Ordak

استیو

2011-10-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

steve.

2011-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

إِنَّالِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on." ~ Steve Jobs

این کجا و آن کجا

2011-10-05T06:06:00.000-07:00

جای موسی کوه طور و جای احمد تاق عرش
هردو یک معراج اما این کجا و آن کجا ؟

دانة فلفل سیاه و خالمهرویان سیاه

هر دو یک خال اند اما این کجا و آن کجا ؟

The city as a sacred place

2011-10-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

At the end of the third Punic war, when invading Romans stood ready to raze ancient Carthage to the ground, one citizen pleaded with the victors in the poignant appeal below, recorded by Appian. For Yi-Fu Tuan, this is a telling account of a primordial relationship between a society and the places it has come to love. The city, through intense, sustained connection, through the memories and stories we weave around its familiar alleys, can achieve a sacred, personified character.

"This is what we have to say concerningthe former treaties and those made with yourselves. If you do not careto hear it we will omit it altogether and have recourse to prayers andtears, the one refuge of the unfortunate, for which there is ample occasionin the greatness of our calamity.

We beseech you, in behalf of an ancient city founded by command of thegods, in behalf of a glory that has become great and a name pervading thewhole world, of the many temples it contains and of its gods who have doneyou no wrong. Do not deprive them of their festivals, solemnities, andsacrifices. Deprive not the dead who have never harmed you, of the offeringswhich their children bring to their tombs. If you have pity for us (asyou say that out of pity you yield us another dwelling place), spare ourshrines, spare our forum, respect the deity who presides over our council,and all else that is dear and precious to the living. What fear can youhave of Carthage when you are in possession of our ships and our arms andour hateful elephants?

As to a change of dwelling place (if that is considered in the lightof a consolation), it is impracticable for our people, a countless numberof whom get their living by the sea, to move into the country. We proposean alternative more desirable for us and more glorious for you. Spare thecity which has done you no harm, but if you please, kill us, whom you haveordered to move away. In this way you will seem to vent your wrath uponmen, not upon temples, gods, tombs, and an innocent city."

And to this, Yi-Fu Tuan adds a thought provoking commentary: "Suppose that Martians have invaded America and are at the gates of Minneapolis. It is hard to believe that our city councilors will plead with the Martians to kill us but save Nicollet Mall, which has done them no harm". Even if we can't relate to the sentiments of ancient urbanites, with their patron gods and foundation myths, we can still reflect on those places that evoke intense emotions, even when we know they are probably imaginary constructions of "homeland"

بلخی

2011-10-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

یہ عشق نہیں آسان، بس اتنا سمجھ لیجئے
ایک آ گ کا دریا ہے اور ڈوب کے جانا ہے

چوپان

2011-10-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

گر بدین سان زیست باید پست

من چه بی شرمم اگر فانوس عمرم را به رسوائی نیاویزم

بر بلندِ کاجِ خشکِ کوچه بن بست

گر بدین سان زیست باید پاک

من چه ناپاکم اگر ننشانم از ایمان خود چون کوه

یادگاری جاودانه بر تراز بی بقای خاک

احمد شاملو

Occasions

2011-10-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

"Intimacy between two persons does not require knowing the details of each other’s life; it glows in moments of true awareness and exchange. Each intimate exchange has a locale which partakes in the quality of the human encounter. There are as many intimate places as there are occasions where human beings truly connect. What are such places like? They are elusive and personal. They may be etched in the recesses of memory and yield intense satisfaction upon recall, but they are not recorded like snapshots in the family album, nor perceived as general symbols like fireplace, chair, bed and living room that invite intricate explication. One can no more deliberately design such places than one can plan, with any guarantee of success, the occasions of genuine human exchange.” - Yi Fu Tuan, Space and Place

young farmers

2011-09-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

بوی بهبود ز اوضاع جهان می‌شنوم
شادی آورد گل و باد صبا شاد آمد

9/11/01 - 9/11/11

2011-09-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, if someone were to have told me where I was going to be today, I would have believed it, but only just.

pen and slate

2011-09-10T11:41:00.000-07:00

متاع لوح و قلم چھن گئی تو کیا غم ہے

کہ خونِ دل میں ڈبو لی ہیں انگلیاں میں نے

زباں پہ مہر لگی ہے تو کیا، کہ رکھ دی ہے

ہر ایک حلقۂ زنجیر میں زباں میں نے

فیض احمد فیض

And why should it pain me that you've taken the worth of my pen and slate?
My fingers are already dipped in the blood of my heart.
And what of it, that you've stamped a seal of silence on my tongue?
All I've said lies before me as links upon a chain.
~ Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Local Networks

2011-07-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

So I was all thinking about FarmVille the other day, right? And I'm all like, why don't people, you know, stop growing magic elephants and stuff and start growing actual vegetables? And start to think, well, maybe it's because FarmVille is all social and fun and stuff, but gardening, especially in the suburbs is pretty lonely and depressing...so why doesn't someone (me) start a site devoted to bringing all the amazing benefits of social networking to real people growing real stuff? Well, it turns out someone, and by someone I mean pretty much everyone, thought of that too and so here's a list of some pretty amazing sites devoted to making gardening cool and social again. Read this article, it says all the stuff I was going to say about this here.

Gardening Network: http://www.gardening-network.com/
Folia - Social Garden Tracker and Organizer: http://myfolia.com/
Oh My Bloom: http://www.ohmybloom.com/profiles/members/
Your Garden Show: http://www.yourgardenshow.com/
Freedom Gardens: http://freedomgardens.org/

Oh, and you have some other really cool ones, too, that bring Gardening enthusiasts together with people who have extra land. If you know anything about suburbia, you know that everyone has extra land.

We Patch: http://www.wepatch.org/
Yardsharing: http://yardsharing.org/

I am thrilled to hear about these online ways of bringing folks together. But ultimately, they represent a way of coping with rather than addressing the root of the problem. These encounters are still "point to point" and generally away from public view. They won't take the place of genuine public spaces, public gardens and neighborhoods full of people invested in the common good.

