This is a newly published book about Iranian-Armenian watercolor artist Sumbat Der Kiureghian. Sumbat (1913-1999) is regarded as a pioneer in bringing the art of watercolor painting to Iran. He is particularly admired for his watercolor and gouache renditions of Iranian and Armenian village scenes and of landscapes. A descendant of 17th century Armenian settlers in the New Julfa district of Isfahan, he embodied the artistic traditions of his people and of his hometown. Through his art, he played the role of a mediator between East and West: He brought a European artistic style (lucid watercolor applied in loose brushwork) to Iran and he introduced Iranian lifestyle, folk traditions and landscapes to Western audiences. Of particular note are his “Sumbatisms,” eponymous innovations Sumbat created by turning his newspaper-palettes into abstract depictions of busy street scenes. These works capture the energy and diversity of Iranian society while also straddling the line between figurative and abstract painting. The common threads that unite all of Sumbat’s works are his stunning colors, at once delicate and vibrant, an inescapable sense of joy and tranquility in his subjects, and a strong appreciation for the life of ordinary people.
Narrated by Sumbat's son, the book (ISBN 978-0-578-03598-7) describes his life and art through a series of anecdotes, intimate stories, quotations and letters. 172 pages in hard cover, the book contains more than 180 reproductions of Sumbat's works.
To learn more about Sumbat and this book, visit www.Sumbat.com.
Iranian Nuclear Threat Looms in Thrilling New Novel
Mushroom In The Sand plays brilliantly in the shadows between espionage, fact and fiction
NASHVILLE, Tenn., -- Mushroom In the Sand, an international spy thriller set against the backdrop of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program, hits bookshelves today.
Breakout author, Farsheed Ferdowsi, weaves a narrative rich in spy-craft, action and intrigue in his debut novel - Mushroom In The Sand. An Iranian-born physicist living the American dream, Dr. Ross Shaheen is at the top of his game. Between his internationally-recognized nuclear weapons research career at the prestigious Berkeley Lab and his picture-perfect family in the San Francisco suburbs, its a good life that can only get betteruntil he is lured into lecturing before an elite group of scientists in his home country.
The 7,000-mile trip takes Shaheen back to the land of the lion and sun, yet it also delivers to Irans very doorstep an important American citizen with Top Secret security clearance. Taken captive in a subterranean plant by Amir Meshkin, head of Irans secret nuclear weapons program, will Shaheen be forced to provide him with the access needed to successfully advance the Iranian nuclear agenda?
The answer lies in a twisting plot of espionage and survival, putting to the test not only Shaheens secret knowledge but also the very core of his allegiance. If he lives, he could walk away a hero for his country. The question iswhich one?
Though a work of fiction, Mushroom In The Sand illuminates the very real and very serious global debate currently raging over Iran's nuclear intentions. At a time when secret uranium enrichment facilities and experimental warhead designs are grabbing the attention of world leaders and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ferdowsi's vivid storytelling takes readers inside a clandestine world which lies just beyond the newspaper headlines and media spotlight. Suspense abounds in this timely geo-political thriller, sure to keep readers on the edge.
Mushroom in the Sand is published by Winsgspan Press and distributed through Ingram Book Group. The novel is available for purchase at Amazon.com, Booksamillion.com, BarnesandNoble.com and select bookstores throughout the country.
About the Author
Farsheed Ferdowsi was born in Tehran, Iran. He was educated as an engineer at Vanderbilt University and University of California, Berkley. He has been a successful entrepreneur, lecturer and business consultant. But his passion has always been in writing. He and his wife have two children and currently live in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Mushroom In The Sand by Farsheed Ferdowsi
Hardcover, 348 pages (softcover & eBook versions also available)
ISBN: 978-1595943446
For review copies or interview requests contact:
Jeremy Gossett
Tel: 615-584-9233
E-mail: jeremygossett@gmail.com
To place orders for the book, including limited signed and numbered copies:
URL: www.mushroominthesand.com
کوچه های بی قانون نوشته شکوفه تقی، عنوان کتابی جدید از این نویسنده است که به تازگی توسط نشر باران در سوئد منتشر شده است.
این مجموعه داستان شامل هشت داستان کوتاه به نام های: „شوهر دوم“، „افسانه ای که واقعیت داشت“، „حسادت“، „کوچ ههای بی قانون“، „خواستگار“، „پس کی می ره؟“، „بختک“ و „غیر از صدایش“ است.
این داستان ها با آنکه در طی سال های متفاوت نوشته شده اند اما در سال ۲۰۰۸ بازنوشته و یرایش شده اند.. شکوفه تقی آثار خود را از زندگی بیرون می کشد و اشخاص داستانی اش به طبقات مختلف و گروه های سنی متفاوت تعلق دارند. او اگر چه مواد آثار داستانی اش را از کوچه و خیابان، زندگی زن ها و مردهای اطرافش جمع می کند اما تلاش می کند سفری به درون شخصیت های داستان هایش کند و خواننده را از واقعیت آن ها دورتر ببرد.
شکوفه تقی روانشناس، ایرانشناس و مذهب شناس است. او در دانشگاه های تهران، گلاسگو، اوپسالا و ییل درس خوانده است.
نوشته های چاپ شده ی او برای کودکان به بیست اثر می رسد و تعدادی از آن ها در داخل و خارج ایران برنده ی جوایز متعددی شده است.
آثار او برای بزرگسالان به سه بخش پژوهش، شعر و داستان تقسیم می شود. در زمینه ی فلسفه و عرفان، مردمشناسی، ایرانشناسی و مسائل مربوط به زنان تألیفات چاپ شدهی او عبارتند از کتاب „دو بال خرد“ که به فارسی و انگلیسی چاپ شده و کتاب „زن آزاری در قصه ها و تاریخ“ که سال ۲۰۰۸ توسط نشر باران در سوئد منتشر شده است. علاوه بر این ها مجموعه شعر „آیه های زمینی عشق“ و رمان „در جستجوی حقیقت“، نیز از او در ایران چاپ شده است.
کتاب را می توانید از کتابفروشی محل زندگی خود و یا از طریق نشر باران در سوئد تهیه کنید.
شکوفه تقی
نشر باران، سوئد
شابک: ۸-۲۶-۸۵۴۶۳-۹۱-۹۷۸
چاپ نخست ۲۰۰۹
طرح جلد: حمید بهرامی
www.baran.st
info@baran.st
While Azadeh Moaveni is promoting her new book –Honeymoon in Tehran—she presents some interesting observations. Here is the link: Azadeh Moaveni.
The first comment on the clip reads:
“In 1997 I took these lessons in Iran before the marraige license was issued. There was a drug test, blood test, urine test, tetanus shot and a one hour family planning and sex education class. Females and males were separated but the content of the class was the same.
I was very impressed by the steps taken to assure some rudimentary teaching.
In comparison when I marrid in the State of New York, a license was issued on the spot merely by showing ID. There was a 24 hour cool off period imposed by the state after which the ceremony could take place. Oh, in New York my intended and I received a plastic bag which contained soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid, and a brochure on contraception.”
Well, it was interesting enough to make me spend a full one hour of my premium time watching her presentation.
Every time she points out a positive comment, she makes sure it is followed by a perceived but irrefutable negative comment against the government of Iran! I do not know whether she does it for promoting her book or what, but It reminded me of our own monthly cultural meetings in which it was so natural for me to do exactly the same! I stopped doing it long time ago, not because I have changed my mind about the government. Not at all. In fact, I think the government of Iran is repressive and it tends to be more so as we move forward no matter who would occupy the office of presidency. But for two reasons. (1) Except for dress code and some other religious ones, any government under the same outright existential threat would be a lot more repressive than IRI is and living examples are abundant (2) Our enemies have created an atmosphere in which the spot light is on your negative comments ONLY and that is unfair. IRI has achieved outstanding progress under unbelievable circumstances including a devastating 8 years long war with the whole world represented by Saddam.
In respect to her opinion on a number of issues, I have a decisively different opinion, but I still think she has done a great job. While I think celebrating a day for women is as tricky as any other one, i.e. father’s day, mother’s day, etc., I think it is well worth one hour of it watching this video clip.
Having said that, here is some of what you might ponder about her comments:
1. The overwhelming majority of highly educated females is entirely a success story for IRI. This fact is vividly distortion proof.
2. Brain drain is a universal problem for less developed countries simply because the industrialized world are still capable to lure and steal them. No government in the third world drives them out.
3. As she pointed out the traditional mentality of Iranians has effectively offered a successful alternative balancing work and motherhood for women.
4. Except for dress code and some religious ones, Iranian women are better off compared with many other countries in the world, including the U.S.
