Certain Dates:

There are certain dates,
Which mark themselves on our heart-gates,
Not the birth, not the death,
That these two, are easier and do not hurt!


It is one day before the three-day hunger strike: I walk the narrow path that goes by one of the largest magnolia trees on the campus to yet another meeting.

To another talk on Iran,
On what will be the next heartbreaking news;
On whom among my brothers, sisters and friends are going to take the next accidental bullet in the streets of Tehran; Tehran the city I was born in almost 30 years ago.

I am near the magnolia tree, here the path gets narrower and my thoughts are all on Tehran.
I think of my brother, my mom and my aunt.

Tehran the ugliest city on earth; the city that I cannot live without,
For its vicious rush hours made me who I am today,
For its gloomy dusk, comforted my baby heart in so many of my girlish affairs.
For it is, A unique City, at least in the way it grows everyday, both on earth and in me!

Oh,
If you see Tehran once, only once, it will hold on forever without any price!

I get to the building where we are going to meet. I think of my postponed laundry basket; It was full a week ago! A commercial is playing on TV, showing a happy woman with a bright yellow puffy skirt, holding a basket full of roses, trying to cut yet another rose in her backyard garden.

They come. We meet and the image of the happy woman gardening stays with me.

It is the first day of the hunger strike: It goes by easy. I have a cold but I hang in there. My cat knows something is wrong. He just doesn’t know how long this foodless house will be a part of his life.

On the second day of the hunger strike: I cannot get out of bed. I stay in. I dream. I dream of that happy woman with a puffy skirt.

On the third day: my eyes hurt. I have never drunk so much water in my life. I am shaking.
Someone calls. I cannot answer. Then I wake up. I start to type. My fingers are weak. I write of my dream of that yellow puffy skirt.

I write:
I grew up in Tehran. I cannot be that woman in the commercial, happy with rosy cheeks, picking up flowers from the dreamy garden of her house.

But I wish I could be her; I wish I could go on with my life
I wish there were no certain dates,
That have marked me on my chests.

I wish I didn’t know about the Summer of 1988 and what happened in Tehran; The mass execution of political prisoners. I wish it had not happened to me.

I wish I hadn’t seen 18th of Tir in Tehran; July 9th 1999 Tehran University Dormitory attack. I wish I was not a student then.

I wish I hadn’t seen Neda; the shine of her eyes flying out of the TV screen!


There are certain dates, Which mark themselves on our heart-gates!

I so much wish I could be the happy woman of the commercial, that I can even smell the apple pie baking in the fake kitchen of the TV set.

But,
There are certain dates,
Which mark themselves on our heart-gates,
Not the birth, not the death,
That these two are easier and do not hurt!

Certain dates: they mark you; they make you!

I saw a happy woman on TV with a yellow puffy skirt!
I am not that woman, for so many certain dates have marked me on my chest.

A Strange View of the Capital, Austin, May 2009

A Rare Moment!

I felt your heart, when I took you in.

It was a rare moment;
Time stopped,
Rain stopped,
Your heart stopped,
Only the scent of wet soil continued into my lungs.
It was a rare moment!

One of those moments that my hope opens its wings,
That my smile breaks my fear,
That I have no tear,
One of those rare moments, when I dream that my dreams are real and I have no fear,

It was a rare moment under the summer rain,
It was you, who took away my pain,

Two tiny white spots on your wings, I remember well,
A fade azure ruff around your neck, that had no break,
And the smell of rainbow in a far away sky, that took away your hope to fly,


I took you in, from the rain,
I felt your heart with my vein,
And,
In that rare moment, I had no chain!

I gave you up to the cruel warmth,
And with you, went away my broken heart!

It was a rare moment!

Back on the chain,
Back in the pain,
I am waiting for the rain!

* Blue Dove by Picasso,
** For D13, my baby dove,

Iran, Where Mathematics is challenged!

Where Mathematics is challenged:

Last night in the cloudy sky of Austin I saw the crescent moon of June; a dash of hope in the gloomy days of my life.

I am from Iran; I study Art History. I live in Austin with a cat and a mathematician husband whose ultimate belief in mathematics was challenged a couple of weeks ago.

It was about three weeks ago around 2AM Tehran’s time, that Iran’s interior ministry with a speed unknown to men announced the results of the 10th Presidential Election; more than 20 million votes were counted and the winner of the presidential election was announced some hours later, as Ahmadinejad.

My husband said, the interior ministry people have probably failed their calculus courses in high school.

The next day when people, my friends and my fellow students, came to the streets to get their votes back, my family of 4 in Tehran extended to millions. It was yet another mathematically challenging equation.

Today, although we are far from Iran, we are standing side by side with our family of millions, with our fellow Iranians.

Since mathematics could not answer neither for the fraudulent election of June 2009, nor for my overgrown family, my mind is reaching out to any art historical analysis I have learned. So I may be able to bring some sense to what has shocked my people and me in these past weeks.

Iran, my country is in a Surreal State; a mixture of dreams and nightmares. People of course are trying to turn the dreams into reality and the nightmares into a minimal state.

I am from Iran, where mathematics is challenged and surrealistic nightmares are ruling.

Our Votes Are Stolen, But Not Our Hopes!