In any event, the specialized and then localized garden sites pointed me in the direction of a new and growing trend in networking, that is, hyperlocal and neighborhood social networks. Residents organizing, sharing ideas and interacting with management to better take charge of issues that effect them, creating real physical communities that break the isolation of urban life. Cool:

DeHood: http://www.dehood.com/home
Meet the Neighbors: http://www.meettheneighbors.org
Life At: http://www.lifeat.com/
i-Neighbors: http://www.i-neighbors.org/

Sense and Suitability

2011-07-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

Word on the street is that, back in the day, the government actually encouraged people to plant real food in their yards. Right. Well, last week, a woman in Oak Park, Michigan was fined and threatened with imprisonment for growing vegetables on her own land. Authorities charged Mrs. Julie Bass with a misdemeanor for refusing to uproot her garden. City ordinance states that grass or other "suitable living plant material" should cover unpaved land, which makes enough sense to you and me. Ah, but wait:

Oak Park’s Planning and Technology Director Kevin Rulkowski says, “If you look at the dictionary, suitable means common. You can look all throughout the city and you'll never find another vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard.”

Because in Rulkowski's world, suitable means common and common means suitable, what is now uncommon is destined to be forever unsuitable; for none may render the uncommon common without first engaging in the ill-suited, and by extension, illegal. Do you follow?

After the story, pretty much everyone and their dog made a beeline for Merriam Webster's definition of suitable and found no mention of "common". You can follow the unraveling hilarity here.

Void where not Suitable

The proper response seems clear enough. Everyone should emulate the work of our Julie Bass, because in the absurdistan that is America's suburbs, growing vegetables on your own land is a revolutionary act. Julie is writing all about this on her blog. I think the implications of this case and the attention it receives are going to be huge (or at least, they could be), so tell your friends.

Pedestrian Prisons

2011-07-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

The difference between freedom and captivity is related to the ability to move, to interact with others, to speak in effective, meaningful spaces. The right to health is tied to the ability to access services, real food and environments conducive to basic needs of human beings as social animals. To remove these outlets of behavioral expression is to simulate captivity, to create spaces at odds with necessary conditions for a dignified life.

Returning briefly to the American suburb has reminded me of this. All around, I see intensive grass cultivation at the hands of immigrant laborers while homeowners, inside, tend to their Second Lives and FarmVilles. Zynga, the company that produces FarmVille, was recently valued at around $20 Billion, nearly twice the agricultural GDP of Afghanistan. Naturally, this puts my own and others' grueling and often dangerous work in that country into sobering perspective.

A digital space that augments our social realities is one thing, but when these imitative environments begin replacing our physical lives, they truncate and impoverish our experiences. Undeniably, many people find answers to unmet needs in these digital spaces. My goal is not to indict our online experiences, but simply to wonder aloud; are the mechanics of spacial organization (eg: low walkability and high autodependency) factors in generating these unmet social needs?

I recently found an innovative group in Hyderabad fighting for the “Right to Walk”, the right to live in a walkable city. In Bogota, too, the colorful tenures of Mockus and Peñalosa consistently saw walkability couched in the language of human rights. An exciting new US based website now helps generate a "Walk Score", assessing pedestrian access in neighborhoods there.

The fight to help shape the spaces we inhabit is one that can bring people in diverse geographies closer together. Let's start thinking seriously about pedestrian rights in America, about genuine walkability, and let's start learning from examples overseas to help guide our discussions.

Bangla in Benghazi

2011-02-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

The attendant at Zia international was so pleased I'd visited the country that she bumped my return flight to first class. "Please come back and visit us, sometime!". Following me onto the plane were a large group of Bangladeshi men of various ages, all dressed in dark blue uniforms. On their backs, in letters they could not read, was the logo of the construction company they'd be serving. Each man held a manila folder with a job description written clearly at the top. "Welder", "Sanitation Engineer", "Heavy Equipment Operator", "Pipelayer"....it looked and felt like something out of a dystopian novel.

When I asked Nazrul sitting next to me (until a flight attendant forced him to move) where he and his men were headed, he smiled and said, "Libya". He said he would be there for two years, maybe more, that he knew nothing about the country, and not a word of Arabic. In the unfolding drama that is Bahrain, Libya and beyond, the role of these men, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, will remain largely untold. When all of this is over, will they remain a vulnerable, disposessed class of laborers living in constant fear of deportation?

Perhaps Nazrul made it to Italy as he said he would, maybe he's among the hundreds of deshis now held hostage in eastern Libya. For now, though, all I can think of is a nervous Ghaddafi pacing to and fro in a room somewhere, surrounded by his trusted Amazons, wondering how he got there and where he'll run away to next.
______
Update: Hostages Freed.

Captain Abu Raed

2011-02-19T21:50:00.000-08:00

I once asked my grandfather why, after the revolution overthrew a dictator, our country slipped so quickly into the same dehumanizing oppression. Avoiding the complicated historical answer about war, hostage crisis and geopolitics, he told me that even though the Shah had left, there remained a little shah in the heart of every Iranian. We had to confront that demon before we could truly gain our freedom. Thinking back, I realize what he was saying, about the way a people often internalize the worst traits of the systems they are forced to endure.

I watched Captain Abu Raed last night with this idea, and events in our region, fresh in my mind. In the film, Abu Raed, an elderly airport janitor, brings home an abandoned pilots' hat to his poverty stricken neighborhood. Local children, thinking he is really a pilot, ask him to tell stories of his travels and Abu Raed obliges them. Through this process, he becomes slowly involved in the lives of the children and feels an increasing sense of ownership towards the challenges they face. One boy in particular, Murad, lives with an abusive father who spends his day trying in vain to hawk his wares in the market, returning each night in a drunken rage.

I could not help but wonder where Murad's father got all of his frustration, more so where he got the notion he could inflict horrific daily abuse on his wife and children with near impunity. Was he so different from our dictators, with their security services that do with us as they want with no regard for law or justice? Perhaps when we are too afraid to raise our fists against these leaders, we turn them instead towards the people in our lives who are more vulnerable and disempowered than we are. When we cannot raise our voices in the squares and streets, we raise them in our homes. We internalize the dictatorship and tyranny, identify with the men whose images hover constantly on every empty wall and billboard across town, and create a microcosm of our social order. That the opposite is also true gives me a lot of hope.