5. Women are indeed the driving force behind any meaningful socio-political (but not regime) change in Iran.
The sole encyclopedia on Persian Gulf will go online in April 2009, providing a chance for researchers to use it in their research works.
Work on the electronic encyclopedia began by Abu Reyhan Birouni Research Center, affiliated to the Center for Islamic Encyclopedia, last year.
Persian Gulf space image (source: NASA)
Commenting on the project, head of the center, Kianoush Kiani said that the electronic version of the encyclopedia will officially go online on Persian Gulf Day (April 29).
The encyclopedia has been designed in two sections of general information and entries. Four volumes have been scheduled to cover extensive articles on Persian Gulf while another four volumes are to feature entries, 1,500 of which have so far been identified, he said.
The eight-volume encyclopedia will take four years to complete, Kiani said.
'Ancient Iran' - Culture of Iran Youth Series
A pictorial history for young readers
'Ancient Iran' aims to educate young readers about the cultural history of one of today's most contentious and mysterious world powers. Spanning a 5,500-year period, Ancient Iran is the first book to document the ancient civilizations of the Iranian plateau in a pictorial format for young readers. Through a visually stimulating collection of over 260 high quality images of museum objects and accessible writing, young readers will gain insight into the life, beliefs and cultural practices of the ancient Iranians and their contribution to the civilizations of antiquity. The publisher believes this book comes at a key time - when today's youth are growing up in a world where Iran's cultural and political practices are continually questioned on the world stage. Understanding Iranian cultural history has become more valuable than ever before. This book will also be of particular interest to second- and third-generation Iranians in various continents who wish to educate their children about the cultural history of their ancestors.
Educated in both Iran and England, Massoume Price has written extensively on many aspects of Iranian culture. Her book Iran's Diverse Peoples (2005); was called by the Middle East Quarterly 'must reading for anyone who wants to understand ethnic and religious diversity in Iran'. Her website - www.cultureofiran.com - is used widely as an on-line reference source. For additional information about this publication, or to order the book, visit
www.anahitaproductions.com
ISBN 978-0-9809714-0-8, Hardcover, 72 pages, 8.77 X 11.18, $19.95 US
As the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approached, Abbas Milani realized that very little, if any, attention had been given to the entire prerevolutionary generation. Political upheavals and a tradition of neglecting the history of past regimes have resulted in a cultural memory loss, erasing the contributions of a generation of individuals. Eminent Persians seeks to rectify that loss. Milani's groundbreaking portrait of modern Iran reveals the country's rich history through the lives of the men and women who forged it. Consisting of 150 profiles of the most important innovators in Iran between World War II and the Islamic Revolution, the book includes politicians, entrepreneurs, poets, artists, and thinkers who brought Iran into the modern era with brilliant success and sometimes terrible consequences. The biographies and essays weave a richly textured tapestry of lives, ideas, and events that reveals the true story of these decades in the life of a nation.
The two volumes are divided into sections on politics, economics, and culture, each accompanied by an introductory essay that places the individual stories in their broader historical context. Drawn from interviews, extensive archival material, and private correspondence, Eminent Persians is a treasure trove of original documents, many appearing in print for the first time. Detailed sketches of personalities and personal foibles offer a compelling and highly readable account of this remarkable period of history on a human scale.
About the Author
Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University where he is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of Modernity in Iran, Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran, and Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir.
The novel is a rich historical romance about the life of Roxana, Alexander’s wife.
One of the great ways to explore history is through historical novels. The new historical novel, Roxana Romance, Rošanak Nâmeh, is a rich historical romance about the life of Roxana, Alexander’s wife.
Author A.J. Cave relies heavily on newer scholarly efforts by modern historians focusing on the histories of the Macedonian Alexander and the Achaemenid Persia.
The epic story pulls the readers in with love and lost, romance and scandal, and sweeping adventure. It starts in Bactria and journeys along the eastern edges of the Achaemenid Empire, returns to the heartland, laments the burning of Parsa, visits the royal cities of the empire and lingers in Babylon before leaving for the western edges of the empire. The story unfolds after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, witnesses the disintegration of the Alexandrian conquests almost immediately after his death, and suffers through the bloody struggles of Alexander’s successors for the control=2 0of the Persian Empire.
At the heart of Roxana Romance is the unwavering love of the Iranians for their motherland and the Iranian determination and resilience to ride the tides of historical adversity and rise again.
The author’s motivation for writing the novel is two-fold:
1) An interest in the ancient history of Persia, especially the Achaemenid era
2) The recent surge in books, fiction and non-fiction, and movies about this period of Persian history. While some of the newer historical books, offer a fresh alternative to the Eurocentric or Hellenecist view of the Achaemenids, the literary works and movies, and even carton books, continue to perpetuate the outdated stereotypical and negative views of the ancient Iranians.
The story of Roxana starts at the end of the Achaemenids, a period well known in the West, especially in lieu of the Alexandrian conquests. The author plans to start another book will narrate the even ts at the commencement of the Achaemenid era, namely the story of Cyrus the Great. The book will be entitled: Cyrus Romance, Kuruš Nâmeh.
Seymour Hersh’s new titled “Preparing the Battle Field” in the July 7, 2008 issue of The New Yorker is a must read. It unveil covert operations against Iran with real figures: “Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran... These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars… are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations.”
“ …some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.”
هوا آنقدر تاریک بود که فکر می کردم سقف آسمان آمده پایین. فکر می کردم اگر دستم را دراز کنم، دستم توی سیاهی آسمان گم می شود. همه چیز عوض شده بود. بوته های لب جو پر از فش فش مار بود و جو مثل اژدها غرش می زد و جلو می رفت. آنقدر ترسیده بودم که دندان هایم درک درک ور هم می خورد. ولی نمی فهمیدم چرا ور نمی گردم.
EWIC is an interdisciplinary encyclopedia project focused on women and Islamic cultures. We are currently in the process of inviting interested scholars, including graduate students, to be possible contributors. Please, if you are interested in being included in the author database, visit our website at: http://sjoseph.ucdavis.edu/ewic/ and follow the link to the contributor template. Thank you for your interest and contribution!
Book Review "Anahita's Woven Riddle" by Meghan Sayres
Anahita's Woven Riddle, September 21, 2007
I had the privilege of living in Iran for five years in the 1970's and I fell in love with the people and the culture. This book was researched for 10 years before it was written and the details are highly accurate but it is much more than that. It is a beautiful loving story which could have only have been written by someone who knows and loves Iran. For this reason the author was invited to present her book at the First International Children's Book Festival in Kerman.
Her work speaks to the qualities we identify as goodness that transcend all cultures and boundaries; it describes what we recognize as the qualities of compassion that we humans share, as well as the generosity, good naturedness and kindness that so predominate the common culture of the Iranian people at a time that a propoganda war has been mounted against Iran in a run up to another possible war.
A book that puts Iranians in such a positive light and speaks of their past struggle for a constitutional monarchy in 1906 to curb the excessive power of tyranical monarchs and empower the elected parliament, their struggle against Tzarist Russian expansionism, their struggle between traditional ways and modern change, between nomadic life style versus settled, their struggle between material and spiritual values, all helps those ignorant of Iran to better understand the Iranian experience and to put a human face on Iran.
Most of all this book makes the characters very believable...the struggles of a young girl against the social pressure to be married off in an arranged political union to someone she cannot love, which would benefit everyone in her tribe except her own chance at happiness, her struggles with the inevitable transition from childhood to adulthood, her first encounters with legitimate feelings of romantic love, her rivalry with her girl cousin, the humorous aspects of human existence, the admirable leadership qualities of her father, his fairness and courage to stand up against corruption, the self sacrificing loyalty of her childhood friend Daryioush, the noble qualities of the prince and the mystery of love at first sight which will always remain a mystery...
In the end this book leaves you with a heart warming glow and it becomes a friend you want to spend time with and not put down until it is read. It is not a Polly Anna fairy tale but rather quite realistic and yet the good guys win and the bad guys are brought to justice in a comic rather than cruel way...and the theme of weaving the carpet from sheep to work of art runs through the whole story, dying it, tying it together and leaving no loose ends until they tie the knot...and by the way, it is a suspenseful tale and full of surprises which will keep you riveted to it until the very end...
I highly recommend this book for the young and the young of heart,
Dear Readers,
I would like to invite you to my newly launched website at www.zirzameen.com to introduce you to my first book: "Tales From The Zirzameen"
به گزارش ایونا ، مهدي عاطف راد در رماني تاريخي - تخيلي با عنوان «آواز پاييزي» ، سرگذشت دكتر فاطمه سياح - نخستين استاد زن دانشگاه در ايران - را به تصوير ميكشد.
