My next book is due release in the fall of 2007. I had a bit of difficulty as what the title should be. In the end I decided on The Seven Valleys of Love after Attar’s work. It is a bilingual anthology of women poets from the middle ages Persia to the present time Iran. It is a unique work and I had my absolute love and care when working on it. Dr. Ali Alizadeh wrote an insightful introduction for the book and I am most grateful to this scholar and poet of our time. If you like you can preorder by e-mailing me.

  

 

Human Rights Iran: Women rights activists in prison

  

 

After posting about the two women rights activists earlier today I remembered two other Iranian women. I want to remember the two Iranian Baha’i women who were executed by the Iranian regime. I remember them regardless of the fact that I am not a Baha’i and they were and they were murdered by the Iranian regime for the simple fact of practicing their belief. Here are Zhinus Mahmudi, physicist, executed Dec 27, 1981, and Shidrukh Amir-Kiya Baqa, Concert Pianist, executed Jan 4, 1982. Let us not forget what this regime is capable of.

  

 

With the Iranian regime disapproving the right to any peaceful assembly it is not surprising to read the latest news about the two women Rights activists, Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani and Parvin Ardalan. They have been sentenced to three years.

  

 

92 years later, Armenian genocide still pains

  

 

EU agrees Iran nuclear sanctions

BBC: EU foreign ministers have agreed to implement sanctions against Iran after its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

  

 

Hossein Derakhshan: "No one has been able to present a strong legal or even moral case for the illegitimacy of the Islamic Republic and this is the starting point for many arguments about regime change, civil disobedience or nuclear issue. We should start fearlessly challenging these fallacies and logically flawed presumptions and stop being afraid of defamation and personal attacks."

  

 

Kianoush Sanjari has left Iran and is now in Iraq’s Kurdistan. The mass e-mail that I received a few days ago noted Sanjari’s life may be in danger because of the presence of Iranian regime’s terrorists in the area.

  

 

The regime has started to arrest women who are not dressed properly as they put it. Improper public conduct in my opinion is not how a woman dresses but how women and men are humiliated and taken and treated as slaves, and I am not even mentioning the public hangings and stoning.

  

 

I had a reading with the American poet Collin Kelley. I enjoyed listening to him. Being me I love to show my love and affection so the moment I met him I hugged him. I like to hold and hug those I like, love, and admire their mind, creativity, intelligence, and soul. Here is part of his poem War For Oil

No liberation force is coming,
no toppling of statues or searches
for weapons of mass destruction.
Here is famine, genocide,
dark skin pouring black oil
that holds no currency.

here

  

 

The Spring Snow

I open my arms. I am Shenandoah, daughter of the stars. I open my legs and become Shekinah for you to inhabit my body. To my east you will find my right arm volunteering to hold your back and to my west is the left arm trying to remove the pins from my bra and position myself in a series of moves. I am real as real gets, as are these exact things you are doing to me while your thumb removes the lipstick so to kiss my lips. It is spring, snowing here. It is an interrupted season, like the texture of your trousers, trousers that are waiting to be thrown over the bed. Your hands are slipping under me to find the right position for our bodies and I move to discover the sensitivity of this change. You go down on me. I love the movement of your tongue yet I haven't met you. Not having met you beloved feels like a razor sitting erect next to me skin. A razor I say, and I bite my lips. How dare I compare my physical aching for you to the pain of women who have suffered from Female Genital Mutilation?

continue here

  

 

Finally it has come to light what I have been blogging about. They should start investigating the rest of the Iranian regime appeasers in the U.S..

NIAC is part of an extensive US lobbying web that objectively furthers the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The creation of NIAC, Tehran’s role, NIAC’s connection to Iran’s oil mafia, and NIAC attempts to penetrate US political system.

The link via Bereft.

  

 

IRAN

اخبار روز: شب گذشته (شب یکشنبه ۲۶ فروردین ) ۱۵ نفر متحصنین دانشگاه بابل،که سه تن از آنها در اعتصاب غذا بودند، با یورش نیروهای امنیتی و درگیری آنها با دانشجویان متحصن ‌که در دانشگاه تنها بودند، ربوده شده و به مکان نامعلومی منتقل شدند.

15 university students have been abducted in Mazandaran, Iran.

  

 

I was interviewed after my second reading and I had no idea I am going to be asked anything beside my poetry. The interviewer was wonderful but after my flight I was on the verge of collapse. In any case here is Pars Times and Sheema live! When watching don't take everything I say seriously. My mouth was talking faster than my brain but then again I usually am! I am logging off from the Disney Land in California.

  

 

I am exhausted. I had a reading last night and I was half awake!

  

 

اخبار روز: ده ها تن از معلمان شنبه شب ۱۸ قروردین در همدان توسط نیروهای امنیتی دستگیر شدند. دستگیری معلمین در یک جلسه ی صنفی صورت گرفت. روزهای یکشنبه و دوشنبه، معلمین همدانی در اعتراض به دستگیری همکاران خود در برابر آموزش و پرورش اجتماع کرده و در برخی از مناطق از رفتن به کلاس های درس خودداری کردند. مدارس همدان روز دوشنبه به حالت نیمه تعطیل در آمد

ُMore teachers are arrested in Iran. Schools in Hamdan are closed.

  

 

Houshang Amirahmadi at My Table!
Pllllease!

