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One Day

One day, strolling down the streets of Tehran, I noticed that somethings are near and somethings are far. Big deal, I said to myself. Everybody knows there is a here and a there. But why did this thought feel like a find? Why was I inspired by it as though I had just heard a Hafez verse? For some reason, I felt compelled to give life to the sensation so that it can trot out on its own and share itself with other people? Fortunately, I am a Hafez of sorts myself. I work in a different medium, photographs that hang in a gallery instead of verses written in a book>>>

Safe Haven

The Glass House (Fictionville, 2009) is an amazing movie reveals what goes on at Omid-e-Mehr center in Tehran, Iran. Founded by Marjaneh Halati, Omid-e-Mehr, or “Hope for Kindness”, is a non-profit organization helping disadvantaged young women of Iran to get back on their feet and learn the right skills to independently function in the society. As painful as it may sound, this movie was not about the pain these young women go through, although the story evolves around their problems and challenges>>>

The hug dispensers

My ex-girlfriend Sandra got married. Last Saturday, she and her groom Joe vowed to look after each other “in credit and in overdraft” even “when you are grumpy”. It was a wedding filled with humour in a room – in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – overlooking the River Thames, with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral, on a sunny (if chilly) day. I stood at the back, pondering how our lives had changed. Well, mine in particular – weddings are a time to navel-gaze. Twelve years ago finding a pair of socks that matched was difficult for me. Today things are no different>>>

Flowing from his bones

On Saturday, September 26th, I wandered into San Francisco’s gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts ten minutes late like any good Iranian. This was one time I regret coming even one minute late. Before my butt hit the red velour seat, my jaw fell down as I finally heard something I’ve been hunting for for years: the Iranian Jeff Buckley and his motley band of strings and drums that spanned the Old and New worlds with creativity, melancholy, and good ‘ol Iranian silliness. At intermission, while Fared was flocked by newfound fans to sign his CD>>>

This land is my land

The American who first sang, “This land is my land,” had a sticker on his guitar that said, “This machine kills fascists.” The great Woody Guthrie is lovingly remembered for singing what was in the heart of the people during a crisis of injustice in his country. Last week I traveled five hundred miles to hear an Iranian musician sing out Iran’s recent anguish in a new song parallel in name and spirit to Guthrie’s historic “This land is my land.” Hamed Nikpay’s setar has no anti-fascist sticker on it, but his green wristband says the same thing as he sings, “I am the owner of this land.”>>>

Kind of Persian

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Starstruck

Since they were children in Iran, the sisters Shirin and Nasrin Asgari dreamt of becoming opera singers. They spent their playtime pretending be Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Later they made friends with Kamelia Dara, who had also been training to sing since early childhood, and practiced together. Yet hard work and ambition could only take the aspiring artists so far. They quickly realized they needed better training than they could find in Iran. Opera is rooted in Europe; you can’t perfect it in Tehran any more than you can perfect the Persian radif of music in Vienna. So the three came to Austria on tourist visas, hoping they could pass the auditions to be admitted as students>>>

Thousand motions

A wine color silk fabric hanging on the back curtain with golden calligraphy of Omar Khayam’s poetry, hundreds of vines hanging from the ceiling all over the stage with a discrete lighting on each leaf and grape, candles surrounding the stage… Paradise on earth was the scenery of this Persian ballet called Omar Khayam presented at the majestic Palace of Fine Arts of San Francisco on September 12th 2009. The choreographer and dancer Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam was the Iranian poet and philosopher Omar Khayam himself traveling through time and space, both physically and by the spirit expressed in his movements>>>