My new piece on Roozonline website (in Persian)

Here is the link.

My new piece on Khodnevis website (in Persian)

For those of you who know Persian, here is my new piece on Khodnevis website.

"I owe myself life"

I wanna get back to writing about my personal takes on life, let's give sociopolitical themes a break. After all my 'personal' Facebook page seems politicized enough so why not utilize this place to fill the void? I am writing because of a touching experience I have had with an artistic masterpiece that at the first glance appeared a far cry from my conventional taste: a song by the French heavy metal group "Gojira" titled "L'Enfant Sauvage".  After listening to the song over and over again and savoring every word of it, I am now convinced my musical was frozen in at least a few decades ago.

Dom Lawson from The Guardian gives them a five star review and describes Gojira's new album "a ferociously original piece of work that reaches its electrifying zenith on The Gift of Guilt," being from where I come from I got goose bumps listening thorough "L'Enfant Sauvage", the album's second track as it is as if these words are screamed through the mouth of myself and my peers: 

So long I've been trying to match

It doesn't work I'm trying I don't know The aberration of this world
It killed a part of me and I was raging
The denial
Run away from institutions
I owe myself life


I will respond to this pression anger
There is light in this world I fight for
The reason you won't leave this cage
Betray your child the desire
that you won't serve to reveal yourself
Forgot to create your own life
Anger
Lies
Denial

I try to deal with

The pain is gone

There's no way

Flowing through me

Fereshteh Khomeini and Farah Pahlavi II, faces of Iran's tomorrow

Today is the anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Iran in 1979. A historic event that proved to be a turning point in our contemporary history. Like it or not, this was a day that changed all we were and all that we were yet to become.

Reading all sorts of ideas and commentaries, by those who believe Khomeini's return to be the worst plague that has ever struck our homeland against the ones who would still revere the long passed leader as an "Imam". (somehow an equal to the Christian Saints) I ended up with a moving epiphany. 

Hassan Khomeini, the Ayatollah 's grandson, has posted a photograph of a little girl, presumably his own daughter, named Fereshteh Khomeini. On the other front, Reza Pahlavi, Shah's son and the first in line to the Peacock Throne, has also posted several photos of his youngest daughter, Farah, named after Empress Farah Pahlavi, Reza's mother, Hence: Farah Pahlavi II. 

Look at their faces for yourself. Both kids are cute (as all kids their age are), both are innocent and both could live in a democratic and civilized Iran free from the faults of their past generations. This should be our goal to make that happen, to recreate our motherland and let her embrace all her children. Only that way "Iran will never die". 

"Wherever We Gather is The House of Cinema"

The following article originally appeared on 

the Official Website of Arseh Sevom Civil Society Organization: 

***

Arseh Sevom — “What grace? We would be better off if we forgot about the country and opened an orphanage. People don’t have bread, yet wine is imported from France. There is famine and sickness everywhere. People are forced to pay even for their breathing. The rain of blessings is bestowed upon us for the sake of His Majesty but flood and earthquake descend for the wrongdoings of the people. We have more executioners than barbers. Beheading is easier than circumcision. People don’t look like humans anymore, their foreheads are stigmatized with the seal of smallpox. Their eyes are languid from trachoma and their faces are skinny from opium…”

This was a monologue from a classic Iranian movie, ‘Haji Washington’, by the late Ali Hatami, the renowned Iranian director whose signature nostalgic view of the old Iran is celebrated by many Iranians –a style that won him the title of ‘the most Iranian film maker’. Haji Washington was produced in 1982, three years after the victory of the Islamic revolution, and it was immediately banned.

For the past 32 years there has been a complex relationship between the Iranian cinema industry and the Islamic republic. The ideologues of the Islamic revolution of 1979 sought justice and independence, dismissing the Shah as the figurehead of the status quo and opposing the West. The dawn of 1979 revolution started out with the mass persecution of actors, actresses, singers, musicians, dancers and other Iranian media figures. They were accused of having acted as accomplices of the former regime in propagating Western values – hence ‘westoxification’. Many were forced to sign repentance letters in revolutionary courts from the ‘mischief’ they had committed, for tainting youths’ minds and spreading ‘Western corrupt values’ in the society. The new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, justified their approach by famously arguing that they were “not against the cinema but against prostitution.”

My Commentary on Aljazeera's "Listening Post"

Quoted from Listening Post program blog: 

Over the past couple of months, Iran has been in the news, and the news has not been good. There was the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat. Then came the International Atomic Agency's latest report on the country's nuclear programme. And in November, hundreds of Iranians stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Behind the headlines however, there has been another story - Iran's media conflict with the West, especially the UK.

Within Iran, BBC's Persian service is on the authorities' blacklist and the channel's signal into the country is regularly jammed. Journalists can be arrested on mere suspicion of working for the BBC. On the flip side, Iran claims that Britain inflicts unfair fines and regulations on its state-funded international news channel Press TV. The war between the countries and the broadcasters has a long history and is getting progressively more heated. In Our News Divide this week, we take a closer look at the media crossfire between London and Tehran. 

Fighting for Women’s Rights: An Interview with Mahnaz Afkhami

This interview was originally published on Arseh Sevom Civil Society Zine. 

Link: http://www.arsehsevom.net/zine/?p=151

Hooman Askary reports on his discussion with the former minister of women’s affairs in pre-revolution Iran, Mahnaz Afkhami. She links the century long struggle of Iranian women for equal protection under the law to the demonstrations that emerged in 2009 after the flawed presidential elections in Iran. Afkhami states, “The green movement in Iran is the continuation of what had been started nearly a century before and gone through ups and downs, changes and evolutionary and revolutionary transformations.”

For more than three decades, the rare images of women coming out of Iran primarily showed them in the required Islamic hijab, implying absolute compliance and complacency. Disparate accounts seldom raised doubts about the way women saw their role in society. Information and communication technologies altered that image once and for all. The world was able to see different images of Iranian women through the lens of netizens. It appeared that the imagined complacency had never even existed in the first place. In 2009, Iranian women really made the world stop and notice. They were the pioneers of the national opposition and demonstrations against the Islamic Republic which became known as the Green Movement. That movement soon became personified by a young woman who lost her life to a bullet from the Basiji militia. Unlike most of the national heroes of Iranian patriarchal society, a young woman, Neda, became the face of the nation. She was special because she was not special at all. She was the Iranian girl next door; one worlds apart from the image endorsed by the Islamic Republic.

To read the complete text, click on this link.