فراتر

2011-02-18T21:30:00.000-08:00

گه ملحد و گه دهری و کافر باشد / گه دشمن خلق و فتنه پرور باشد

باید بچشد عذاب تنهایی را / مردی که ز عصر خود فراتر باشد

محمدرضا شفیعی کدکنی -

Cultures of Resistance

2011-02-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

Today I stumbled upon the work of director Iara Lee, a Brazilian of Korean descent who has done amazing work producing films and music that confront militarism and promote peace. What I didn't know, and was very excited to learn, was that she helped produce a music video for Hichkas, pioneers in Persian hiphop featured in Bahman Ghobadi's "No One Knows about Persian Cats". Supporting Capoeira initiatives among Palestinian refugees, skate boarding in Afghanistan, or sustainable farming in Africa, her work is an example of how global perspective has a really important place in facilitating the transfer of peace oriented solutions into new arenas. Check it out!

Nightfall in Tehran

2011-02-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

Nightfall in Tehran. The people have gone out onto their rooftops for the first time in a year. Cries of "Allahu Akbar" through the streets, the same cries we heard last year, and again three decades before that. Friends returning from today's demonstrations in Tehran, (and Tabriz, Kermansha, Isfahan and beyond) this time unfazed by the batons and tear gas, said the people were chanting "Khamenei hayaa kon, Mobarako negaah kon"...Khamenei have some shame, see what became of Mubarak. Elsewhere cries of "Mubarak, Ben Ali, now the turn of Seyyed Ali [Khamenei]".

There was something comforting, the first time around, knowing that Mousavi and Karroubi were there in the streets along with the people, in the illusion that their presence served as a kind protective embrace putting a limit on government brutality. Now, with both figures under house arrest, there is a strange feeling that the people are unhinged, perhaps less safe but certainly more empowered to chart a more confident path. And as upheavals continue unabated in Yemen, Bahrain, Palestine, and Algeria, the poignant slogan of 2009 comes to mind "natarsid, natarsid, ma hame ba ham hastim" (do not be afraid, we are all together here) in the face of official violence. This time, the truth of that powerful idea extends far beyond Iranian borders.

Mubarak Leaves

2011-02-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

How eerie and extraordinary that today, the 22nd of Bahman, is the anniversary of the Iranian revolution of 1979. It is also the first day of a new Egypt, may it heed the lessons of our perilous history and avoid it's sanguinary excesses. May she inspire us as Tunisia inspired her, to fight for liberty in Tehran as they have done in Tahrir, Alexandria and beyond. For the first time since 2009, you've given us hope.

Tahrir in Tehran

2011-02-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

I visited Tehran's Azadi Square for the first time the winter before the election crisis. As I see images streaming in from Cairo, masses camped in the center of town for what is turning into weeks of public defiance, I often try to imagine how this square would look similarly peopled. I wonder how it must have felt for demonstrators standing here three decades ago and again after the 2009 elections. Opposition leaders have requested, and been denied, permits to demonstrate here on the 25th of Bahman in solidarity with activists across the Arab world. This square, with its iconic monument, stands as a quiet, daily reminder of promises yet to be fulfilled and more struggles to come.

On "Third Place"

2011-02-08T22:30:00.001-08:00

In a thought provoking TED talk, award winning architect Ellen Dunham Jones articulates the goals of a new movement in American planning, one to "retrofit suburbia" with the trappings of urban life. This includes the conversion of strip malls and office parks (bankrupted by the recession) into art galleries, libraries, places of worship, community buildings and other thriving centers of suburban culture. The next stage involves active reworking of sprawl environments into walkable mainstreets, complete with public spaces for creative or political expression.

A key concept that stuck with me was Jones' reference to the idea of a "third place" first articulated by Florida sociologist Ray Oldenburg. Where home and work are the first and second places, the Third Place is where civic identity takes shape, social lives are cultivated and culture is produced and shared. Emaciating the Third Place, as has happened in suburbs across America, means isolating citizens, forcing them into costly auto-dependency, and restricting them to television and digital spaces to fill the social vacuum.

Suburban architecture may spell the end of a healthy social life, but the consequences for a viable democratic society are far more acute. In his analysis of mobilizations of the Civil Rights era, Moldova and contemporary Iran, Malcolm Gladwell describes the limits of social media in single handedly redirecting the course of political events (and the dangers of relying on it to do so). Ultimately, it is physical networks, predominantly created through face to face interactions in the Third Place, that are key to any successful mobilization.

This phenomenon is nowhere more directly observable than in Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square, where protesters have created a unique social order shaped by the intersection between political mass action and public space. And regardless of all the social, economic and or regional factors that have gone into this uprising, it is ultimately the mechanics of actual street demonstrations that have played the largest role in shaping Egypt's dramatic revolution (see here for a planning perspective on Cairo).

Poverty and Separation

2011-02-07T00:27:00.000-08:00

In "Suburban Nation", Duany (et all) describe the decline of the mixed income community across America. Many suburban zoning laws prevent these types of communities from emerging, and many home owners associations, afraid of the potential adverse affect on property value, want to keep the poor as far away as possible. This has created a kind of economic apartheid (which often correlates with racial divisions in frightening ways). In the past, economic mobility, up or down, didn't necessarily mean uprooting yourself from your neighborhood. Nowadays, losing your job usually means leaving town altogether. The poor, unless we ourselves are forced to join their ranks, tend to remain safely hidden from view.

The fact that we don't interact with the needy within our own communities, and hence are not capable of helping them directly, creates a void in our moral lives. Looking for ways to satisfy our basic psychological need to help others, we often create imaginary portraits of those we are attempting to aid. And when the reality fails to match these portraits, we become unsettled by the cognitive dissonance and change the channel. The increasingly popular industry known as "voluntourism" is an important symptom of our physical separation. NGO's and aid organizations are scrambling to pander to our perceptions of what the poor should look like, which frequently include romanticizations of poverty.

