Dear friends and readers, The time is ripe for me to take a break from the blogging and the poetic expression for a short while in order to focus on some personal rejuvenation and some home affairs, even though I would love to keep the show going day in and day out. I’ve given you … Continue reading Public Service Announcement, December 7, 2022 →

Before you came things were just what they were:the road precisely a road, the horizon fixed,the limit of what could be seen,a glass of wine was no more than a glass of wine. With you the world took on the spectrumradiating from my heart: your eyes goldas they open to me, slate the colorthat falls … Continue reading “Before You Came” by Faiz Ahmad Faiz →

The recent flareup of violence between Israelis and Palestinians which caught the attention of many civil society actors and stakeholders again requires and prompts a revisiting of an issue which has long been the center of gravity, focal point, main flashpoint, and “core concentric circle” of international issues and global conflict aside from the regional … Continue reading Ahlal-Kitab →

The one who pours is wilder than we ever become drinking, wilder than wine, the one who fills to the brim and leaves to live in absence with a toast, Go home. There is nothing for you here. A pearl in the shell does not touch the ocean. Be a pearl without a shell, a … Continue reading “Wilder Than We Ever” (Rumi) →

It follows that a concerted and deliberate “condemnation of modesty” has replaced military invasions and economic warfare as a novel foreign relations strategy, given that the hard power strategy of military invasion and economic warfare has exhausted its course. When Nazanin Boniadi is propped up and then she defines freedom and liberation for others in … Continue reading Sex as a Weapon →