Diaspora

A prayer for hope

In the early hours of Saturday, I set our Nowruz spread. I grew up in a household of ceremonies and rituals. Everything was a BIG deal to my parents, worthy of time, attention, and love. Of all the ceremonies celebrated in my childhood, however, nothing was as big as Nowruz. Weeks of preparations and cleaning chores and shopping delivered my family into the moments the year changed, the biggest deal of the year. I left my parents' home when I was 18. Whatever I learned there has obviously made a serious impact on me! >>>

Mano Gonjishka

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I know I’m in the right place

I am passionate-borderline obsessed- with food. My philosophy: if you can make it, why buy it? I jump fences to pick lemons, I make my own apple cider vinegar, I own nine aprons, and I’ve been known to swoon over the vibrant leaves of my garden’s purple potatoes. I’m stubborn in my ways of healthy eating and I (used to) think white rice is akin to a bowl of sugar. However, in the past several months, I’ve learned not only how to tame my convictions, but that above all else, food is celebratory. After graduating from Bauman College, a Nutritional Education and Culinary Arts school, I began an internship cooking lunches for an Iranian language immersion school>>>

Toro Yadam Miyareh

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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>>>

Augustine

My daughter often asks me why I talk to strangers -- the answer is, that is how I get a chance to meet my loved-ones-to-be. One of my dear friends, found completely randomly, is a woman by the name of Sarah D. I met Sarah in 2006. At the time, she sold lettuce at the Burbank Farmer's Market and we struck up a conversation over arugula and dill. One particular morning, Sarah was positively beaming. She showed me a picture of a little girl named Augustine whom she had just met in Haiti. Her love for Augustine was contagious especially when she shared her pictures ... but let me get out of the way, and let you hear Sarah's story directly from her>>>

Rooftops of Villanova

As a debut novelist, the selection of my book Rooftops of Tehran for Villanova University’s One Book program was an amazing honor. In its fifth year, earlier selections of this prestigious initiative have included Khaled Hossini’s The Kite Runner in 2005, followed in successive years by Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name, Immaculee Illibagiza’s Left to Tell, and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle. I had no idea, prior to arriving at the campus, how much time and effort had gone into preparing for my visit. >>>

Economizing My Way Up

I was quite young and full of joy and pride when I graduated from Tehran University - the only major state university in Iran in early 70s, - because my long held dream had come true. Back then in Iran, just being accepted to a major university was considered quite an achievement, but successfully sticking with it right through graduation was even more of an accomplishment. This was especially true for me because I was the first one in my family to go to college or have any kind of formal education for that matter>>>

The Future Takes Forever

“No civilization of the past was great,” Esfandiary insisted. “They were all primitive and persecutory, founded on mass subjugation and mass murder.” Against a tide of books warning of global crisis, decline, and alienation, Esfandiary proclaimed the first Age of Optimism. Technology would universalize abundance; nations would disappear; identities would shift from cultural to personal. “The young modern is not losing his identity. He is gladly disencumbering himself of it,” he wrote. “In the 21st century, no one will say ‘I’m Egyptian, or Romanian, or American,’ but ‘I’m global,’ or ‘I’m moon-based,’ or ‘part Martian.’”>>>