It's important to be a part of aiding communities far from home, and internationally. But it's also important to create spaces where people, as they experience upward mobility, retain the opportunity to contribute to the lives of their less fortunate neighbors. Separation reinforces the idea in our minds that the poor are a problem, instead of the reality that the poor can be our neighbors, friends and family. Promoting real, mixed income neighborhoods as an alternative to income stratified sprawl is an important part of the solution.

Suburban Nation

2011-01-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

Today I began to read quietly, and then with increasing excitement, through the pages of "Suburban Nation". So completely are we defined by our surroundings that I had the odd sense that my recent life had been exposed to the world in the pages of the introduction, that the authors had taken careful note of my anxieties, apprehensions and frustrations over the course of a given week and codified them into treatise on how not to be.

Where once developers in America were revered as visionaries and immortalized as founding fathers, they now suffered public reputations as vandals and charlatans. They confront angry suburbanites, opposing all growth because the only growth they know is more of the same placeless, faceless and forgettable they have seen bleeding its way across the country. Modern zoning laws, banning most forms of mixed use neighborhoods, prevent the emergence of new Palmer Squares in favor of parking lots. This, and ignorance, greed and not infrequently, the conspicuous absence of any real plan have come together to turn suburban America into a vast cell block, house arrest for the upwardly mobile.

It was poignant and nostalgic to see the old town I once lived in, Mariemont, Ohio, in the pages of the text as an example of successful planning. The blueprint on display was from the early 1920's, but I could still identify the exact location of our old house, the field where we played soccer, the old hotel and the village square. At the time I was too young to understand the blessing, it seemed too normal and expected that life should be this way. At the time, I didn't understand what it meant to be able to walk to school, to see pedestrians out and about, to know your neighbors and to hear the chimes of a community clock tower.

Red Vienna

2011-01-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'd made for Vienna to see the Karl Marx Hof, an apartment complex built when social democrats ran the city in the years following WWI. As a social, aesthetic project, seeing the building taught me a great deal.

Consider something as seemingly trivial as the ideal proportion of building heights to the distances between them. Too tall, and you create a sense of suffocation. Too spread out and the area ceases to be a comforting, protected enclosure. KMH apartments were about three stories high and wrapped around a large, enclosed area that was differentiated from the wider urban context, like the courtyard of a single home.

In a typical urban and suburban setting, most of our encounters are instrumental; we make appointments and we have goals in mind as to what we want from our interactions, be they romantic, commercial and so on. But the KMH welcomed interactions with others for the sole reason that they were part of the architecture of your daily life. Speak to your neighbors, because you share, are invested in, a common space. Real interactions gradually become the foundation stones of real communities.

A great deal of modern planning, along with the digital age, has paradoxically divorced us from space and from the people who are physically present around us. It has given each individual the ability to create their own social apartheid. This problem was particularly acute in my personal diaspora experience as an Iranian American. While my mind was constantly in Iran, where I was powerless to affect direct change, I often didn't know the first thing about issues facing my own neighborhood, where I had the ability to make a real difference.

On issues that matter (eg. environment, social justice) we have no choice but to work together with all types of people, not just those we like or agree with. If strong ties are not cultivated in moments of stability and calm, we cannot expect to rely on them in moments of crisis and upheaval.

I saw in the KMH an attempt to physically turn residents inward, to allow them to identify with common features of their daily lives. My hypothesis: over time, this type of architecture has the ability to translate into more interactions, more dialog, and ultimately, a greater willingness to build a future with others around you.

Space and Life

2011-01-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

I spent my childhood in Austin, shaped by married student housing, full of children, families and community. I swam in Barton Springs and watched the Christmas lights of Zilker Park, now slowly being destroyed by massive development projects. I fed pigeons at the hippy hangouts of UT and sailed through Lake Travis in our bright red family boat. Looking back I feel keenly the realization that as human beings, our personalities, the quality of our lives and interactions are in great measure the products of the physical spaces we live in.

The bustle and smog of Tehran in 90's, the gradual transition of the city's aesthetic, on display on the bodies of women, from navy blue and gray to the colorization of the Khatami years. The terraced homes of Masouleh, the adobe landscapes of Yazd, the great bridge in Esfahan...and then the green streets of that fateful summer, turned to red in full view of twenty first century social media.

My travels took me further afield, to dozens more cities. Some emerging from war, like pockmarked Beirut, Sarajevo and Mostar, where the location of urban killings were marked with red concrete, where lovers made out on benches surrounded by the headstones of Ottoman nobles. Others, like Kabul and Baghlan surrounded by rings of steel, bases and concrete barriers, were still very much at war. The quiet of grey dawns interrupted by the distant thud of a suicide bomb. And still others, like Cairo and Dhaka slums, were scenes of far quieter but equally deadly conflicts over resources, political voice and human dignity.

Fez, Istanbul, Seville, Zagreb, Vienna, Damascus, Mecca, Medina, London, Los Angeles and beyond. Each city spoke with a unique voice and presented a unique story, of how human beings attempted to interact with their material conditions (and not infrequently, their metaphysical ones), how they sought to create meaning, community, and belonging. Alternatively, they also presented stories of how centers of power attempted to comodify, disempower and atomize residents through deliberate manipulations of space.

I have finally settled on my life's calling. It is to make my mark on this earth by helping shape the spaces that people call home. To plan the cities emerging out of the developing world, and to help guide the trajectories of struggling communities from blight to health and sustainability.

patient, focused.