So we go to this Iranian restaurant where after 5 years of living in Connecticut and pretty much being deprived of every Persian cuisine but those I cook and I am finally to enjoy some Cholo Kabob! Ah, Life is so much better with Kabob but as the plate is placed on the table my Iranian husband starts to give me his input on Amirahmadi’s recent article. I truly don’t want to hear about these regime appeasers when I eat but he talks with such passion that I have to give in. He tells me I should give Amriahmadi and his likes the benefit of the doubt but my question is why he (Amirahmadi) has made this division of people in three camps (nokar/opportunist, tension-maker, and normalization advocate)! And why he calls the United Stated the enemy but lives and works here! It is much more respectful to be the servant of United States which IS a free and democratic country but the servant of a murderer regime. This regime has committed horrendous crimes. With such a regime one doesn’t show sympathy or empathy. War is not a solution in my opinion because Iran is not Afghanistan either. We don’t have the same tribal divide or respect for the head of the tribes in Iran. It all went away with the previous regime. And Iran is not a British made country like Iraq. In any case I just wanted to eat my Kabob and had to say goodbye to Amirahmadi until the next time he writes another one of his good articles with his off the charts conclusions.

  

 

فاشیزم

نانا: به همین دلیل کل مجموعه فاشیستی این رژیم باید بروند و باید زندان اوین تبدیل (شود) به موزه ای از وحشت و هالوکاستی که مردم یهود همه جا بر پا کرده اند که ما انسانها فراموش نکنیم که همین دیروز چه فاجعه ای بر پا کردیم.

  

 

D.C.'s Frozen Cherry Blossoms!

I wake up to snow today! I was hoping we could go to see the famous cherry blossoms in D.C. but it's not in the cards I guess! I move in the bed and hear the little girl calling her dad to kiss her twenty times before she would come to our bed. It is cold outside and reminds me of a poem by Verya Mazhar:

... instead of coffee or tea
one has to drink anti-freeze every morning.
But there is also a warm place
a place to cozy up,
to replicate hot meanings…

  

 

The Iranian Way!

The news of Baha'i children being harassed is another reminder of my good country of birth. A country where Ms. Vojdani’s father was burned to death because of his Baha’i faith. A country that its so called women activists want to shut the Iranian authors for expressing their views, and harass the same people who stand up for them when they are arrested by the regime. Please do more tattoos on your eyebrows and lips and make fun of those who don't, and do marry more Green Card holders. Some may start believing you are genuinely caring for the rights of Iranian Women! After all to the rest of us it is clear who you are. Yes! The Iranian dictators sometimes do come with nose jobs.

  

 

My Sense of Direction? ZERO!

I took the little girl to my friend Negar’s home to play with her kids who have their spring break. I got lost and drove for two hours and visited and revisited the Pentagon. On my way back I got lost again and ended up passing the BWI exit some 24 miles from where my apartment is located! P was telling me it would have been easier and timesaving if he had dropped me off and picked me up! I have to buy a GPS for the car. This driving from one end to another is not working for me.

  

 

Sizdah Bedar

First I combined my sensual writings with socioeconomic problems as well as historical and political issues related mostly to my country of birth Iran and now... well I have brought in erotica in to my writings since my last post. The first time I wrote erotica it was in 2001 but the editor had decided to cut and change it so much that to my eyes it just didn't read the same. In any case I love every bit of my new writings. I am making love to my words. Here is my latest titled: Sizdah Bedar.

Probably the long line of Ayatollahs and grand ayatollahs in my father’s family shake and shiver in their graves... I am glad my grandfather and his brothers didn’t follow their father’s family tradition of studying religious sciences and theology to become high Islamic priests.

  

 

فیلم فانتزی ۳۰۰
رامین احمدی: آخر آدمهای اخلاقی این سناریو را نگاه کنید: غلامحسین الهام، منوچهر متکی، صفار هرندی! انگار نه انگار که یک عمر رهبرشان خمینی به ایران قبل از اسلام توهین می کرده و آنها را وحشی و گبر و جانی می خوانده است. مگر آقایان الهام و متکی و صفار هرندی و نمایندگان مجلس خیال خمینی زدایی دارند که اینطور طرفدار ایران باستان شده اند؟ اگر چنین است چرا آقای ناصر پور پبرار، عضو سابق حزب پر افتخار توده، به خرج دولت اسلامی راه می افتد دور دانشگاههای ایران و به تاریخ قبل از اسلامی و پادشاهان هخامنشی فحش رکیک می دهد و این فحاشی را سازمان تبلیغات اسلامی در هزاران جلد کتاب به خورد ملت می دهد؟اگر چنین است چرا صادق الحسینی، مشاور فرهنگی آقای خاتمی، در شرق الاوسط ایرانیان قبل از اسلام را مشتی وحشی نامید و انتقاد از ایرانیانی که به کوروش می نازند و اینکه کوروش جبار خونخواره ای بیش نبود. عقل هم خوب چیزی است. آن امپراطوری و «خشایارشا» امروز وجود خارجی ندارد. کسانی که فکر می کنند نواده های کوروش کبیر و میراث خوار منشور حقوق بشر او هستند یک نگاه مختصری به کشور امروزشان بکنند و یک نگاه کوتاهتری در آینه. آخر محمود احمدی نژاد و سید علی خامنه ای و اکبر هاشمی رفسنجانی و محسنی اژه ای و نوکر هایشان چه ربطی به کوروش و منشور حقوق بشر دارند؟ کسی که ادعای میراث خواری اولین منشور حقوق بشر را دارد که نمی تواند قانون سنگسار زن و شکنجه کارگران و دانشجویان و سیاست شلاق و تبعیض جنسی در سال ۲۰۰۷ میلادی داشته باشد.