Chaharshanbe Suri

The last Wednesday before Persian New Year, Iranians celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri, the festival of fire. Suri has two different meanings in Farsi, scarlet, and festive. Chaharshanbe means Wednesday, but because of the time difference, that day may fall on a Tuesday. Those who live in Los Angeles celebrate this holiday on a Tuesday. Other countries such as Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turki, and Iraq also celebrate the festival of fire because parts of those countries were once part of the Persian Empire.

The festival of fire is based on Zoroastrianism religion which has three mottos: “Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds." Persians aka Iranians were Zoroastrians until the Arabs invaded Persia in 7^th century and made life difficult for the Persians unless they changed their religion to Islam. Islamic leaders everywhere tried hard to put a stop to the celebration of Chaharshanbe Suri because they believe it is a blasphemous celebration, and label those who participate in it, “Fire Worshipers.” But Iranians refused to give up this holiday. They considered it part of their heritage that predated Islam.

A bit of Trivia: The above photo depicts Farvahar Ahura Mazda, a Zoroastrian god and symbol. Ahura Mazda is the God of the sky in Zoroastrianism religion. Ahura means Lord and Mazda means wisdom. The Japanese car, Mazda, is named after the Persian God Farvahar Ahura Mazda. Etsy sells necklaces and bracelets like this.

So, what happens during this night? People make a bonfire for a purification ritual. The fire sometimes goes much higher than the one you see in the above video which is of my nieces and their friend when they were younger. People jump over the fire and literally say, “My yellowness goes to you, and your redness comes to me,” meaning any sickness that I have, I pass it on to the fire in exchange for heat, warmth, and good health.

Families also burn a handful of rue seeds in a small pan over the stove and when the seeds start to make popping noises like popcorn, and cause smoke, they turn off the stove and walk around the house with pan in hand to spread the smoke, for good health and to ward off evil. Sometimes they swirl the smoke over someone’s head. Unfortunately, this ritual is not good for the lungs, and is banned in some countries such as in Australia.

It’s tradition to eat dried fruits and raw nuts on this night. This special mix of nuts is best purchased at a Persian markets. In Farsi, they are called Ajil-e Moshkel Gosha which means Problem Solving Nuts. It is said that if you have problems, and eat these nuts, your problem will be solved. Obviously, there is a lot of superstition attached to most of these rituals, but people still do it for the fun of it.

On this evening, there is also Ghashogh Zani, spoon banging, which is similar to the Halloween tradition when kids go trick-or-treating. Except Spoon banging can be done at any age. Men or women, boys or girls cover themselves with Chador, a loose cloth thrown over hair and body. They go from house to house, and bang their spoon to get candy, nuts, or food. When I lived in Iran, someone did that to my mom. My mom, gave the person food, but they kept ringing the doorbell. My mom got angry and started to get into a fight with the intruder, not realizing that the person under the chador was her friend pulling a prank on her. They had a good laugh about it.

There are other rituals tied to this celebration, but today, many skip a lot of it, and focus more on the bonfire ritual.

Tehran, Darband, and Tabriz

Since the first day of spring, March 19, is the start of Persian New Year, this month’s posts will be about Iran. There are many beautiful cities, islands, beaches, mountains, hiking trails and villages to visit. This post will touch on a few highlights. I have not been to Iran since I was 12. Well, I went back as a tourist for two weeks when I was 14. So, when my brother went to Iran, he sent me some pictures. Before the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979, Iran was called the France of the east, and the capital, Tehran, was referred to as the Paris of the middle east.

This area is called the Azadi (freedom) square, and the white monument is called the Azadi Tower. It is an important symbol in Iran where many gatherings and celebrations take place. When Iran was a monarchy until 1979, this tower was named Shahyad after the Shahs (kings) of Iran representing 2500 years of the Persian empire.

Street vendor selling cooked fava beans and beets. Cooked fava beans taste good with cumin as a snack or mixed with other ingredients in various dishes like this one.

