i am getting anxious, and losing hope. i see the videos from iran, posted online and ask myself "is it worth it?"...then again, what is worth more than freedom. isn't freedom what humanity has been seeking in the long history of our being? isn't the power to decide for your life what we all work for? we need to get back our basic rights, we need to teach a lesson to the oppressor. we need to be free...

i feel guilty and sad not being there, not being able to participate. on the other hand, my life has other issues here. every day i show up at work, i am thinking about the next round o lay-offs, about how i don't manage to save money anymore and about the chances that i get laid off without getting my green card. then i think about what people are putting up with in iran and i feel ashamed...it's kind of a vicious cycle.

i miss the fight for freedom. i hope my people could see the result of their courage.

i feel so restless. things are happening and i am far far away from the scene. from the excitement, the hope for a better day; and the rage, violence and the bitter taste of blood. i don't know if i should feel privileged or unfortunate. it is as if i am watching a film, a days-long film, a crazy brutal film, which is powerful and full of hope at the same time. i feel enraged, i feel happy, i feel concerned, i feel hopeful, i feel sad, i feel helpless, and mostly, i feel far far away from everything that is happening. and i wish i was there, in between people i love, fighting for freedom, fighting for better days, fighting in hope of better days, fighting for hope...

my heart is with you my dear iran.

books and flowers

i was doing some uninteresting cadd work and my mind was wondering around when suddenly i had this vivid image in my mind of these dried flowers that we used to keep in between the pages of books. there were tulip and violet and rose leaves. and sometimes we would accidentally open the books and the flowers would fall down, dancing in the air before they lay on the ground...for some reason that memory reminds me of my dad, when he was young, when i was a child and i used to love reading books. the books that he would buy me for my birthdays, for graduations, for any unimportant occasion..and there was always little snack in the gift wraps; a walnut, a piece of chocolate,...

i looked through my books this time when i went back to tehran. we kept all of my children books in a box in a closet. i browse through them, they were such interesting books. made me admire my parents for they had chosen those books with so much care. i can only hope i'd do the same for the next generation.

everyone is talking about the election. it's all over facebook. and i am reading articles online all the time. everyone is excited again. and some people have got carried away. like every other time...

i wish i was in iran somehow. that i could witness this passion. the passion for freedom. the passion for participating and decision making. the passion that might lead us to a better place. somewhere closer to the path to freedom.

let's hope so...

Jacky

we got jacky when he was maybe a month old. maybe younger. a friend of my sister has bought him, and he somehow just left it at our house, and we took care of her. at the beginning with suspicious and then with love. she was extremely cute and that was enough to convince us that she is going to be our dog, even though we really didn't know the responsibilities and difficulties of having a dog. after all, how hard could it be?

and jacky was a part of our family from then on. we loved her, we cherished her, we cried when he got hit by a car and we missed her a lot when we had to take her to our country house because the neighbours complained that he barks too much. she was more than what i ever imagined a dog could be. she was smart and every time one of us was sad or depressed, she somehow acted like she know what's going on...

jacky lived in our country house for the past 6 years. my dad was her main companion and she loved him. they comforted each other, and took care of each other in their own ways. my dad would get really unsettled whenever he would come to the city and leave jacky for more than a couple of days.

in my last trip home, jacky seemed like she us putting on weight. we thought she must have gotten pregnant in one of her adventures in the streets. she didn't have energy to run around and play. she moaned kind of sadly when i first saw her after 5 years. jacky has comforted me a lot of times. when i was emotionally drained and didn't want to talk to anyone, i would just hug her and sit with her tacitly for hours. she was big and fury and the warmth of her body was very comforting.

i had a feeling that it would be the last time i am seeing jacky when i left iran. and so it was. jacky died about a week ago. my mom gave me the news in an email. i didn't sleep all night, thinking about her and that how my dad must be feeling lonely. she died just two days after my 29th birthday.

i miss her. she was a good companion...

the ultimate effect of protecting men from folly is to people the world with fools. - Spencer

election

i didn't vote in the last election when ahmadinejad became the president. i remember people told me i should vote, and i was against voting. mostly because i didn't think any of the candidates are legitimate, but also, i reasoned, the larger number of votes would indicate stronger support for the islamic republic. ahmadinejad was elected and i remember feeling very indifferent about it. i thought there is not a big difference who is the president; the country is not going to change for better, or much worse. it was the end of khatami's term and i was only thinking about how much more could be done with his popularity, and how many things went wrong. but i seemed to have forgotten how the result of that election changed our country for ever. not only because we, people of iran, felt we have a saying in our country's political path, but also, because of all the positive change that followed the election of khatami.

four years later, i am looking back and think there were very few days in the past four years, in which i, an iranian who doesn't even live in the country, did not feel the catastrophic result of this past election. let's remember ahmadinejad denial the holocaust, his interview/speech in columbia university and the united nations, to the nuclear energy controversy and the threats of preemptive attacks, the unbelievable inflation of the past four years, and the increasingly deteriorating freedom of speech in iran.


to vote or not to vote...


i wish i could say: of course i am going to vote, and of course i know who i am voting for. that i believe in the competence, integrity and the judgment of this or that candidate. i wish i could say, my candidate is not going to lie when he campaigns and is going to execute what he promises, and is not going to be afraid to take action when it is needed. i wish i could say my candidate is a diplomat with the tools, knowledge and resources needed to run the country in the center of all different ideologies and for all iranian people.


but i can not say any of these. i can not possibly believe such a candidate could get passed the filters that the islamic republic enforces on the nominees. and i can not say from the existing choices, there is a single candidate that i trust, even in the loosest form...


but i can also say, my candidate, whoever it is going to be, is hopefully going to be a less horrible choice than mahmoud ahmadinejad and is going to run the country less horribly than him. and that might only be wishful thinking, but what else is there for me to do? because when your alternative is the worst, whoever you choose, is going to be better...


and i wish this was not the case.