Opium and Saffron

The spot of your mole cannot be stamped on vision's tablet unless from the pupil of the eye we seek black ink. With all its soul ...

"Strangely enough this period of the most terrible political disaster was, at the same time, a period of highest religious and mystica...

Soon it will be twilight.   But the clouds are still clear, the pines are not yet dark.   For the lake illumines them with its transpare...

آنکه غافل بود از کشت بهار او چه داند قیمت این روزگار He that was heedless of the sowing and the springtide How should he know...

We believe in cash, not in credit So why narrate to us the story of paradise? -Mawlana Mawdudi

“What do you know of the kind of bird that I am? And of what I am whispering under my lips in each breath? How can anyone come to own me? ...

این جهان کوه است فعل ماندا سوی ما آید نداها را صدا مولوی "The world is a mountain and our actions a call . To us will return the echo o...

This morning as I passed by two men talking on the sidewalk, I heard one of them say “life isn’t bad.” Immediately the opening lines of Soh...

One day, Sheikh al-Junayd set out on a journey and while traveling was overtaken by a thirst. He found a well that was too deep to draw wate...

"For just a moment, just a fleeting second, I have this thought as I stand scrunched on the overcrowded Tehran metro, hanging on with m...

When I first met Davoud five years ago, he smiled little and laughed not at all. He was quite religious. He spoke disparagingly of women wh...

“We now resemble an alien people, with unfamiliar customs, a culture with no roots in our land and no chance of blossoming here.“ “Occidento...

Once as I walked through Golestan Palace in Tehran, I was attracted to a painting in a palace gallery. It showed a turbaned man sitting wit...

Signing of the Treaty of Turkmanchai He was a man of letters, a celebrated playwright whose involvement in an illegal dual had led to his ex...

ظالم آن قومی که چشمان دوختند زان سخنها عالمی را سوختند Cruel are those whose eyes are sewn shut And with their words incinerate the...

Why aren’t there more autobiographical books by Iranian men? There’s certainly no shortage of women writing about the period leadi...

A friend has given me permission to post these reflections from a recent visit home to Tehran: "What is this love/hate relationship wit...