This dish is sholeh zard, saffron rice pudding. I haven’t yet met an American friend who doesn’t like it. Of course, it must be done right, and not all Iranians know how to do it with a perfect balance of ingredients. You may wonder why it is in such a huge pot. It’s Nazri – free food you give away to family, friends and the needy on religious holidays. People also give away free food on the anniversary of the date when relatives or friends passed away.

 High-end condos with views in Tehran 

  

A café serving eggs with Barbari (a type of Persian bread) on a bench on a sidewalk.

A baker making fresh bread. Just as in Europe, the food in Iran is amazingly good, and takes a lot of work to prepare. You often see people walking on the street with fresh baked bread hand wrapped in brown paper. None of that frozen stuff…

Darband, near Shemran, is a village in northern Tehran which is now part of Tehran. It is a popular place with the locals and tourists. I have been there when I was younger and remember sitting on the ground behind tables covered with Persian carpet and servers bringing us tea. There are mountainous areas, beautiful views, and hiking trails. Among the places to eat, Darband restaurant is well-known. If you’re into Hookah, you’ll find Hookah places around. Check out the video below about Darband towards the end of this blog.

This scene is funny. It’s a domestic airline, and as Iranians wait, they shoot the breeze.

Tabriz is a Turkish city in Iran where the residents speak mostly Turkish or Farsi with a thick accent. It’s a clean modern city in the Iranian part of Azerbaijan. Included here is an aerial view of Tabriz, a video of university grounds, and a restaurant where my brother had dinner.

There are plenty of restaurants throughout Iran where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor. The food in the center is a popular dish called Abgoosht – lamb and chickpea stew with onions, turmeric and tomato paste cooked slowly in a special pot, allowing all the flavors to set in. There are two parts to this dish. One part is like soup and you soak in pieces of Sangak (a type of Persian bread you see in the photo) before you eat it. The second part of this dish is mashed, has a burrito like texture, and eaten with the same Persian bread. It’s yum. My mom used to make a vegetarian version for me since I don’t eat meat.

Young Tabrizi girl weaving Persian carpet.

There is so much more to see in Iran. Perhaps at some other point in time, I will do another post like this.

 

My phone is tapped

Every time I talk to someone in the U.S or Iran, I can hear the double connection, the clicking and the annoying spying. Are they really that stupid? If they’re going to tap my phone, they should do it discreetly. I don’t need to be reminded of some idiot listening to my conversation. I mean if they want to hear me tell my friend that I threw up yesterday because I had a stomach flu, that’s their business, but they could at least spare me the terrible connection. Are they being blatantly obvious on purpose? I have no clue what goes through their feeble minds. 

I guess I should be thankful that I am not able to hear them breathe. After 9/11, I complained to AT&T about my phone being tapped. The conversations went something like this:

 

Me: My phone is tapped.

AT&T operator: Why do you think that?

Me: Because I can hear the person breathing when I get on the phone.

AT&T: Do you have a cordless?

ME: Yes, I like to keep up with this century.

AT&T: Try changing the battery. It’s probably because the battery is low.

Wowwww!!! You know, the phone tapping doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that they truly believe people are stupid. But really, who is the stupid person in the above conversation?

Is it the job of retailers to be the Gestapo of the US government?

Recently, An Apple store employee in Atlanta, Georgia refused to sell an iPad to a Farsi-speaking customer claiming that they are simply adhering to the US policy of sanctions against Iran.

When the customer contacted the Apple corporate office to complain, they simply told her, no worries, go buy it online. WOW!!!!!!

I don’t know about you, but I love to window shop and sometimes when something special catches my eyes, I go ahead and buy it. I don’t want to be forced to sit behind my computer and shop when I can just as easily walk outside on a nice beautiful day and browse the stores in my neighborhood. After all, I live in the U.S, the so-called “land of freedom.”

Now, comes in Apple telling me that I’m only allowed to buy their products online and that I’m not allowed to shop at their store simply because I’m "Iranian". What an offensive thing to say. And what if I was Cuban or North Korean? Will they soon have translators in their stores, eavesdropping on their customers? Should we all soon be afraid to talk in our mother tongue when we enter a retail store?