2010-12-01T03:24:00.000-08:00

"Any culture that is patient and focused enough to spend years working on a single carpet is capable of waiting years and even decades to acheive even greater goals."
- Prince bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi on the Persian, Wikileaks

the amazing life of phillipe ferrier

2010-11-29T01:26:00.000-08:00

"In 1839, while being prosecuted by his creditors, he developed a feeling for adventure. He was recruited as a military instructor by Ḥosayn Khan Ājudān-bāši (q.v.). After his attempt to conquer Herat, countered by the British (1837-38), Moḥammad Shah (q.v.) had sent Ḥosayn Khan on a diplomatic mission to Europe (1839). While in Paris, he endeavored to persuade France to supplant Britain in Persia. To replace the withdrawn British instructors, he recruited French officers and artisans." Source

"The Persians have been not inaptly called the Frenchmen of the East. Their elegant manners, their wit, their levity, their general scepticism, their taste, their love of display, their hospitality, and their cookery, give them a claim to this title as compared with the surrounding Mohammedan nations. A Persian gentleman is naturally polished and refined. It would be difficult to exceed the grace of his demeanour and his courteous address. He is intimately acquainted with the literature of his country, and will embellish his conversation and his letters with ready and apposite quotations from the poets of his nation. He will be apparently generous and unselfish. His house and its contents are yours. He is your servant and your dearest friend." Source

hafiz far from home

2010-11-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

zolf bar bād made, tā nadahi bar bādam....

Translation of Hafiz' divān, Sarajevo

har gez namirad ān ke delash zendeh shod ze eshq...

Translation of Hafiz' divān, Istanbul

Hafiz commentary in Ottoman and Persian, Istanbul

galata fishermen

2010-11-26T03:56:00.000-08:00

"I hate this place," Samir grumbled in his singsong Damascene as he served up two plates of fresh fish. Mine was horrible, maddeningly full of spikes and wrapped in a cheap bun. "They work me twelve hours a day and treat me like shit all the time. They've got this complex, these Turks, they blame us for bringing down the Ottoman empire. It's the fucking twenty first century, get over it!" He was getting visibly redder in the face as he spoke; he saw in me an opening to vent, and I gladly obliged.

"You know I don't just work here, right, I am studying maritime law, masters, at the university..." Trailed off, distracted, and then suddenly leaped into character as he saw a couple pass by. "WELCOME!" he shouted, with a comically desperate grin, "Take a look at our menu, great prices, service, best fish in town!! Please just take a look, maybe for later..." The tourists awkwardly disentangled themselves and walked on.

Everything about this city makes me giddy and delighted to be here. Not least of these elements are the fishermen who come out each night on the Galata bridge, fishing until all hours of the morning. It was sad to think of Samir's rough patch, that he felt compelled to point out that he was a student, and not just a waiter. It made me think of my own insecurities on being away from the academy. Samir bustled about the store, stopping every once in a while to lament one or another facet of Turkish life.

Babaçan

2010-11-25T03:10:00.000-08:00

Babaçan is an Alevi from Eastern Turkey. Some people radiate peace. He spent a good half hour talking to me about life in his village, in Istanbul, as a musician. I tried to catch bits and pieces with my broken Turkish. He sits in a cold underpass on the Bosphorus from seven to ten each night playing away for passers bye. He couldn't possibly do it for the money, because there didn't seem to be many people walking by, or very many coins in his case.

life and death

2010-11-24T05:54:00.000-08:00

Graves and signs in Mostar, Bosnia & Hercegovina

london, if you're lucky...

2010-11-24T05:25:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Istanbul. Thıs was ıt. I had fınally arrıved. Nothıng says welcome home lıke cart loads of fresh pomegranıtes by the roadsıde, towerıng mınarets, posters of Aası the soap star (I am stıll ıncurrably ın love wıth her) and an entıre floor of a hostel just for me for a spectacular 10 dollars a nıght. Istanbul was every bit as magical as I remembered it.

I popped ınto the fırst and fınest cafe I spotted on the long walk from the bus depot to Sultanahmet. As I began to drift away into cups of Turkısh coffee and baklava, I heard the unmıstakable sounds of a Persıan conversatıon floatıng past the table to my left. What I heard left me badly shaken for the rest of what has turned ınto another ınsomnıac nıght wanderıng through a foreıgn cıty.

You can delıver the rest of the payment on the other sıde. Tell them not to waıt around, ıf he speaks the language already, there ıs no reason to delay thıngs. We can arrange the passports, probably Spanısh or Italıan, documents and everythıng, but let me tell you no funny busıness, brıngıng other people along and so on. You follow ınstructıons and we can get you to Parıs, Berlın, even London ıf you're lucky..

And so I sat there for a half hour more as Masud explaıned the mechanıcs of people smugglıng to hıs newest customer. I was overcome by sadness as I shot a furtıve glance across my table. Mr Hosseını dıdnt look lıke a scruffy crımınal or wıld eyed refugee. He was about to put hıs lıfe ın the hands of a stranger and weave hıs way by land and sea to a far away cıty to buıld a lıfe for himself and his family. I felt so ashamed, as though I had failed this man somehow, as if I had failed to make our country a home where people could live, not turn themselves into contraband in the hopes of a better future.

Welcome to Istanbul, I thought, looking into my coffee grinds. I got up and walked on.

Roads

2010-11-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

The gentle, rolling sounds of Habib Popal and pockmarked roads and hills of a country slowly emerging from a bitter history of incessant war. His whistling took us to a different time.

Hope

2010-11-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

A Kabul licence plate and an Obama/Biden campaign sticker along the infamous Salang Pass, Afghanistan. In this country, there is a story wrapped in the folds of every stone.

Lesson Learned: Don't Whistle in Damascus

2009-11-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

Today I was waiting for an Iranian girl who one of my friends informed me was to arrive in Damascus shortly and needed help finding a hotel in town. It was her first time in Damascus and she spoke no Arabic. Eager as ever to help a fellow traveler (regardless of nationality!), I told her to meet me at the Bab Touma steps at 9:30pm. I waited on the steps for about half an hour with my German housemate to no avail. The traveler, whose name we did not even know, had yet to arrive. Suddenly, a rather splendid thought popped into my Persian head. I would whistle our national song, Ey Iran, in the hopes that, hearing the familiar sound, she would be able to identify us. So I whistled for about one minute before I realized what an immensely stupid idea this was. But before I could unwhistle what I had whistled, a Syrian security guard grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me to the nearest police station over my terrified protestations, saying all the while the Arabic equivalent of "We are going to beat the shit out of you.". Up stairs we went, my German friend following as loyal as ever. Before long, we were standing in front a group of officers, me fumbling through a desperate explanation. The man in charge smiled, slightly embarrassed, said he was sorry, and bid us leave the station. The entire episode could not have taken more than thirty seconds.

