بایگانی دسته: In English

Shahrzad and the 1953 Coup in Iran

My article: A TV Show for the Rouhani Era: Shahrzad and the 1953 Coup d’etat in Iran” published by Ajam:

“‘History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” wrote James Joyce in Ulysses. The US-sponsored Coup of 1953 is such an event: a “nightmare” in Iranian contemporary history. It is widely depicted as a rupture in the modern history of Iran. It is also a Pandora’s box filled with contested narratives. The proliferation of narratives on the coup in recent years clearly shows that it is time for Iranians to awake from “this nightmare,” especially as the Nuclear Deal signals a new phase in Iran-US relations. The following discusses in what sense and to what ends Shahrzad, the most popular Iranian television series of the last year, has contributed to this “awakening.”

http://ajammc.com/2016/08/15/shahrzad-1953-coup-in-iran/

A review of Alireza Gholami’s the Wall

“The Wall” by Alireza Gholami, is the story of a 14 years old boy who is unable but to read and interpret the ideology of Iran-Iraq war in a “literal” manner. This story with its grotesque yet comic narration, reminds the reader of both Emile Habibi’s “The secret life of Saeed the pessoptomist” and Jaroslav Hasek’s ” The good soldier Svejik”. In a course of one day, the protagonist loses his brother, his mother, his friend, and at last, while searching for a prostitute, is mistakenly arrested and condemned as a counterrevolutionary. Like Camus’ Meursault, the boy in “the Wall” has no power but to nourish his hatred toward the world, however his estrangement is not the result of his inclination to absurd philosophy. The novel develops the idea that in certain historical moments in the discourse of an ideological system, the literal interpretation will become dominant; the interpretation which will result to eventual injustice even for those who have tried their best to remain “ideologically innocent”.

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Translation of a few Lickos

Licko is the haiku of South west of Iran. Similar to Haiku, they too are mostly about a moment, a sense, a feeling, an arbitrary nature. They are mood poems. The nature in this part of Iran is mostly dry.
Beside the bitter-water well
A girl in chador is asleep
—-
I am sitting beside a dry river
Waiting for the black hair beloved
—-
I have put on your chador
I can’t stand without you
—-
You can’t force a friendship
From one valley to the other

I am distracting myself
You can come out collect your cloth
—-
You are sitting beside the pool
What did I say that made you mad?

….

Translated from the Farsi collection edited by Mansur Alimoradi

The Red Intellect by Bijan Elahi

 

Poem: Bijan Elahi

Trans: Mehdi Ganjavi

————-

The Red Intellect

Why should I travel? Why

Should I travel?

I, who can bewilder,

Years around my house

 –

Home: my longing- because

I am out of it-

The house, which appears in the light

appears on the peak of light…

The known bird

swallows out of kindness

-The Adam’s apple

moves for a second-

then its eyes

bring forgetfulness.