سير حوادث اين رمان به اواخر دورهي قاجار و اوايل دورهي پهلوي مربوط ميشود. به گفتهي نويسنده، بخشي از اين رمان تاريخي، واقعي و بخشهايي كه تاريخ دربارهي آنها سكوت كرده است، تخيلياند.
عاطف راد همچنين مجموعهي مقالاتي را دربارهي فروغ فرخزاد در كتابي با عنوان «فروغ در آينهي شعر فروغ» براي چاپ آماده دارد. در اين كتاب، 12 تم شعر اين شاعر مورد بررسي قرار گرفتهاند.
«گذار از رنجها در زندگي آنا آخماتوما» نيز عنوان ديگري از كتابهاي آمادهي چاپ اين نويسنده است، كه در آن، به انديشه، طرز تفكر، زندگي و آثار آخماتوا پرداخته شده است.
عاطف راد همچنين ترجمهاي از كتاب «ماسك» نوشتهي پيتر هال - بازيگر و كارگردان تئاتر و رهبر اپرا - را منتشر خواهد كرد.
موضوع اين كتاب كه از سوي انتشارات مينوفرد در دست انتشار است، بررسي پديدهي ماسك در هنر از جمله تئاتر، موسيقي و اپراست، كه مخفيكنندهي نيتهاي كارگردان و يا خالق اثر است.
«بيژن گرازاوژن در چاه افسون منيژهي سيمينتن» و «ماجراهاي من و صادق هدايت» از جمله آثار اين نويسندهاند.
This book attempts to fill in the non-recognized gaps, mainly in the history of physical sciences, covering some important topics in modern scientific views.
She spread her smile
With her poignant felicity
And captivated today and tomorrow
Could I only hold on
To the angles of her lips
And lighten my heart
In the soft cushions of her hope
She reached out a “come”
Came and left footsteps on my heart
Filled with tears and kisses
I want to drag her in my soul
Cling on to every thread
Of her flesh and bone
So that in my body and being
I will carry her name and scent to my grave
My mother, my love, my Iran
~By: Tina Ehrami From “Persian Pomegranates- A Young Poet’s Soliloquy”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Iranian born Tina Ehrami (1980) is a poet, a writer and a public policy advisor. Her works have been published in various anthologies, literary journals and on line magazines.
Her poetry focuses on both personal and social matters. Through her writings she expresses her emotional commitment to Iran and its peoples struggle for freedom of speech. In her poems, mostly in free verse style, she uses shape and alliteration to develop coherence.
She lives and works in The Hague, The Netherlands.
By Akbar Golrang's
Ali was medium height, with a round body and round belly, light skinned and large eyed. He had a thin, curved nose, protruding lips, a high forehead and thick, straight eyebrows. He had inherited everything from his mamma,
including his walk. He swayed when he moved, and no one ever knew what he was up to. Besides, nobody could convince him of anything, because only he could determine right from wrong. He was egotistical about everything. No one could touch his pencils, pad or school bag. He was stubborn; if he made up his mind about something, nobody could stop him. In order to draw attention to himself, he came home every day with some bit of news, which he told in such an exciting manner, that everyone would be astonished. Even when he couldn’t find news to tell, he made up something and told it with such conviction, that he believed it himself.
One time in the beginning of June, 1947, he pounded heavily on the door. Everyone ran to the door and saw Ali standing there trembling, pale and with his eyes bulging. His mamma was terrified, and took him into her arms and drew him into the room, to try and calm him.
He remained fastened in his mother’s embrace. When he was a little more calm he said, ”There’s an arm in the bay!”
”What do you mean, an arm?” asked mamma.
”An arm has come up out of the water, it’s a human arm.”
”Maybe someone has drowned.”
”No, no matter how many rocks people threw at it, it wouldn’t sink.”
”Well, at least whoever drowned is no longer in pain.”
”Yeah, but there was someone who swam toward the arm, and when he got close, it disappeared and then came to the surface in another place.”
”Maybe there was someone under water who wanted to play a joke on people.”
”What kind of a joke is that? Can anyone stay under water so long?”
”It’s not so difficult. You could breathe through a tube that sticks out over the water, and then you could stay under as long as you wanted.”
”Why don’t you believe what I say? Come and see for yourselves that there’s an arm lying in the water.”
Even though Amena, Heydar, Mariam and Jasem were used to Ali’s fantasies, they put on their shoes, amazed and curious. Heydar-Mamma put on her stockings, threw on her chador, and everyone followed after Ali.
*
Their house stood two streets away from the bay.
When they got to Amiri Street, they could see that it was full of people toward the end of the street. The sun rose on a pale porcelain¬-colored sky, and seemed to just hang there under the ceiling of the world. The street was
a mess. Occasionally someone managed to move up to, or away from the bay. The faces of several people on the street were pale. Everyone was confused, and looked like corpses with bluish skin and violet lips. Everything was quiet,
except for the looks on people’s faces. Even the cars were silent on that day. Neither the motors nor the horns were heard.
When they got to the end of the street, they realized that so many people had come that it was impossible to move forward. People came from out of the Taj Theater, and from around the whole bay to look. A bagpipe player and a drummer came and played. In front of the crowd, at the water’s edge, they saw an excavator digging with its scoop. Everyone followed with their eyes each time the scoop sank down into the water, and they screamed, ”The hand disappeared again!”
They watched as the scoop took clay from the edge of the beach, and then suddenly screamed, ”There it is, there it is again!”
As long as the excavator worked, Heydar-Mamma and the children saw nothing. They just took in the crowd’s reactions, heard their screams and expressions. But when a truck came with policemen to disperse the crowd,
they suddenly caught sight of the arm. Even though the policemen beat back the crowd with their batons to get them to leave, their efforts were in vain. The crowd thinned a little, but they kept staring at the water, and the arm that rose up in it.
It was actually a human arm, a black arm. It was a right arm.
One man standing in front of all of the others, screamed, ”What kind of a show is this?”
”Lemonade … Lemonade …“ a voice rose among the crowd.
“Cookies! … Candy! …”
”Peanuts, enjoy and watch!”
”People are tired of the heat, even though they’re used to it.”
”Now we’ve come out to see something new.”
”Bottles, half bottles, sacks, buckets, we buy!”
”Ice cream! … Ice cream!”
”Boiled fish, fresh fish, just caught!”
”Water! Cold water, one rial per glass.”
Suddenly an old man appeared in the crowd, wearing a fine suit and bow tie. Every¬one made room for him as he wound his way forward.
He came up to the beach and stared for a while at the arm in the water. Then he lifted his arm and pointed with his index finger and his middle finger at the arm. The crowd watched with terrified expressions as the arm sank in that same moment, and never came up again.
Everyone yelled and whistled. People surrounded him and asked for an explanation.
The old man answered without looking at anyone, ”The mysterious arm wanted to show that if five people unite together, they can conquer the whole world.”
”What happened when it disappeared and didn’t come up again?”
The old man looked straight ahead and said, ”I gave the arm a signal that said: That’s wrong, it is enough if two people join together to conquer the whole world. And the arm accepted my point of view and disappeared.”
Somebody screamed, ”This is also an inven¬tion of the English.”
Without acknowledging anyone, the old man turned and left in the same grand fashion with which he had arrived.
The people left the bay one by one.
Ali gave Heydar’s foot a hard kick, looked proudly at the others and said, ”Did you see the arm? Now you know, I always tell the truth.”
Heydar laughed, and so did Mariam.
By: David Shasha- Knopf Books, 2004 To Wear a Head Scarf or Not to Wear a Head Scarf?
Orhan Pamuk began publishing the most intriguing and elliptical novels back in the 1980’s. He was once a novelist who took his cues from Italo Calvino’s moody historical landscapes and from Franz Kafka’s oblique portraits of human beings at the edge of an abyss. In books like The White Castle and The Black Book, Pamuk earned a well-deserved reputation as a brilliant post-modern novelist whose themes and plot-lines – when a plot-line could be discerned – lightly touched the historical legacy of the Ottoman Empire, that magnificent multicultural entity that had so stymied Europe for centuries.
Pamuk was writing about a mythic past that lived uneasily in a present that had been constructed more or less in opposition to that past.
Turkey as a modern nation was created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a vigorous and brutal Muslim reformer who denatured the religious and cultural traditions of the Ottoman civilization. Ataturk’s image stands at the very center of much of Orhan Pamuk’s fiction. In his previous novel, My Name is Red, Pamuk examined the court culture of Ottoman painters, called miniaturists, and wrote a post-modern allegory, along the lines of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, lightly portraying the massive conflicts that have been taking place in the Middle East and in Turkey regarding the role of religion and art and secularism in the march to modernity.
