Pars Arts

Marina Nemat Appearing at Indigo

At 16 years of age, Marina Nemat was arrested in Tehran by officials of Khomeini’s regime and taken to Evin Prison. She spent two years there before being saved from execution by a prison guard she would later be forced to marry. Her book “Prisoner of Tehran,” published more than 20 years later in Canada, is a story of survival spanning the years in which she made efforts to help other young women survive prison, lived in a forced marriage, and was eventually able to escape the country.

For those in the Toronto area, Nemat will appear at Indigo Books and Music in the Manulife Centre on Wednesday, July 4 at 7:00 pm to discuss the book with Indigo CEO Heather Reisman.

Michael Hirsh’s “Tehran Diary”

Newsweek columnist Michael Hirsh is in Iran and keeping a Tehran diary. It’s online-only and marked by a lot of the same commentary most of these “foreigner inside Iran” stories include: Iranian people are stylish, no one likes Ahmadinejad, Tehran’s traffic is really bad. Still, it’s good writing with political insights, and a nice change from their really lopsided “Modern Iran” coverage this past February. Nice save, Newsweek.

Rana Farhan at Mannahatta Lounge, NYC

A game of word association tells us to follow “jazz” with New Orleans, prohibition, the 1920s, Fitzgerald, Holiday, and Gillespie. Now add Rana Farhan and Mowlana Jalaludin Rumi to the list. Farhan, an Iranian jazz singer, is performing at the Mannahatta Lounge in NYC this Tuesday, June 26, at 9 pm.

The combination makes perfect sense: Jazz is all about improvisation and Rumi’s poetry is music, so why haven’t we heard this before? Well, because Rana Farhan had not yet finished recording her new album, I Return (Baz Amadam).

The album is a flawless union of her soulful Persian voice and deep understanding of Persian Sufi poetry, partnered with guitarist Steve Toub’s musical compositions. It was born out of the positive response her single, “Rumi’s Prayer,” received when it was included in a compilation of Iranian music called Made in Persia.

“I Return” also showcases more bluesy tracks and the work of another great poet – Hafez – and features Farhan’s painting on the cover.

Farhan was born and raised in Iran and moved to NYC in 1989, where she pursued her interests in painting and music, discovering her style as she and Toub improvised. The result is a natural synthesis that’s a pleasure to hear and must be eye-opening to experience live.

To explore why Farhan claims “Jazz is peace,” hear her earlier album of jazz standards, and take a look at her paintings, visit Rana Farhan’s website.

[Image: ranafarhan.com]

Color of Love

I had never heard of Color of Love (Rang-e Eshgh) until, one night at the video store, my mom reached past my shoulder, picked up a DVD from the shelf, and said, “Look! This looks like it’s from Iran.”

I looked at the cover: three Iranian girls blowing big pink bubbles with their gum, standing in front of a propagandist mural. The cover didn’t awe me, as this idea has been overused in photographing Iran: Place a fashionably dressed young person in front of a larger-than-life portrait of Khomeini, and voila, you’ve “captured” an “ironic” shot. In fact, I think I’ve come to associate that style of composition with a certain political agenda.

Still, I brought the DVD home and watched the hour-long documentary. To my delight, it turned out an offbeat film that simply didn’t get caught up in the current Western media trend of playing up the perceived misery of Iranian life. Even better is the fact that Color of Love is filmed entirely in the city of Shiraz, rather than in the overrepresented Tehran.

In the film, Maryam Keshavarz, the director, visits the homes of several Shirazi families (we later learn they’re members of her extended family) on a quest to find out what love means in contemporary Iran. Keshavarz chose the day of Ashura to shoot her documentary and subtly hints at the relatively secular nature of its mourning rituals – rituals whose footage is often shown on TV to depict religious extremism.

Color of Love may not answer the questions it sets out with, but for the most part it has a delicious, heartwarming effect that makes you want to see more of its characters. After watching the deleted scenes on the special features, I was surprised that a scene which takes place in a tea house- in my opinion, the most telling footage about love in Iran – was not included in the film. Perhaps my biggest concern was that Persian text in the film had quite a few spelling errors, all of which an Iranian third grader could have caught. I understand if Keshavarz decidedly left in the misspellings to make Color of Love seem more personal and human. However, if that’s not the case, the carelessness was rather irritating. (Well, at least to me it is!)

Nevertheless, I’m glad my mom noticed this film amid all the apocalypse flicks, and kudos to Maryam Keshavarz for this lovely journey to the heart of Shiraz.

[Image: Marakesh Films]

On Praising Khomeini

Despite the fact that he is a friend of mine and was one of my inspirations to begin blogging, I cannot disagree more with Hossein Derakshan’s recent praise for Khomeini (the text is in Persian, with a small English excerpt). While the post might be sensationalist and most likely written for the purpose of getting attention, there some things called out by Hoder that I think he gets right. First, he touches on Iranians’ generally excessive admiration of ancient Persian emperors. I think it’s relevant to ask ourselves: if we were not Iranian but rather of another culture with no prior interaction with Iranians, how would we view the former Persian kings? Would we, for instance, praise Darius and Cyrus for slaughtering thousands of people in order to colonize surrounding territories? To the extent that Derakhshan writes that the praise we give the former Persian empire is ridiculous, closed-minded, and egocentric, I believe he is correct.

