Diaspora

What Are the Odds?

Sometimes practicing law can make you jaded and a pessimist. But every once in a while a client who has a clear dream comes in the door and reminds you of the power of perseverance. Today I get a call from a young Iranian man currently studying in Turkey, who was recently denied an F-1 student visa for attending a community college in the U.S., without a formal interview. Of course they don’t give visas for attending a community college to Iranians, are you kidding?>>>

Happily Never After

When fairytales inform us that 'they all lived happily ever after', they never specify how happily - or for how long that 'ever after' lasted. If it really was for ever after, then it still must be happening now. Somewhere, in some hidden corner of our world, must be loads of ageing but blissful princes, princesses, frogs, dragons, kings and witches. Eternity is a tricky concept. We just don't have time to sit around long enough to figure out what it means. But 'happiness' is a much easier idea to understand>>>

Fighting Ignorance

While reading War on Error by Melody Moezzi, I was overcome by awe for a young Iranian-American woman who is brave enough to take a chance and defend a topic that has caused much animosity. This may be the most difficult time for Muslims around the world to raise their voices, but it’s ten times more so for those in the US. In the words of one interviewee, “It has just become such a Pavlovian response in this country: if terrorism, then Islam.”>>>

Green Card Love

I am doing this last one for my mom, I tell myself. I could have easily gotten out of it but felt bad for my mom and her never-ending efforts to set me up on dates. So I finally agree to see some random suitor who is the brother of my second cousin’s friend. After all, this is Iran and everyone has a cousin who has a friend who has a brother who is single. Right off the bat, I don’t like his voice when he calls me. Nonetheless, I still go along with the process>>>

I refuse to be a victim

For me it began with my children telling me that I was not white. The first suggestion had come after the birth of my first child as the nurse explained the bruise on my child’s backside as a “Mongolian mark” to signify she’d have a darker skin. Convinced that the woman must have dropped the baby and was just covering up, I dismissed the idea. When my daughter grew up “tanned”, I convinced myself that if she stayed out of the sun, she’d be white as a “Lilly.”>>>

Paris Tragedy

And there are moments that no grief can do justice to the level of sadness and sorrows. Last Saturday our day was shattered with news that one cannot comprehend and accept. It was short, our friend's young daughter Jasmine Jahanshahi was killed in a fire in Paris. The story was devastating, especially if you knew that Yassi's family was already struggling with difficulties of a different sort. "Yassi", a junior at University of California, Berkeley, hesitated to join the student exchange program in France last Fall, saying that she rather stay few more months with her family>>>

How do you say...?

Everyone on my dad’s side of the family speaks Persian. At family reunions they all jabber like exotic birds, their hands spinning and twirling for emphasis. Every so often I catch a word that I know, or my name, and I try hard to make out what’s going on, but I never can.  So I just sit there, pretending I’m having fun, and waiting for someone to translate for me. Besides my mom, I am the only one who doesn’t understand. You would think having someone like me would make me feel better, but it doesn’t>>>

شیرینی‌ عید با معلم نقاشی‌

در این اوضاع و احوال، تهران فقط در ایام عید قابل بازدید است. سال پیش، هوا ملایم و لطیف بود؛ مثل همان موقع که آقا محمد خان عاشق پایتخت جدیدش شد! همه زده بودند بیرون، و جمعیت شهر رسیده بود به حداکثر ظرفیت مجاز برای زیست انسانی‌ - یعنی‌ چیزی حدود دو میلیون. مسیر سرازیری از پارک ساعی تا کافه نادری را پیاده آمدم؛ که بنظر من، بهترین روش برای لذت بردن و شناختن هر شهری ست>>>

Norooz Pirooz

I try to look at the positive side. The error in that puzzle seems to have been the kick I needed in my guts. It has told me that even if the world is not celebrating, it’s up to me to make a small haft seen, light Norooz candles, and pray for mankind. After all, this ancient feast is all that’s left of my Iranian-ness, it will forever define my identity and is the legacy I shall leave to my children. I can’t allow anger or sorrow to mar the optimism of vernal equinox>>>

NoRooz NEVER cowbug

Once again, my personal NoRooz tradition and mission of bashing the inherently wrong and unduly horrendous English spelling of nowruz begins like Spring herself, anew. Once again, I carefully prepare to gird my loins as the necessary backlash arrives from those haplessly less versed than I in Anglicus Lactosa, and hopelessly trapped in Encyclopaedia Iranica, and we begin our endless dance once again>>>

Eid Didani ba Skype

In October 2003, I wrote an article about how the world is changing, how the information era is making what we perceived as normal life become obsolete. No more walks to the grocery store, online shopping has taken over Mr Petal shops and Amazon is the way to go, (oh hell where I am they deliver a can of coke with a phone call…for Free!). The change is so vast that we are seeing classic symptoms; regimes collapsing; Old orders retreating; Essential commodity costs rocketing, and earthquakes telling us as men we are certainly not the super power. By the time we reach the equinox, on March 21 god knows where we maybe!>>>