Ataturk’s aim was to integrate Turkey into Europe by adopting European modes of behavior. He outlawed the Arabic language and put severe restrictions on the traditional practice of Islam. The brutal establishment of a monocultural Turkish ethnic identity mirrored Hegelian European nationalism and was an implicit rejection of the syncretistic model of Ottoman convivencia that had been an important part of Sephardic Jewish life in the wake of the Spanish Expulsion in 1492.
Ottoman civilization in its classical period provided Jews from Spain and the Middle East not merely with a social and political haven from their European Christian persecutors, but enriched Sephardic Jewish life with its reiteration of the social and cultural values of Andalusia and Baghdad. Istanbul and Salonika became for early modern Jewish civilization what Cordoba and Cairo had once been for medieval Jewry.
The reforms of Ataturk hurt the religious and ethnic minorities of Turkey. Though his aim was to reform Turkey and make it a modern nation state, Ataturk’s reforms led to great and convoluted revolts and changes in a world that was now starting to become unhinged. In the wake of World War I, Turkey purged itself of its Armenian population and began to dissolve ethnic and religious identification among its minorities, as well as its Islamic traditionalists. The question of Turkey’s role during the Holocaust has been oft-debated and, given the traditional Ottoman fidelity to its Jewish minority, even this ambiguity displays troubling signs of an ethnocentric shift in the traditional openness and pluralism of Ottoman civilization.
Orhan Pamuk as a young novelist wrote in a highly elliptical fashion, eschewing the social realism of the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz – the greatest novelist in the modern Middle East. Slowly but surely, Pamuk has inched closer to a form of realism in each of his novels. In his latest Snow he has developed the theme of religious intolerance as seen through the lens of a Turkey whose own democratic and liberal principles have been deeply compromised by an authoritarian regime that uses its military and police as a mechanism to stifle dissent and free expression.
Pamuk is that rare writer who refuses to take sides in the hot button issues that haunt the Middle East. In Snow we are introduced to KA, an exiled Turkish poet who has left his homeland and gone to write and work in Germany, a common place of exile for Turkish artists and workers. KA has returned to Turkey at the behest of a German newspaper to write a story on the plague of suicides that has arisen in the religious community of Kars – a small town in the Turkish hinterland that is in the throes of battling the government over religious freedom and expression.
As we have seen in France, one of the primary issues that divide the religious fundamentalists from the secularists is the wearing of the head scarf. In Kars there has been a spate of suicides among young high school age girls who have been forcibly removed from their schools because they will not take the scarf off. In addition, a number of these girls have been contracted into marriages with older men that have also turned them depressive and sullen.
Here we see that Pamuk sets out to skewer both the traditionalists and the modernists on a rotating basis. KA is not presented as overtly siding with either group and as he begins to assimilate into this toxic environment, peopled with religious terrorists and government operatives, he tries his best to see the story in human terms rather than demonizing any one person or entity.
While working for the press, KA the poet finds an active propaganda war ongoing between the fundamentalists and the local TV and print media – some of the most important scenes in the book are broadcast live on television and become embedded in a war of rhetoric between the sides; each side trying to find some advantage in presenting itself to the public. Key pieces of information are laid out in the local paper leading to transformations and surprises in the development of the narrative.
KA’s existential odyssey leads him to fall in love with Ipek, the sister of Hanife – one of the head scarf girls. Ipek and Hanife are both linked to Blue, a fundamentalist who lives on the margins of this society and who is hell bent on restoring a “pure” Islam back into Turkish society.
Snow is layered into its various and varied elements: A love story, an intimate analysis of the issue of religious fundamentalism and an intricately plotted mystery that pits an artist against the vicious savagery of both the secularists as well as the Islamists.
The novel is a finely textured and realistically plotted work that is suffused with a sense of what we have been taught to see as the “Kafka-esque”; an upside-down world where things are not always as they seem. Young girls appear to be repressed by the government policy of no head scarves and yet we continue to see the crass manipulations of the Islamists and the confusions that have arisen due to the dehumanizing vulgarity of both the marketplace as well as the harshness of a political system, known in Turkey as Kemalism, that has sought to stifle freedom of religion and expression with an iron fist.
Throughout the novel we see KA moving through the town of Kars with the eye of a reporter and the heart and soul of a poet. KA is a sensitive artist who has been thrown into a maelstrom of atavistic forces – secular and religious – that have caused the hardening of Turkish society and its political culture.
The relationship of KA and Ipek is tenuous and we are never quite clear what it is that Ipek is really doing and why she is doing it. KA forms relationships with a number of the young men who live at the margins of this Islamist world – young men who have been brutalized by a nightmare society that has not opened itself to the true values of culture and democracy as we know those values here in the West.
Pamuk thus skewers the Turkish pretence to being a truly Western state and pines for the clarity that his characters lack. KA is a model for the tribulations of the Turkish humanist who frequently looks back at Ottoman history and sees more productive and regenerative models of culture and civilization. The motif of SNOW that permeates this richly textured and brilliantly written work is a model of the debilitation and the paralyzing stasis that has overtaken Turkish civilization at present.
As the SNOW falls throughout the novel, the palpable sense of dysfunction and danger increases. Even as people fall in and out of love and in and out of religion and culture, the novel tracks a burning failure at the heart of Turkish society, a failure that has yet to be acknowledged within the corridors of power in Istanbul and Ankara. Just like the French passion for secularist repression of religious expression, the Turkish traditions of Kemalism have cordoned off Islamic forms of expression as a sign of incipient terrorism and criminality.
And indeed, the fundamentalists have used the issue of the head scarf as a means to rally their “troops” and try to form a beachhead against the onslaught of the modern values of liberalism and pluralism. The fundamentalists will frequently use the values and tactics of democracy in order to destroy any democratic order.
And this is the genius of Orhan Pamuk’s writing: In My Name is Red and Snow he has written of a world that punishes freedom of thought from both the religious and secular standpoints. Pamuk shows the struggle of the artist against those who would have him silenced and suppressed. Pamuk thus fits into the paradigm of a Levantine Humanist as we have been expressing it in these pages: He demands a polyglot reality where human freedom is not limited and where repression can come from any angle and from any group.
Snow is a rich novel of ideas and of human characters who struggle to express their love, their humanity and their fear of what has debilitated them. It is a revolutionary work that seeks to look into the hearts and minds of ordinary people who are caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The style of the novel is a mélange of the atmospheric reflexivity of past Pamuk works, but it portends a greater engagement with realism than in his previous work. There is a richly detailed story, centered around KA and his relationship to Ipek and the plot lines that spin out of that love story, that is peopled with characters who exemplify the realities of the current Middle East; characters that are by turns venal, brilliant, vain and completely HUMAN. Pamuk shows that there are no easy answers; life in its staggering complexity leaves us as people with choices to make, choices that we do not always have the ability to understand and process completely. The characters of Snow have been caught in a punishing vortex of hate and war that has left them paralyzed and pathological.
Orhan Pamuk is a writer of rare perspicacity and stylistic brilliance in a Muslim world that has turned in on itself. There are no other writers in the Middle East with a comparable talent. His work echoes, as we have said, the elliptical tonality of Kafka and the post-modern narratology of Eco and Calvino. He frequently, as in this book, becomes a rhetorical presence in his own narratives; in Snow Orhan Pamuk is the narrator of the story and stands in for KA in the latter portions of the novel.
Pamuk is a writer who is deeply entrenched and suffused with the realities of both past and present. Rather than simply call him a historical novelist, it would be better to see him as a HUMANIST writer who has not closed himself off from the rich literary heritage of the spiritual greatness of Islam and the role that religion has in the lives of everyday people.
Pamuk is in this sense a truly OTTOMAN writer who has rejected key tenets of Kemalism and the false sense of security in Turkish modernism. Like Naguib Mahfouz, but in a far more elliptical manner, Pamuk has written an epic representation of the struggle of regular people dealing with their quotidian lives. While Mahfouz in his Cairo Trilogy wrote of the Egyptian middle class and their struggle against British imperialism, Pamuk writes of a post-modern, post-9/11 (the book was completed in December 2001) Turkish civilization that has not successfully modernized and has chucked what was once best about its past.
As we saw earlier this year in the Al Qa’da-linked bombings of Jewish Synagogues in Istanbul, the Ottoman traditions of religious tolerance have been decimated in this brutal war of attrition between the atavistic forces of secularism and religion. The values of pluralism that were once a central feature of Ottoman life have now been destroyed by the extremes of both sides. In Snow we heart that small still voice of a great novelist who tells a very simple yet awful story of human beings trying to live and love in a world that has been corroded by the fanaticisms of ideology.
Snow is one of the great novels of our time from a writer whose deep and abiding knowledge of the past has led him to evaluate life in the present with a rare prescience and sensitivity.