Do retail stores have the right to stick their nose in our business and ask us about our nationality before selling us a product? Isn’t this discrimination? It wasn’t as though this customer was purchasing a weapon. Even then, they simply do a background check regardless of nationality, race, religion or sex. But in this case, the argument is even weaker. This poor customer was simply purchasing an over-priced, over-rated stupid electronic gadget called an Apple ipad.

Personally, I would never go back to a store that would discriminate against me and I would go even further and slap them with a big lawsuit for discrimination and tell everybody I know not to shop there unless the store was willing to give me the product I was planning to purchase for free, a minimum of a $100 gift certificate and a big public apology for behaving like an ass.

Remember the Nokia-Simmens story & how their stock took a nose dive when Iranians all over the world boycott their products? Same can happen to Apple. As arrogant as they may be, no company is too big to fail when they mistreat their customers.

Retailers are retailers. The government is the government. The police are the police. It is not the job of retailers to police the country.

The politics of human rights

Photo contributor: Idea go

Let’s face it, in a world where all ethics has disappeared, governments do not care about human rights. In fact, in the eyes of world leaders, activists are considered a pain in the rear. A handful of families who run the Corporations who run our world, our leaders and our governments prefer people who are sheep. So, why do activists of certain countries get more attention than those of other countries? Simple – it’s all due to their political relationship with the western governments. Take Saudi Arabia for example, the so-called secret society. The news everywhere rarely covers newsworthy information from the Kingdom and yet, they are one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. Have a look at Dubai and their promotion of slavery by hanging on to the passport of poor foreigners and forcing them to work for little or no pay while their ostentatious towers reach the sky. When was the last time you saw a negative coverage of Dubai in the mainstream media? So the next time you wonder why the media does not care about the activists in your country, have a look at your country’s political relationship with the forces that control our world.

Another factor that gets calculated in the equation is if a leader can be controlled. After the recent revolution, Tunisia may have a new leader who gives more liberty to their citizens, but if that leader does not succumb to the needs of the families who run the corporations who run our world, mark my world, that leader will be replaced by another who is willing to kiss many behinds in order to keep his/her power and fill-up his/her bank account in various countries such as Switzerland even if he/she violates all aspects of human rights.

A good example is Iran. Iran had democracy in the 50s, that democracy was squashed by corporations and western governments and replaced by dictatorship so that they could get free oil. In the meantime, the shah tortured all opponents of his regime and there was little coverage of it in the news. Then the west decided to remove the Shah because it no longer needed Iran’s oil. They had found a new oil provider with richer oil fields. During this transition at least 30,000 were tortured and killed. Still little coverage in the media. And today…well…the world had shut up about the entire Iran thing until recently when Iran continuously increased its influence in the middle-east. 

So, there has been more coverage of the Iranian activists but for how long? Perhaps until another deal is struck under the table. And after that, the well controlled media will zip up their lips and instead cover some cat who got caught in the tree or a reality TV star who cheated on his wife. That is the politics of human rights. Nevertheless, as activists, we do what we can in our own limited way to bring voice to the innocent and the oppressed. 

I was living a shallow dream

I have been a lucky person my whole life and never really had major tragedies. I left Iran long before the Islamic revolution and grew up in the U.S. When the Shah was overthrown, I was too busy getting ready for college. My family never talked about it much and I didn’t think much of it. Ten years ago when there was a student uprising in Iran and many were killed, I had a new job in a new industry and was too busy learning the ropes to pay much attention to what had happened. But recently as I watched the images of what had happened then, I realized I was living in a shallow dream.

In June and July of this year, many Iranians were killed. I saw their faces all over my television set and on the internet. I have never felt death until now. I have never seen such suffering with my own eyes. I have never seen such courage up until now. Sure, I have read and heard about it and I have seen it in movies, but I have never felt something so real and so close to home. I feel the pain of all Iranians as if it were my pain and the naïve and carefree girl inside of me has departed forever. I will always remember June of 2009 as the beginning of one of the darkest times in my life and the only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I am half American. No, I am not half American by blood but I am half American in essence because The United States is where I grew up for the majority of my life. And I know that Iran does not recognize dual citizenships, but you see, I cannot separate the Iranian and the American in me. They both blend in in a silent harmony.