My friend never arrived, though she called later on telling me that she had found a place with another helpful Iranian near the Zaynabiyya shrine. I sat on the steps of Bab Touma for a good half hour after that, dizzy with adrenaline, my hands shaking and my forehead dotted with beads of cold sweat. For a moment I was overcome by a desire to leave this country immediately and forever. Then I thought about all those delicious pomegranates...

A day in Konya

2009-11-08T23:55:00.000-08:00

It's hard to describe an encounter with a man who has brought so much to my life. Standing before Mowlana Rumi shattered any pretensions I harbored about having recovered from the romanticism that afflicts so many from my country. A twelve hour night bus took me from Istanbul to Konya. I stepped off the bus, made my way in broken Turkish towards the tram station, and watched the streets of Konya pass me by as I fell deeper and deeper into thought. All the while every line I had ever learned made itself available to my tired thoughts...

beshno az ney, chon hekāyat mikonad...az jodā-ee-hā shekāyat mikonad...
Listen to the reed as it speaks, complaining of separation...

Chanting and stumbling, I walked from the tram station to the nearest restaurant. I hadn't eaten a square meal in what seemed like forever. Only after I entered I realized I was in a MacDonald's. The garish yellow-red interior snapped me out of my romantic daze. I ordered a MacDonald's hamburger for what would be the first time in my life. Underwhelmed by the reaching of yet another momentous benchmark, I finished my meal down to the last perfectly manicured fry and made my way to the shrine.

I walked past the city garden, past mosque after ancient mosque, castles and forts and history that was so common in Turkey I had gotten used to seeing it all sort of lying around. I walked past the Mowlana restaurant, the Mowlana hotel, the Mowlana bank and coffee shop selling Mowlana coffee at prices Mowlana would never be able to afford, past ten thousand little figurines of whirling darvishes, and clock faces of whirling darvishes and signs for two for one deals on whirling darvishes....

At long last, I saw the turquoise dome of the shrine emerging from behind the trees. And then, I did what every self respecting Persian gentleman does in the face of the numinous; I sat myself down and cried big, hot tears, unfazed by the stares of passers by. I walked on, past the jinazah prayer at the masjid to my left, past the ticket booth swarming with pilgrims turned tourists and past the rubble of "renovation" work. Two liras later I was inside the "Mevlana Museum", determined to at least try containing myself. The museum was packed like a bazaar with all of Mowlana's purported stuff, but my watery eyes were fixed on a few simple lines, written in nasta'liq on the far wall...

bāzā, bāzā, harānche hasti, bāzā
gar kāfar-o bot parasti, bāzā
in dargah,dargah-e nā-omeedee neest
sad bār agar towbe shekasti, bāzā

Return, return, whatever you are
if you are kafer or idolater, return
for this house is not the house of hopelessness
If you broke your towbas a hundred times, return...

More tears, more wandering, more encounters with beautiful, warm, friendly Konyans inviting me into their lives without reservation, more tea and shopping later, I was on another bus, heading back to Syria.

Good Morning

2009-10-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Grammar is not a game!

2009-10-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Professor Yusuf wrote a sentence on the board. Zaid stands accused of killing the driver...and his son. (زيد متهم بقتل سايق و إبنه). "Grammar is not a game," he said, calling on a student to close the door, barring all late comers from the lecture hall. The place was packed to the gills with mesmerized Syrians. "This sentence, depending on how we place the diacritical marks on ibn (son) can mean either that Zaid and his son were accused of killing the driver or that one culprit, Zaid, stands accused of killing the driver and the drivers' son. Grammar is not, I repeat, a game. Grammar is life!!"

I was far too captivated by the professor's rapid fire fus'ha to notice the melodramatic aside. He whisked us through the next two hours, I and nearly three hundred freshmen on the edge of our Ottoman era benches. Professor Yusuf threw us stanza after classical stanza, manipulated verses like a magician, an inveritable Gandalf of Grammar, "Is the poet al-Jareer telling us that every heart seeks its beloved, or is he telling us something more, about his own heart in particular. thi'qalbin, is it what it seems, or is thi really short of hathihi?!"

Some, unable to contain themselves, would shout out answers, flail their arms and rise from their seats. All of this went against the almost nineteenth century rules governing teacher student etiquette at Damascus University. "We are an in an adab department after all, let us conduct ourselves with adab," he said, playing on the dual meaning of adab as both grammar and manners. Smiling, Professor Yusuf assured students there would be ample time in the coming classes for outbursts of morphological enthusiasm. Hijabs glittered under the auditorium lights, pens scratched furiously trying to keep up, and the professor soldiered on.

Clearly in over my head, I nevertheless knew I had come to the right place. Language institutes for foreigners? Not I! Hanif al-Batuta, fresh from Bengal, will sit in a Syrian class with Syrian students. And before I realized how desperately behind I was falling, my mind was already dancing with thoughts of those early Persian linguists, to Sibawayh, who composed an elaborate and precise Arabic grammar as early as the 8th century...

I walked out of class, my mind awash with classical Arabic. As for the bemused expression on the face of the roadside fruit vendor, I only realized after the fact that I had asked him something that roughly approximated to, "When, pray, shall yonder bus arrive at this here spot where we are currently standing."

Damascus

2009-09-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Last night I was sitting on the balcony with Madame Raifeh, waiting to hear the sound of cannon fire. The explosion would mark the end of another lackadaisical day of Damascus fasting. Somewhere along the line, I had simply given up on daytime productivity. One day sort of melted into the next as I slept or read or procrastinated the minutes until iftaar. Iftaar, would mean Turkish coffee, and another round of Madame Raifeh's favorite, if slightly underwhelming, Ramadan talkshow. Mischeiviously, she often prods me to call in, feeding me elaborate back stories I should recite in the unlikely event my call goes through.

Raifeh has been living and renting out apartments to foreigners like me in Bab Touma since long before I was born. The years haven't been particularly kind to her. At about sixty, she walks with a visible hunch, the product of a difficult life in rural Sueda. Somehow, though, when she smiles through her sun baked wrinkles, fires up another cigarette, or helps her unimaginably old mother to bed, it becomes easier to picture a vibrant Raifeh's better days.