Snow is mandatory reading for those interested in how we live NOW – and how we can bring the Middle East back to the pluralism of its glorious past.
Though gender analysis is the very foundation of feminism, the more complex intersections of transsexuality are often overlooked, and feminism has not always welcomed the participation of trans activists and thinkers.
In this groundbreaking anthology, feminist scholar and trans ally Krista Scott-Dixon takes on the challenge of moving us towards more inclusive transfeminist politics. The 30 essays reflect academic, personal and political perspectives of contributors from Canada, the U.S. and Europe. These include well-known activists and scholars in the field — Bobby Noble, barbara findlay, Miqqi Alicia/Michael Gilbert, Kyle Scanlon, Talia Bettcher, Joshua Goldberg and Caroline White — as well as fresh new voices.
The book is divided into five sections to highlight the intersections between trans and feminist ideas. 'Narratives and Voices' builds on the feminist idea of consciousness-raising, speaking from individual experiences and questions of how to represent oneself in language. 'Identities and Alliances' takes up questions of how identities are produced, maintained and reproduced, and how diverse identities can work collectively. 'Inclusion and Exclusion' examines the notion of 'safe spaces' and 'women-only spaces' in the context of trans challenges such as the Kimberly Nixon v. Vancouver Rape Relief Society case and the entrance policies of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. 'Shelter and Violence' explores the service-provision policies of shelters, as well as the sex-gender system that supports transphobic abuse. The final section, 'Teaching and Transgressing,' looks at pedagogy and classroom practice, critiquing tools of the trade and identifying ways that instructors can bring critical gender studies into the classrooms. The section introductions contextualize the discussion and identify key issues. The collection concludes with suggestions for future research and activism.
Trans/forming Feminisms is an invaluable collection for social justice activists, progressive academics and students, and readers interested in tackling these compelling and challenging issues.
About the Author: Krista Scott-Dixon supervises the development of a research database on gender and work at York University. She also teaches undergraduate courses on work, women and technology, and is the author of Doing IT: Women Working in Information Technology (Sumach Press, 2004).
Book/Screenplay by Ren A. Hakim
Ren A. Hakim made her "world debut" in 1979. Her interest in ancient history, inspired by her Iraqi ancestry, is deep and abiding, as is her love of writing and performance. After attending a broadcast arts school, where she was named "Most Entertaining Air Personality" by her graduating class, Ren went on to work in radio, both behind the microphone and in commercial production. She also studied acting for several years, and has played many featured roles, including, perhaps prophetically, two of literature's most well-known storytellers: Peter Pan's Wendy
SYNOPSIS OF XERXES
There was once another world superpower that was a great melting pot of cultures, a champion of human rights, a forerunner in transit, communication, an economic reformer and a codifier of laws. It was an empire built in the pursuit of unity and the expulsion of evil. Indeed, its architects believed themselves ordained to enforce the will of good; that, in order to ensure peace prevailed on earth, they, as its mandated guardians, had to rule it. The kingdom flourished. Its standard, the eagle, was esteemed by those encompassed by its borders. Its leaders were respected as wise and benevolent, with little exception. Bearing this in mind, one can imagine the incredulity felt throughout the empire when an enemy few had ever heard of crossed the sea and set one of their prestigious capitals afire. The tragedy was labeled an unprovoked attack, perpetrated by evildoers, and incited a near-unanimous demand for revenge. The call would later be satisfied by an ambitious visionary. Little did he know, in bringing to fruition the uncompleted plans of his predecessor, his father, he would also fulfill Biblical prophesy. 'Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all, and by his strength, through his riches, he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia." Daniel 11:2 To the Persians, this imperial ruler was known as Khashayarshah, 'King of Heroes'. To the Hebrews, he was Ahasuerus, who married the Biblical Esther and crowned her queen. To the Greeks, he was a force believed unstoppable, whose name was synonymous with Ares and Zeus -- Xerxes. In 480 B.C., Xerxes led an unprecedented army of nations on a retributive attack against Athens in what would come to be known as the second Greco-Persian War. While one of the most famed campaigns in history, notably for the Battle of Thermopylae, its profundity has been lost in translation and minimized as failed exercise in hegemony. This myopic perception continues to be perpetuated in print, art and on the screen. Greece, at that time, was an extremely fractured nation. Its city-states were constantly at odds with one another. Greek exiles from prominent houses, former and reigning kings entreated Xerxes to take up their cause: to invade the country and bring it into the empire's fold. They were not the only ones begging his ear. The cry for punitive action against the evildoers of Athens continued to sound. Talk of destiny and ideology resonated and ultimately convinced him that military action was not only necessary, but the moral, fated course to take. He would wage war against enemies of the empire and rebuild a nation, too. At least.that was the plan. These events and their consequences have been debated by archeologists, Biblical scholars and other historians for over two millenniums. They have also inspired numerous artisans, including Rembrandt van Rijn, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and the baroque composer, George Frederick Handel. Now, in her 'novelized" screenplay, Xerxes, author Ren A. Hakim tells the tale of the most feared and revered figure of his time, breathing new life into the emperor -- revealing the man. Whether one is a lover of history, action and adventure, spicy intrigue, romance, or looking to take a palpable journey with an identifiable character, they will find what they seek in Xerxes. Deeply moving and richly-layered, it is provocative story which fits many genres, explores timeless themes, and illustrates a past so shockingly parallel with the present, it may change the way people view the current state of world affairs.
Sahab Geographic Institute have published the historical maps of the Persian Gulf in a valuable book.
Ordering this book (as much as you can) is one of the best ways to support PERSIAN GULF ONLINE ORGANIZATION (www.PersianGulfOnline.Org) which is an only organization that protects the name of the Persian Gulf.
Even ordering one copy is effective. If you have friends in universities or cultural organizations you can encourage them to do that as well. It's also a valuable gift for all Persian families.
This book is a sound document to protect the name of the "Persian Gulf". Please read the review about this book in Payvand News:
http://www.payvand.com/news/05/sep/1099.html
Please note that the book is bilingual (English/Persian) and can be used for everyone in the world.
The price of the book for those who live outside of the country is 30 $ + 5 $ for shipping.
If you wish to order you may send your money orders/cheques to Mr. Ala:
Prof. Mohammad Ala
C/O Persian Gulf Org.
PO Box 3251
Alhambra, CA 91803
USA
The book will be sent to your address directly from Tehran.
Thanks for your support.
Best Regards
Pejman
www.artistswithoutfrontiers.com/pakbarzadeh/
Journeys in Iran
Jason Elliot's first book, An Unexpected Light, was an account of his travels through Afghanistan during the war with Russia and the civil war that followed. It captured the country in a moment of paroxysm, and made the extremes of climate and circumstance, the resilience of a people in the grip of war, almost palpable. It won a prize, and comparisons with T E Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
That stunning debut was a hard act to follow, and Elliot took his time, but he has succeeded admirably. This is quite a different book: not a young man's initiative journey across a war-torn landscape, but a mature traveller's adventures through a vast country of 70 million in peacetime. His charm, knowledge of Persian, a few introductions and chance encounters, made him welcome and provided him with gentle companions. The result is a portrait of a nation, and a survey of its long history and heritage. Informed by intelligence, humour, erudition, descriptive power and poetic prose, Mirrors of the Unseen is a joy to read, and a perfect antidote to the current image of Iran in the West.
A taxi-driver in Teheran asks Elliot why he has come to Iran; in order to write a book, he replies. "What is there to write about?", retorts the driver, and there follows a list of what Iran and Iranians have contributed to the world, particularly to Europe, in religion, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, architecture, the arts and crafts, poetry and literature. Among others are the concept of resurrection, the institution of empire, the extraction of water from the desert, the creation of the garden as the reflection of Paradise (paradaiso), the building of domes, and the first Charter of Human Rights. The rest of this engaging and instructive book is the development of that initial enumeration.
Until recently, the West saw Persia through the eyes of the ancient Greeks, who wrote after the Greco-Persian wars: "Herodotus and Xenophon... were the world's first 'Orientalists'" while the Romantics, such as Delacroix, Jerome and Pierre Loti, were "fascinated by the allure of the harem". But recent scholarship, east and west, has provided a more balanced view.
Alexander, who conquered Persia in 330BC, found "a flourishing and sophisticated civilisation", which Elliot describes in his chapter on Persepolis. Plato and Plotinus were influenced by Zoroastrian ideas, while later scholars fled Roman persecution and took refuge in Persian universities. Alexander married two thousand officers to Persian women and left them to run Persia. They ruled for a century and were overthrown by native dynasties until, in in in 640, the Arab conquest ushering in the Islamic era. From then on invaders from the east - Chengiz Khan, Tamerlaine and other Turkish chieftains - devastated the land and decimated its population only to be "seduced by Persia", settle down and start to build.
