuse by some jerks in this site, and seeing that your flame of passion for Iran and its culture is still burning, all I can say is that your love for our land must indeed be genuine.

I hope you are back better and stronger. Sometimes, we lose some, but if you look through the torrents of emotions carefully, there was always a gain too, if you know what I mean!

Hello!

Welcome back! Please write more soon.

Welcome!

Nice to see you again on the site. Your passion for Iran, intellectual views, and dynamism animates the site. Hopefully we can enjoy your writings for a long long time.

Rosie Khanom... Chetori?

Where have you been lady? I thought you got upset from these rude lost-in-the-west-and-not-behaving iranians around here and decided to defect to some other far away land. Shame on us/them if we/they caused you discomfort ("ranjesh"). Be safe and have fun, and don't take some of these ideologues too seriously.

Az deev-o dad maloolam-o ensaanam aarezoost.

how about posting the first paragraphs too?

Dear Rosie,

It's good to see you again. I can only speak for myself, but I really missed your passion and fire and intelligence! You made the site really addictive for me :-)

Please post the beginning too..I loved the ending.

azarin 

Heeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

Welcome back, Khanoom...:-)