Last night, after the show, over another round of coffee, in a thick as soup Syrian dialect, Madame Raifeh decided to tell me a story.

"In Sueda, there were no cars, no electricity, no doctors." Drought, she said, had hit the mostly Christian and Druze village for nearly ten years to the dismay of her farmer father. Each day, her mother would walk about two hours to a river, collect enough drinking water for the family, and walk back. I tried to picture Madame Raifeh's mother, quietly sleeping on the sofa, with an urn full of water on her tired shoulders. Schools had just become a part of Suedan life, and a six year old Raifeh was eager to attend. She would, of course, have to bring along her younger sister, with whom she'd share the single pen her father had bought them. Raifeh and her sister would take turns using the pen to finish their assignments.

"And so one day, my sister told me she was sick and didn't want to come to school. This made me happy because I would have the pen all to myself. I was little, I couldn't understand what sickness was. I returned home and asked my sister if she wanted to finish her assignment. Again, she said no, that she was feeling sick, complaining about a pain in her stomach. Without giving it a second thought, I ran off and played with my friends. A few hours later, my sister had died from an infected appendix. Well of course she died, there was no doctor, no medicine or anything! I was bit happy after that, too. All I could understand in my six year old mind was that I would get all of my little sister's old things. That's so sad, right?"

Madame Raifeh said all this with a bubbly, storytelling kind of cheer. And so it was. I finished my coffee, bid Raifeh good night, and took another long walk through old Damascus.

How do you feel about Catfish?

2009-07-18T01:23:00.000-07:00

A Christian man in the park. “The Missionaries,” he complained, “simply tell me to be happy with what I have in life. I’m not impressed. I want my children to have a good education, to travel once in a while. And you, you must return to our country, you must come and work here. In Bangladesh, you can do anything. How do you feel about Catfish? My brother raises catfish, best in the country, straight to export. You put your thoughts together about catfish, and business, and you give me a call, ok? Also, it would make us all extremely happy if you came over for dinner. Meet my family, see our place. Puna? Puna is beautiful, students from everywhere, I studied English literature there. I’ve forgotten all my Marathi, haven't been there in eighteen years. No I’m not going back and why would I? Bangladesh is my home, even though here, I’m a bit of a second and a half class citizen…amar gramer bari? Borishal, such a beautiful place, I can’t even begin to describe it. Just no jobs, no jobs in Borishal, and plenty of rain." ~ Prodip Roy

Irane Gonotontro Mukti Pak

2009-06-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Pictures from the rally of Bangladeshis in Dhaka in solidarity with Iranian democracy activists: http://unheardvoice.net/blog/2009/06/24/iran-mukti/

Inside the Shongshod

2009-06-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Today I was sitting in Jatiyo Shongshod watching a debate about the budget. BNP had boycotted the session, because they only had 30 seats out of 300 anyway, and did not approve of a single word of the proposal from the outset. So things were more peaceful than usual.I could not follow most of the discussion, because it was in Bangla. But I did catch one line, from the agriculture minister tagged onto the end of his speech, from Nathanial Hawthorne:

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”

I sat there, looking at the foreign minister, dressed in her gray sari across the room, surrounded by Awami stalwarts in their penguin uniforms. My thoughts drifted to a fantasy, of stopping her in the hall, of telling her to tell to the PM not to recognize the results of the Iranian election, to stand against the violence and barbarism that the government is inflicting on our people. Our government has barred its teeth against us, the people it was charged to represent. Our soldiers have fired on us, they have aimed their guns and honor at the people they had sworn to protect. And now images of Neda, her desperate family trying in vain to save her life, are stuck in my mind forever.

I am determined to play whatever part I can here in Dhaka. It is so important for people here to know and show support for students who are being persecuted in Iran. Demonstrations in Western capitals will never have the impact that a show of support will here. I hope I can get through to people in Bangladesh that fighting American imperialism is no excuse for the kind of barbarism the government has unleashed on us. I hope I can communicate to my fellow students here that we are all in this together, that nothing, nothing can justify the killing of students, the raiding of their dorms. Tehran is Tienanmen, it is Gaza, it is so much more than a disputed election. The government is now creating the future sites for a thousand Shohid Minars. Their fight and yours has always been the same. See that, and speak out, now, while it still matters. Stand with my people, and let the world know we are not alone.

If you are in Bangladesh, read, sign, and forward this statement: http://www.petitiononline.com/deshiran/petition.html

1979 - 2009

2009-06-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

I must now come to excruciating terms with the fact that I am not, indeed, in Iran at one of the most important junctions of her history. No amount of blog reading or facebook posting will replace this fact. Where were you in '79, I ask the generation of my parents. Where were you in '09, others will ask me. I was in Bangladesh, close, but no cigar. And as the guilt and tears and hopelessness subside, I must wake up and remember why I have come here. I'll soldier on and accept, once again, what I cannot change and fight to change those things I refuse to accept.

The sabzi is more Persian on the other side...

2009-06-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

I count seven Iranian films in this one picture. Iranian films, ones I have never heard of, are available everywhere in Bangladesh. This past winter in Iran, I searched in vain to find Iranian art films by Kiarostami, Makhmalbaaf and others in Tehran's movie stores. I found a great deal that was pirated and Hollywood, and an increasing number of Hindi movies. But it was impossible, literally impossible to find our Iranian films anywhere in Tehran. I bought a copy of "Secret Ballot", an Iranian comedie about our ridiculous elections and burgeoning democracy, and Matir Moina (The Clay Bird), a film about the social fissures that gave birth to modern Bangladesh.

I never, not in my wildest dreams, imagined that the first time I would vote in an Iranian election, I would be doing it in Dhaka. The Iranian community here is small, tight knit and eccentric to the last. One gentlemen had been here for the last 35 years, sneering at the place, railing against its every nook and cranny, but somehow so in love that he learned Urdu, Sanskrit, Hindi, and (as he claimed and I refused to believe) became the first Iranian to learn to read Bengali, which he again claimed no Bengali could write without making numerous spelling mistakes at every go.