Shiraz, near Persepolis, is the city of poets and gardens, famous for its architects. Further south, Isfahan rises from the desert like a mirage - one of the most beautiful cities in the world, built by the Safavids in the 16th century. Elliot's lyricism and knowledge make him a perfect guide to the dazzling blue of the domes, the intricacies of tiles and calligraphy, the cypress- and plane-lined roads.
Elliot intended "to give politics a wide berth", but found this impossible on the frontier with Iraq. From a high hill he looks down on Halabja, the Kurdish village whose 6,000 inhabitants were massacred by Saddam with gas given by his "Western friends".
Enchanting and informative, Mirrors of the Unseen is full of funny anecdotes, fortuitous encounters, conversations, parties and picnics. They give an idea of the Iranian people: their propensity to wild conspiracy theories, the young's disenchantment with politics and contempt for their rulers, pollution, humour, hospitality and "exquisite courtesy". It occurred to me that this book would make a lovely birthday present for Tony Blair, and for George W Bush - if only he wanted to learn.
Jason Elliot's first book, An Unexpected Light, was an account of his travels through Afghanistan during the war with Russia and the civil war that followed. It captured the country in a moment of paroxysm, and made the extremes of climate and circumstance, the resilience of a people in the grip of war, almost palpable. It won a prize, and comparisons with T E Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
That stunning debut was a hard act to follow, and Elliot took his time, but he has succeeded admirably. This is quite a different book: not a young man's initiative journey across a war-torn landscape, but a mature traveller's adventures through a vast country of 70 million in peacetime. His charm, knowledge of Persian, a few introductions and chance encounters, made him welcome and provided him with gentle companions. The result is a portrait of a nation, and a survey of its long history and heritage. Informed by intelligence, humour, erudition, descriptive power and poetic prose, Mirrors of the Unseen is a joy to read, and a perfect antidote to the current image of Iran in the West.
A taxi-driver in Teheran asks Elliot why he has come to Iran; in order to write a book, he replies. "What is there to write about?", retorts the driver, and there follows a list of what Iran and Iranians have contributed to the world, particularly to Europe, in religion, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, architecture, the arts and crafts, poetry and literature. Among others are the concept of resurrection, the institution of empire, the extraction of water from the desert, the creation of the garden as the reflection of Paradise (paradaiso), the building of domes, and the first Charter of Human Rights. The rest of this engaging and instructive book is the development of that initial enumeration.
Until recently, the West saw Persia through the eyes of the ancient Greeks, who wrote after the Greco-Persian wars: "Herodotus and Xenophon... were the world's first 'Orientalists'" while the Romantics, such as Delacroix, Jerome and Pierre Loti, were "fascinated by the allure of the harem". But recent scholarship, east and west, has provided a more balanced view.
Alexander, who conquered Persia in 330BC, found "a flourishing and sophisticated civilisation", which Elliot describes in his chapter on Persepolis. Plato and Plotinus were influenced by Zoroastrian ideas, while later scholars fled Roman persecution and took refuge in Persian universities. Alexander married two thousand officers to Persian women and left them to run Persia. They ruled for a century and were overthrown by native dynasties until, in in in 640, the Arab conquest ushering in the Islamic era. From then on invaders from the east - Chengiz Khan, Tamerlaine and other Turkish chieftains - devastated the land and decimated its population only to be "seduced by Persia", settle down and start to build.
Shiraz, near Persepolis, is the city of poets and gardens, famous for its architects. Further south, Isfahan rises from the desert like a mirage - one of the most beautiful cities in the world, built by the Safavids in the 16th century. Elliot's lyricism and knowledge make him a perfect guide to the dazzling blue of the domes, the intricacies of tiles and calligraphy, the cypress- and plane-lined roads.
Elliot intended "to give politics a wide berth", but found this impossible on the frontier with Iraq. From a high hill he looks down on Halabja, the Kurdish village whose 6,000 inhabitants were massacred by Saddam with gas given by his "Western friends".
Poems by Abbas Kiarostami, Trans. by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkad and Michael Beard.
Reviewed by DORNA KHAZENI
It is April 2000. Abbas Kiarostami is being given the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award by the San Francisco Film Festival. He has a heavy schedule of interviews. He has just returned from Uganda, where in March, at the request of the U.N. he made ABC Africa, a documentary about children orphaned by the AIDS crisis. Characteristically the focus of his gaze shifted away from death and desolation. All he can talk of is the spirited life force that was present amid the poverty and ravages of the country he has just returned from. He speaks of the beauty and majesty of the men and women he's met. He says that if he were ever to abandon his home in Iran, he would seek to become a citizen of Africa because he has never seen the will to live present in so vibrant, forceful, and unabashed a manner; he says he has never known a people so gracious.
In an interlude between two interviews — I am his translator from Farsi to English — he picks up a book. It is a book of poems he has just written. It is in Farsi. He reads the 220-odd poems to me one by one. In the quiet warmth of the afternoon in this room, his reading is measured as he slowly goes through the entire book. I am struck dumb both at the immensity of the moment, this private audience with a master of the world cinema, a man I venerate, and also daunted by the stark, brilliant, and austere nature of these capsules that fly across the room toward me in a continuum.
********
The poems in Walk with the Wind distill and deliver the world in the same ways Kiarostami's films do. After all, what is poetry but the ability to utter and share one's experience of the world? Time itself stops, and within it the Kiarostami moment begins and ends, like musical time, with its own measure. In film this sort of observation may be hampered by conventions of narrative, a beginning, an end, and characters. In this book of poetry, Kiarostami is not bound by these constraints. Sparse words are effortlessly wedded to the sensory world and result in brilliant illuminations. The ingredients are elemental: night, day, Spring, moonlight, violets, streams, butterfly, cherry blossoms, a snowflake, or a spider diligently weaving its web. Each poem is a journey that lasts a mere instant; in it we are momentary travelers and life itself is revealed to us.
The lyrical quality of Kiarostami's cinematic gaze carries over to these poems. The images are delicate and bold and acutely visual. Nature here is not imbued with mystical content; it is the poet's observation that yields nature's true essence. The seer and the seen become one.
From a crack in the ashen sky
a drop of light
falls
onto spring's first blossom.
******** The more I think
the less I understand
the reason
to fear death so much.
The first time I meet Mr. Kiarostami is 1977. I am his translator at the Telluride Film Festival. Taste of Cherry is showing, its first U.S. screening after it has received the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. In the film a man is attempting to decide whether he should live or kill himself. Throughout the time he spends at the festival, Kiarostami is carrying with him a book of Khayyam's poems. He tells me he is reading it in preparation for his next film. He reads the Khayyam poems, and later, when some Italian guests at the Festival offer us a glass of wine, he reads it to them as well. The film will be The Wind Will Carry Us, in which Kiarostami quotes Khayyam directly. It is set in a far village, a world at once impenetrable, beautiful, and ordinary.
Omar Khayyam (1048-1123) is perhaps better known than some other of the extraordinary Persian poets in the West primarily because of the eloquent, if not always accurate, Edward Fitzgerald translations. Khayyam's poetry is about understanding mortality and the choices we make in the short span of our life.
Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn
I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmur'd — "While you live,
"Drink! — for, once dead, you never shall return."
He proposes pleasure, not as a hedonist, in an "eat, drink, and be merry" sense. Rather, the choice is informed by the wise man's fatal knowledge of mortality and familiarity with death that colors every moment of the present life.
The title of the film The Wind Will Carry Us is that of a Forough Farrokhzad poem. Farrokhzad (1935-1967) and Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) are the twin foundations on which Iran's modern cultural and poetic sensibility is built. Both poets were acutely aware of sensory detail. Forough shook the Iranian world with her passionate verse. Sepehri, a painter and poet, wove a delicate and fragile tapestry of simple, tender, and vibrant colors. Where Is the House of the Friend is inspired by a Sepehri poem, and Kiarostami dedicates the film to him.
This is a translation of the Forough Farrokhzad poem:
In my small night, alas,
The wind has an appointment with the trees,
In my small night there is fear of devastation.
Listen.
Do you hear the dark wind whispering?
I look upon this bliss with alien eyes
I am addicted to my sorrow
Listen.
Do you hear the dark wind whispering?
Now something is happening in the night
The moon is red and agitated
And the roof may cave in at any moment.
The clouds have gathered like a bunch of mourners
And seem to be waiting for the moment of rain.
A moment
And after it, nothing.
Beyond this window the night trembles
And the earth
Will no longer turn.
Beyond this window an enigma worries for you and for me.
Oh you who are so verdant
Place your hands like a burning memory in my hands.
