Diaspora

Ancestral soil

Ancestral soil – I don’t mean “the fatherland”, the nation-state, the racial or linguistic group to which a person belongs. I mean the dirt and soil upon which you walk, composed of the blood and pulverized bones of your ancestors. Our forebears (those who supported themselves by agriculture) had an intimate and spiritual relationship with the land about them. Living in mainly settled communities, they rarely strayed far from their villages. Houses and farmsteads were passed down from father to son; generations of the same family came to be buried in the same earth, eventually dissolving and becoming a part of it. >>>

فردای يلدا

آتشکده ام برفراز بلندايي بود؛ همانجا که گلِشاه مهربان هر روز می نشست و ساعت ها با خاک و آب و هوا گِل درست می کرد و آدم می ساخت، نيلوفر آبی می ساخت، گاو بزرگ می ساخت و پرنده هايی با بال های زرد و سبز و سرخ. آدم ها دو تا که می شدند برمی خاستند و رقص کنان می دويدند، نيلوفرها به رنگ زر می شدند و بر آب های آسمان حرکت می کردند، و گاو بزرگ از عشق بارور می شد و به تنهايي همه ی گندم های جهان را می زاييد تا پرنده ها از ازل تا به ابد بر سر گندم ها پرواز کنند.>>>

What would you tell him?

"I am 35 years old, and live in Iran," he tells you. OK. 35? This is not IranianSingles.com. The guy looks at least 55 for God's sake. But fine, you let it go.
"Ehhhhhhh iroonee hasteed? Pas cheraa zoodtar nemeegeed? Cheh lahjatoon khoobeh. Taazeh oomadeed? Kojaa veezaaa gerefteed?"
Ignoring you, he continuous: "Life is not bad, although it could be better. There's a corrupt group of individuals that are powerful and run the show, and the central government has not been very stable, but, personally, I can't complain too much. I want to see my country prosperous, Iranians good to each other, and world peace." >>>

Shape and purpose

Quite by accident, I came to know an accomplished Iranian artist in our community in Berkeley. His name is Farrokh Shehabi, and he is a ceramics artist. Though he is an engineer by education and profession and managed his construction business for many years, for the past ten years he has found his lost love and passion, pottery. He says about that passion: “It was as though all my life I had been longing for the way clay feels in my hands, as it finds shape and purpose, each piece telling its own story.” >>>

War on error

Lounging contentedly on the bed in her apartment some thirty-five stories directly above the FDR, Roxana looks at me standing over her and proclaims, "Interview me," as though she were Julia Roberts promoting her next blockbuster. I know this is going to be difficult. I have known Roxana for over eight years now. We met in college at Wesleyan when she was a senior and I was a freshman, and within days, we were inseparable. She was the only other Iranian girl I had heard of at Wesleyan, and she seemed to know everything and everyone there was to know there. We were both loud,opinionated, sarcastic, and naive.We were also both virgins and agreed that men were useful almost solely for opening unyielding jars of pickles and hooking up electronic equipment>>>

Familiography

I was born in Tehran, Iran also known as the ancient Persia the land of Cyrus and Darius the great. I was born on January 26, 1984 in a hospital called Mehr which is located near the state building in Tehran. Since I was over 11 pounds in weight and over 55 cm in length my grandfather called me Rostam which is an old Hero (like Hercules in Greek writings) in Persian writings by Ferdousi (an ancient writer who wrote the Shahnameh that resembled the true culture of Persians and their tales of bravery and loyalty toward the King). I was raised in Northern Tehran an area that is called Tajrish and nowadays is considered uptown Tehran due to the great numbers of buildings and shopping malls>>>

My generation

To my children who might say “we are suffering because YOU made a revolution,” I would say: My generation beat you in the “suffering game” hands down! Those are people from our generation sleeping in those nameless graves in Iran. Those are people from our generation who have been missing, maimed, or put to rest in the Martyrs Graveyards across Iran. Those are people from our generation, displaced and exiled to faraway places of the world, seeing Iran again just a huge dream in their hearts.>>>

No-nonsense revolution

The graphic novels, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, now combined into a movie, do not look back to the classics. Satrapi’s self mocking style is ultra-modern. It combines a Disneyesque cuteness with the author’s Hedayat-like anguish. At first the work appears to lack subtlety, protesting the Islamic Regime’s repressions too directly. Later we realize this straight shooting is just another manifestation of the no-nonsense way in which the artist conducts her life. Satrapi’s uninhibited tendency to speak her primal mind has been the driving force in the events of her life.>>>

Try gratitude

It was disheartening to read Curious Joe’s, "Don’t Immigrate to the US". I have felt sad for him since reading of his regret about immigrating to this country. Like Joe, my mother moved to the United States several years before Iran’s revolution. Perhaps, if there had never been a revolution she would have returned to the country she has always loved first and foremost, but since there was a revolution, we can never know for sure what she might have done. One thing that is for certain is that I have never heard my mother utter a word of regret about her decision to come here, originally as a student, or her decision to remain here and make this country her home>>>

Don't immigrate to the US

I immigrated to the US well before the so-called “Iranian Revolution of 1979”. I always thought I had one leg up ahead of those Iranians that “had to run away” from the tyranny of the Ayatollahs -- to anywhere, including the US. Being born in Tehran, I watched the flock of Iranians from Khorassan, Ahvaz, Esfehan, Yazd, Kerman and Shiraz to the US - you know – the ones we used to call Daahaati – if you were born and raised in Tehran. I used to shun those Daahaatis immigrating from Iran in the aftermath of post-1979, thinking “what are they doing here”? >>>