Then there was the tea magnate who had lived here for fifty years, and the petro-man and the one who imported carpets and handicrafts to Bangladesh. We all sat around eating watermelons and imported kharboozeh, arguing intensely over whether khiaar was Arabic for cucumber, or whether it was really related to ikhtiyaar and hence never originally the name of a fruit. We then proceeded to find every last word (there are about 17,000) in common between Bengali and Persian, scratching our heads over why z's became j's and s's became sh's and finally, revealing that Mumtaz Mahal was actually an Iranian from Yazd.

Eliminate "Monga" Forever

2009-06-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for direction, consider committing each day of your life from here on out to the singular goal of eliminating seasonal hunger in Bangladesh. Monga affects mostly the northern Upazilas, most severely between Sept-Oct and more mildly between June-July. It occurs when there is a lessening of purchasing power and food reserves before the harvest cycles. The Freedom Foundation here in Dhaka is working out a means of financing "rice banks" in villages, where communities can set aside rice for the lull seasons. The system has to be synchronized just right, or else people will starve. We take food for granted, but reading British accounts of the 1943 famine, I encountered descriptions of people dying in large numbers because the harvest came only a few weeks too late.

We can set up a program on our campus to collaborate with the Freedom Foundation in Dhaka to raise awareness about and get people all over the US and Canada involved in coming up with a way to set up a sustainable rice bank system that can be financed (so it doesn't have to rely on outside funds). I am working on a grant proposal to study the rice bank system next summer, and I'll try to learn as much as I can about the process in the coming weeks.

The people solving these problems in Bangladesh are not super heroes, they are not even geniuses. They are exactly like us, no more or less capable than we are. They have just realized how much they can do while the rest us are only just opening our eyes to all this. I visited the FF headquarters today and spoke to Safi Khan, head of the organization. He is an amazing, dynamic and highly motivated Bangladeshi American who is really committed to what he is doing.

Rickshawalla...

2009-06-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

CNG’s and rickshaws are out. Cost had started adding up, especially paying as I was, the shaddha chamra, the firengi price. I asked a student-looking young man for directions, for college students everywhere are part of a single international brotherhood of the young and hopeful. “You are a guest in my country, if I do not help you then I am shy to saying I am Bangladeshi,” said Mashfique, my new best friend. And so we walked for the better part of a kilometer to a ticket stand where burly men sitting behind wooden boxes shouted like it was some kind of high end auction. I hopped unceremoniously onto the accelerating footboard, for buses never stop moving in this place. I landed with a thump into a bus full of amused expressions, regained my balance, and starred out the window at the shanty towns, the sweeper women and rickshallaw traffic jams we passed by...

Jao, rickshawalla,
Stop rickshawalla,
Aste aste rickshawalla,
Dore dore rickshawalla,
You ferry my princely self around town for pennies on the dollar,
I’ll sit here and play Rudyard Kipling.
Bame, dane, eidike, oidike, ei pasha, oi pasha,
Jao rickshawalla, jao!
I only see your face when it’s time to pay,
Sometimes not even then
And then we’ll haggle over a few dimes, because haggling is chic,
Onek door, rickshawalla? The sun is making me tired,
And I left my chati home,
Because where I come from, chatis are for rainy days
And sunscreen is for sunny days, and deodorant is for sweaty days
And AC for hot days, and bottled water for
Those unpleasant thirsty seconds between when we are full

Laal Baaq Friends

2009-06-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Laal Baaq Fort is an island of serenity in a turbulent sea of rickhsaws, smoke, vendors and bustling humanity of old Dhaka. Traveling alone as I am wont to do in a strange place, a young couple invited me to join them under the shade of a tree lined wall. Hesitant at first, I sat down, and did the first thing an Iranian does when meeting strangers, I offered my pistachios.

What followed was a Bengali conversation that took the better part of an hour. I proceeded to do a thing I have been dreaming of doing for a long time. I explained two verses of my favorite poem by Rumi, while speaking Bengali, in a Mughal fort, in the middle of Dhaka. I talked about the reed, how it moaned of separation. The basha that was once a bash in a maat with all bhai and bon, that he was cut away, and now sang the sad ghan for man and mehru alike.

Raju and Taslima, two beautiful young human beings, students like me, in love, “Dua koro,” said Raju with a sheepish grin, pointing to a kindly Taslima, rolling her eyes in a deep blue hijab. She wrote the first few lines from Tagore’s Shonar Tori in my notebook, and gave me light blue glittering pen.

I walked on after the kind of farewell you hand people you have known for a long time. A group of little school girls, dressed in bright pink shalwar kameez, ran up to me, laughing, pointing, shouting “kamon achen?!”. “Bhalo!”, I replied as their faces lit up in astonishment as I threw in an “As’salamu alaykum” for good measure. They ran off, laughing hysterically, radiating waves of happiness, riding on the gentle breeze.

And then there was Mohsen, the young poet who wanted so badly to publish his work, but was too busy with school and kaaj and everything else to find the time. For close to another hour, we sat and talked, my mind feeling itself slowly but surely into a language no one had ever spoken to me five days ago. He turned to his best work, with tremendous pride, and again, I left his presence like I would an old friend.

First week in Dhaka

2009-06-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

The rickshaw traffic here in Dhaka is incredible. The other day, my rickshaw fell over and spilled me into the street. Rickshawallas have a tough job, pedaling day and night, rain or shine. I can haggle with anyone and everyone, but never with a rickshawalla. Every rickshaw is the unique creation of its owner, and designs are highly individuated. 600,000 rickhsaws means this place is crowded, but the air is cleaner than I expected. I see trash in the streets, but the absence of plastic bags is notable. Almost all the waste here is biodegradable.

The Jatiyo Sangshad (National Assembly Building) designed by American architect Louis Kahn. Seeing the building in person is incredible. The lush, green paddies that surround this place, the serene concrete facades, the crisp geometric cutouts, all work to create a deeply moving aesthetic. On the other side of the street lies the Zia memorial park. The place is full in the mornings with karatekas, cricket matches, strolling families and young students craming quizzing eachother before exams. A peaceful, place, and full of life.