And leave your lips that are warm with life
To the loving caresses of my lips.
The wind will carry us away,
The wind will carry us away.
********
Kiarostami's poems are, however, not love poems. The most striking sentiment in them is an overwhelming sense of solitude.
I arrive alone
I drink alone
I laugh alone
I cry alone
I'm leaving alone.
The subject of Kiarostami's films has always been the collision of the individual and the world. The world in its manifestations remains other, and the protagonist alone must navigate it and make some sense of it. Then, in moments of grace, sometimes the otherness is dissolved. The first 132 poems of this collection consist of pristine observations of nature. This is not realism but brings to find the experience afforded to mystic visionaries. It is the expression of a gaze that is so intrinsically poetic as to eliminate all distance between the viewer and the object viewed. There is no sense of being inside or outside; the poet, the reader, and the subject become one. This is a celebration of life and its mysteries.
A parade of characters also are observed much in the same way as the natural elements. The characters appear as archetypes. While there is a thoughtful and penetrating gaze here, there is no direct emotional relationship in the poet's address. Nonetheless, the pervasive sentiment is not of joy but of loneliness, not of love or community but of isolation. There are peasants, nuns, workmen, a blind man, an old woman, an ugly woman, an unloved woman.
A pregnant woman
weeps silently
in a sleeping man's bed.
Or,
An exhausted traveler
on his way alone —
one parsang
from his destination.
The overriding solitude extends to the natural elements in these poems. However, in nature, there is beauty and serenity.
Autumn afternoon:
a sycamore leaf
falls softly
and rests
on its own shadow.
And hesitant exceptions to loneliness,
Yellow violets
violet violets
together
and apart.
And,
Two dragonflies, one male one female
pass in the air
among the oak trees
It is almost halfway through the book when the poet's address shifts from the third person to the first person. This marks the beginning of the group of the eight more or less consecutive poems that all begin with,
The more I think
the less I understand.
Over the course of the next 80 or so poems, the first-person voice intermittently expresses its solitude.
My shadow
keeps me company
this moonlit evening.
And finally there is one poem, and only one, which speaks of another. In Farsi this subject of address need not be identified as male or female. The pronoun is neutral. But the translated verse reads:
She said:
"I just can't"
I wish she had said:
"My heart won't let me."
The meditation on the world that the poet has developed up to this point has not addressed another. Here it becomes personal.
Sadly, it is also a moment when the translation by Karimi-Hakkak and Beard — distinguished scholars and brave men to have undertaken this most difficult task of which they avail themselves, generally speaking, most admirably — falls short. The simple beauty of the Farsi expression is lost. Nonetheless, the sense comes across, even if the ring of the poetry does not.
Yet even though there is heartache, desolation is offset by the staggering beauty of the world that has been constructed over the course of the previous poems. A universe of great beauty that is imperial. Those who inhabit it submit to its order. The poet observes this order painstakingly.
How merciful
That the turtle doesn't see
The little bird's effortless flight.
Or,
Nobody
can do anything
when the sky
decides to rain.
The poem that lends itself to the book's title comes toward the end of this section and near the end of the book. It is reminiscent of Pessoa's poems on Spring in its acute awareness of the poet's mortality.
I have come along with the wind,
on the first day of summer
the wind will carry me along
on the last day of fall.
********
"... his discourse is like a flower which crumbles away no sooner do you touch it, or like a chemical substance which evaporates the moment it comes into contact with a little heat."
— M. Mo'in [in an introduction to the work of
12th-century Islamic mystic Ruzbehan.]
While the traces may only be visible to a knowing eye, in his poems Kiarostami has married to his own unique visionary gaze to a centuries-old tradition of both Persian verse and of mysticism. Stylistically, he has found a form that matches the immediacy of his images. Emotionally, his sparse and thoughtful observations in this collection succeed in delivering a crystal ball in which we can gaze to see our world.
Over last few weeks many of you have asked me to suggest some books for reading. I ahve compiled the following list with link to Amazon.com for further information and purchase.
I hope that you enjoy reading these books.
Reagrds,
Pari Esfandiari
Sara Wheeler on Mirrors of the Unseen, Jason Elliot's enthusiastic tale of Iran and its people
The Guardian
Buy Mirrors of the Unseen at the Guardian bookshop
Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran
by Jason Elliot
520pp, Picador, £16.99
In these sad and dirty days of demonisation and prejudice few books could be more apposite than Jason Elliot's thoughtful portrait of Iran. Focusing on the tradition and spirit of the Persian people and avoiding contemporary politics, Elliot deploys a guileful blend of traveller's tales, topographical description and history - spiced up with a treatise on the meaning of Islamic art - to guide the reader towards an understanding of what that ancient country is, and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not.
A fluent Farsi-speaker, the author has solid experience of the region: his previous book, An Unexpected Light (2000), illuminated his travels in Afghanistan, Iran's eastern neighbour. In this new work he recounts a sequence of journeys over several years and at different seasons. Eschewing, as far as possible, the dismal wastelands of the urban centres, he shapes his voyages around the ruins and glories of old Persia. They embrace Isfahan, the 17th-century capital; the Mongol Ilkhanid northern capitals Sultaniyya and Tabriz in east Azerbaijan; Kurdistan and the remote and vertiginous Iraqi border, a smugglers' route for alcohol and satellite televisions. He takes in the Seljuk-era Assassins' castles near Qazvin, and, south of Shiraz in the heartland of ancient Fars, the pre-Islamic ruins of the first Sasanian palaces. And finally - of course - he inspects the Achaemenid remains at Persepolis.
Travelling on boneshakers and sleeping in dives, he drops in on the zurkhaneh, a kind of ritualised martial-arts arena, on Tehrani cocktail parties where he spies tattoos under the chadors, and on the world's first Caspian horse-breeding centre. He conjures the warm, cetacean puffs of steam from a samovar, the crackle of hollyoak branches and the shadowy mass of a Golestan bear, the trembling lamp of frosted glass in a dining car. As always, it is when he homes in on the tiny detail that the travelogue works best: supine on a stone slab in a hamman he describes watching individual drops of water detach from the ceiling, "feeling the tension grow in my forehead at each looming descent before the meteor-like impact". Everywhere he finds a people disillusioned with the broken promises of the regime - a bone-deep weariness and resentment. There is no crowing about uranium enrichment among ordinary Iranians. They are more interested in whether Elliot knows someone at the embassy.
In the early chapters Elliot struggles to find a voice, but as the pages turn he emerges as a sympathetic companion on the dusty road, lying to young women about his age and coping with disappointments with warm good humour (a taxi driver, he says, "robbed me courteously"). In a village near Yadz he spends the evening propped up against a cold stone wall deafened by the shouts of his hosts and the blare of the ubiquitous television. "I had often wondered," he confesses, "what it might be like to shoot a television." Always game for a waterpipe with a Turkman or a coy conversation with a veiled beauty, his puppy-like enthusiasm rarely wanes, yet he also has a sharp eye for the bathetic, missing one major site because he is sitting on the wrong side of the bus.
Elliot is not a stylist, but his prose is clear, notwithstanding a tendency to overwrite. "At midday," he explains, "funnelled through octagonal crowning oculi, the light drives downwards like an incandescent whirlpool, into which anyone passing seems to momentarily ignite like a human filament before being extinguished on the far side." Sustaining the narrative drive with lashings of direct speech, he elsewhere fails to win the war against cliché (an enemy wreaks havoc, the shah's days are numbered and every baleful event is heralded as "fateful"). But he quotes judiciously from his predecessors among travellers to Iran, notably, of course, Robert Byron, an author who has become such a Homeric figure in the consciousness of contemporary travel writers. (Byron, Elliot can't stop himself remarking, "spoke hardly a word of Persian".) He also quotes wisely from Hafez and the other great Persian poets, noting what a vital role poetry plays in the national psyche.
He has a firm grasp of history, whether describing the cavalry assault of Hulegu Khan and the ensuing Pax Mongolica, or Parthian fratricide and the volleys of flaming naptha bombs and jars of bloodsucking flies catapulted at Septimius Severus from within the besieged walls of Babylon. (He is less sure-footed off his patch, locating Herodotus 300 years too late in the second century BC.) As dynasties rise and fall he explores the concept of Persian identity. Any writer seeking to explain a culture east of Italy must be alert to the vital spiritual dimension, that mystical aspect of the human condition so conspicuously absent in the rootless west. Elliot is wonderful on this. In one of the best passages in the book he invokes Kipling's never-meeting twain, rightly regretting the debasing of even the words "mystic" and "spiritual" in our own language. Everyone struggling to understand Iran must grasp the fundamental truth of this gulf. To underline its importance, Elliot has taken as his title a reference to the Persian acknowledgement of an unseen world - ghayb - from which the soul receives its most rarefied nourishment. Everything existing in the visible world is the imperfect mirror of this hidden reality.