However, suggesting that we should praise Khomeini because he successfully pulled Iran away from Western quasi-colonialism is foolish. That type of analysis is reactive rather than affirmative. It looks at what evil exists in the world and falsely concludes that its polar opposite must be good. In other words, instead of determining the value of something based on abstract moral or even religious principles, we would be judging something based on how it contrasts with the thing we dislike the most. In this case, we would be looking to colonialism and the “Western” model, submit that it is evil, and therefore accept everything contrary to it. This is the same reactive impulse utilized by many advocates of “Islamic democracies.” Khaled Abou el-Fadl tackles this issue perfectly in his discussions on Islamism:

[Many Muslim scholars] challenge asserted moral values, including the norms of democracy, as false universals, but offer no moral alternatives. Their opposition conforms to the reactive state of modern Islamic discourse. Much of this discourse is formed by the experience of colonialism and imperialism, and is hostage to a traumatized condition in which obsessive concerns with autonomy are coupled with a disregard of the need for constructive self-definition.

Derakhshan’s commentary on Khomeini functions precisely the same way: it does nothing to create a sense of self-definition or value of the Iranian, but mimics a system of values based purely on the importance of autonomy and Iran’s reaction to colonialism. This is precisely the way that the killing of thousands of Iranians, the suppression of fundamental human rights, and the subversion and manipulation of popular support committed by Khomeini are (unjustly) justified. If we perceive this regime from the perspective of the “other,” the same way that an outsider would see Cyrus and Darius, then we reach something closer to this conclusion: Khomeini was nothing more than a megalomaniac who systematically utilized violence and repression to achieve his private dreams and ambitions. In other words, Hossein got it wrong.

[Photo: Sydney Morning Herald]

Sussan Deyhim at the BAMcafe

Iranian musician Sussan Deyhim is performing Saturday, June 9, at Brooklyn’s BAMcafe. She takes the stage at 9 pm, and there’s no cover and no drink/food purchase minimum.

Born in Tehran and based in New York City since 1980, Deyhim is a world renowned vocalist, composer and performance artist. She began dancing in Iran with the Pars National Ballet, and participated in the avant-garde Shiraz Festival. Her long list of collaborators include musicians Branford Marsalis and Jerry Garcia and Iranian visual artist/filmmaker Shirin Neshat. Deyhim and Neshat’s work on the two-channel video installation Turbulent won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennial in 1999.

Deyhim’s music can also be heard on the soundtracks of The Last Temptation of Christ and Unfaithful, and her most recent recordings are Madman Of God: Divine Love Sounds of the Persian Sufi Masters and its remix by Bill Laswell, Shy Angels. Continuing on the same path of Persian influences and experimental works, she will release an album of classic Persian pop songs (from the 1950s to 1970s) on her new label, IsleX Records. Something tells us the live performance will have more impact, but for a sample of Deyhim’s sound, watch/listen to the video below (it’s robot-dancing set to her song “I’m A Man”):

Windows into Persian Culture

For literary enthusiasts in the Washington D.C. area, the Asia Society and co-host IREX will present a panel discussion on contemporary Iranian-American literature, and its role in fostering understanding about Iran, as part of their series on Islam in Asia. Windows into Persian Culture: Contemporary Iranian American Literature will take place on Tuesday, June 5th at 6:40 p.m. at the International Research and Exchanges Board.

Panelists Anita Amirrezvani, Afshin Molavi and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, along with moderator Jacki Lyden will explore aspects of traditional Persian culture through an examination of some of the particular challenges encountered by those writing about Iran. For more information on this and other great Asia Society events, take a look at their events calendar.

Persian Fairy Tales on the Mean Streets of NYC

One big benefit of living in New York City – besides never needing a car, rooftop parties, and all the attractive people – is the presence of people selling books on nearly every street corner. This really ramps up when it’s warm, naturally, so the city’s streets are covered with used books.

I’ve tried to be really disciplined about not stopping when I see these tables full of books, because stopping always means buying, but I have luckily broken my own rule a few times. One of these times was when I glimpsed a copy of Mollah Nasreddin stories, which I found hilarious as told by my mom in Persian when I was a little girl. Turns out that Mollah isn’t really all that funny in English, but I had to pick that one up for my mom.

And just a few weeks ago, walking home from the train in my extremely hipster-saturated Brooklyn neighborhood, Williamsburg, I saw the book Persian Fairy Tales by Eleanor Brockett. It was first published in 1962, but the edition I got was a 1968 reprint in nearly perfect condition (I hate when used books have that moldy smell). It sources translations of the Shahnameh in addition to translations of Persian stories that were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I especially love that the last story in the book is entitled “Three Wicked Women.” Yikes!

My only gripe with NYC is that it’s a little tough to find the same books that I know in LA are easily obtained with a drive to Westwood’s many Iranian bookstores. The New York Public Library has a pretty extensive Asian and Middle Eastern Division but it looks like most of their Persian and Iranian resources are only available at the research-level (though they support independent research). Still, it’s so nice to be surprised to find your culture represented (however strangely appropriated and/or translated) vis-a-vis books on the street.