Through all his travel stories and all his historiography, Elliot traces the influence and development of the visual arts, and it is above all architecture that compels him. Many pages of intricate description reveal how viscerally he responds to "reciprocating melodies of light and colour", sensing pressed behind them "a language longing to be heard". He makes discoveries about site geometry, finding underlying principles of numbers and harmony - at one point he sits up till dawn with a map and a pair of spills, measuring the orientation of the Isfahan mosques. Alongside the physical journey the narrative thread follows his internal voyage towards an understanding of Persian architecture, calligraphy and painting. Mirrors of the Unseen is, above all else, an apologia for the unifying underlying meaning of Islamic art. Elliot leads the reader by the hand along his own trajectory of understanding, showing his presuppositions confounded and his "eyes being slowly retrained". Two hundred pages in (still less than half way), he announces: "I felt that, very slowly, I was actually learning something."
His bonnet is buzzing with bees, the noisiest of which concerns the metaphysics of the art he so admires. These have been summarily overlooked by scholars, Elliot reckons. Indeed he claims to have personally discovered layers of meaning ignored by thousands of pages of academic inquiry. "Islamic art as a whole," he states, "is seen by the great majority of art historians as essentially decorative, and lacking in any underlying principles." Only Arthur Upham Pope, author of the magisterial 15-volume Survey of Persian Art and Scholarship, is let off the hook. Otherwise Elliot accuses everyone who has ever thought about an old Persian building of judging that Islamic art cannot possess anything so vague as a "spirit". As the book unfurls he returns obsessively to this theme and becomes increasingly aggressive about it, even suggesting that "nearly all" contemporary studies of Islamic art converge on the verdict that it is "wholly lacking in ontological significance". Perhaps. It is a measure of Elliot's self-absorption that he thinks he is the first to think about meaning. But he does have some fresh ideas, and it is bold of him to make the rubbishing of generations of scholarship the central plank of his book.
Like Byron, Elliot displays a daring approach to form, even including a handful of sorties into fictional recreation of historical scenes. Striving to deliver history with a light touch, at one point he interpolates a footnote about a University Challenge contest between rationalists (Aristotle to Freud) and Mystics (Pythagoras to Gurdjieff), with King Solomon in the Paxman seat. He brings it off triumphantly, overall, though almost every chapter would have benefited from distillation. At 520 pages, few readers will wish this book longer (to be fair, before the longest essay on the origins and history of Islamic art he inserts a caveat lector advising uninterested readers to skip to the next chapter). Mirrors of the Unseen is not without problems. But it is indubitably important. It is a work of profound thought, imagination, passion and ambition. It should be widely read. And not, I hope, as the bombs are falling.
· Sara Wheeler's books include Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (Cape).
By Ata Servati
ISBN: 1-4134-5552-2
Hardcover, 2006
Ata Servati has written an interesting book that is well worth reading. It is not a conventional non-fiction book, as one might hope for in a biography. Yet, it is not an historical novel, though many will think it is closer to being that. Actually, it reads more like a movie script that floats over the action rather than being intimately involved in it. Who will be the actor that fleshes out the rash humanity of Howard Baskerville? Will it be Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, or some brash newcomer? Perhaps it will be a movie someday, but in the meantime you can enjoy this book simply because it demonstrates how unclouded idealism can engender mutual respect among people.
Kami Evans Gives Graduates and Career Changers The Next Step
LONDON, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Author and consultant, Kami Naraghi Evans (http://www.kamievans.com), announces the launch of her book, The Next Step. Billed as 'A Guide to Professional Responsibility' and available from 29 March, the book ADVERTISEMENT
gives recent graduates and career changers a wealth of practical advice on how to realise their ideas and achieve success.
In the thought-provoking book, Naraghi Evans - who has successfully worked in international technology sector management consulting and training since 1995 - shares her experiences and gives examples of how to overcome limitations and fears to achieve a 'go getting' lifestyle.
The book gives readers advice on assessing their life, knowing their audience, investing in themselves, managing expectations, learning to fail, dealing with responsibility and authority, building influence, and putting plans into action - amongst other invaluable insights drawing from historical, economic, political, racial, ecological and medical concepts.
Naraghi Evans, author, comments: 'I wrote The Next Step to provide those who are venturing into fresh careers with a guide that tackles all the uncertainties they're likely to face. My aim is to communicate what to look out for in business and in life.'
She adds: 'The world can look rather limited to university leavers. However, anything is possible as long as you understand the rules and have a strategy to support your goals and reach for success.'
The business portal, Startups (http://www.statups.co.uk), described The Next Step as 'a great book for recent graduates and career changers that need a little guidance once entering the unfamiliar and intimidating working world'.
Naraghi Evans was interviewed at the NGR event on March 11th on which she gives her views about the transition from school to working life. The programme is to appear on ITV Meridian's in June 2005,
Naraghi Evans next event will be at the Royal Aeronautical Society on May 5th at 12:30PM sponsored by KCWC.
With a RRP of 7.99 GBP, The Next Step (ISBN 1412012686) can be bought on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk) or from http://books.global-investor.com/books/.
Notes to Editors:
Kami Evans was born in New York City in 1970 to Persian parents. She received a BSc in Corporate Communications degree from Southern Connecticut State University in 1992. She then began a career in sales and business development before co-founding her first business, Newton Solutions, Inc., in 1997. The company provided interim managers and management consultants to Fortune 500 and FTSE (news) 100 companies and gave Kami a wealth of international business experience which she passes on to recent graduates and career changers in The Next Step.
Wednesday March 30, 08:01 AM
Kami Evans Gives Graduates and Career Changers The Next Step
LONDON, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Author and consultant, Kami Naraghi Evans (http://www.kamievans.com), announces the launch of her book, The Next Step. Billed as 'A Guide to Professional Responsibility' and available from 29 March, the book ADVERTISEMENT
gives recent graduates and career changers a wealth of practical advice on how to realise their ideas and achieve success.
In the thought-provoking book, Naraghi Evans - who has successfully worked in international technology sector management consulting and training since 1995 - shares her experiences and gives examples of how to overcome limitations and fears to achieve a 'go getting' lifestyle.
The book gives readers advice on assessing their life, knowing their audience, investing in themselves, managing expectations, learning to fail, dealing with responsibility and authority, building influence, and putting plans into action - amongst other invaluable insights drawing from historical, economic, political, racial, ecological and medical concepts.
Naraghi Evans, author, comments: 'I wrote The Next Step to provide those who are venturing into fresh careers with a guide that tackles all the uncertainties they're likely to face. My aim is to communicate what to look out for in business and in life.'
She adds: 'The world can look rather limited to university leavers. However, anything is possible as long as you understand the rules and have a strategy to support your goals and reach for success.'
The business portal, Startups (http://www.statups.co.uk), described The Next Step as 'a great book for recent graduates and career changers that need a little guidance once entering the unfamiliar and intimidating working world'.
Naraghi Evans was interviewed at the NGR event on March 11th on which she gives her views about the transition from school to working life. The programme is to appear on ITV Meridian's in June 2005,
Naraghi Evans next event will be at the Royal Aeronautical Society on May 5th at 12:30PM sponsored by KCWC.
With a RRP of 7.99 GBP, The Next Step (ISBN 1412012686) can be bought on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk) or from http://books.global-investor.com/books/.
Notes to Editors:
Kami Evans was born in New York City in 1970 to Persian parents. She received a BSc in Corporate Communications degree from Southern Connecticut State University in 1992. She then began a career in sales and business development before co-founding her first business, Newton Solutions, Inc., in 1997. The company provided interim managers and management consultants to Fortune 500 and FTSE (news) 100 companies and gave Kami a wealth of international business experience which she passes on to recent graduates and career changers in The Next Step.
Reply 
It is April 2000. Abbas Kiarostami is being given the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award by the San Francisco Film Festival. He has a heavy schedule of interviews. He has just returned from Uganda, where in March, at the request of the U.N. he made ABC Africa, a documentary about children orphaned by the AIDS crisis. Characteristically the focus of his gaze shifted away from death and desolation. All he can talk of is the spirited life force that was present amid the poverty and ravages of the country he has just returned from. He speaks of the beauty and majesty of the men and women he's met. He says that if he were ever to abandon his home in Iran, he would seek to become a citizen of Africa because he has never seen the will to live present in so vibrant, forceful, and unabashed a manner; he says he has never known a people so gracious.
The more I think
Kiarostami's poems are, however, not love poems. The most striking sentiment in them is an overwhelming sense of solitude.
