Perspective, Fall 2020

PERSPECTIVE

fall 2020 University of California, Berkeley

E DI T OR'S L E T T E R Dear Reader, It is with great enthusiasm that we present to you the Fall 2020 issue of Perspective Magazine. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it for you all.

For many of us, this year has felt like five years fit into one. I commenced this year with a positive outlook, eager to spend time with friends both new and old, to travel the world, to roam busy streets, to embrace my loved ones closely on Nowruz as we recite prayer in unison, and much more. Just seven days into 2020, the world took an unimaginable turn, and the events to come were the last things many of us expected to endure in our lifetimes. From the threat of a looming war to a global pandemic, to ongoing tragedies of racial injustice, and even the recent loss of the iconic vocalist Shajarian, this year has tested every bit of strength and resilience in all of us. Quarantine and isolation have challenged the sheer breadth of things I had taken so easily for granted: good health, social gatherings, physical touch, a walk to class.

During these times, we have experienced a rapid transformation of our systems of support. We rely on those around us for solidarity, support, guidance, and empathy. Amid emotional devastation and uncertainty, we must also realize the potential for more connectedness, as well as less, and for radically changing the meanings of community itself. This pandemic might, paradoxically, bring people closer. I present this issue in honor of those we have depended on to get through our battles, to the friends, family, and mentors who have never let us feel alone.

This publication holds a special place in my heart as one of my constants throughout my college career. I am honored to remotely lead such a passionate group of writers, designers, editors, and brilliant minds. I am continuously inspired by our shared experiences, and I pray that we continue to explore the intricacies of our identities, to accept risk, and define our perspectives openly.

With gratitude, Mina Shahinfar Editor-in-Chief

CONTENTS 6 A Love Letter to Samin Nosrat 7 Iranian Psychology: The Chasm Between the Profession and the Public’s Mindset 8 Found in Translaton 12 Khuda-Hafez: Farsi, Firangis, and the Fall of Persianate India 16 The Father of Iranian Nationalism 18 Iran and the Imperialist Threat 20 Science and God in an Islamic Iran 22 Paytakht as a Form of Decolonial Media: A Departure from Western-Influenced Television 25 Nowruz Behind a Mask 26 References 27 Appendix

STA F F editor-in-chief

Mina Shahinfar assistant editor-in-chief

Ariana Dideban design team

Emma Rooholfada Nusheen Ghaemi outreach team

Omeed Askary Yaas Farzanefar Alexander Talaie finance

Mia Karimabadi copy editors

Sara Zoroufy Mesean Sadri staff writers

Sean Adibi Ariana Dideban Yaas Farzanefar Janan Mostajabi Kyle Newman Mesean Sadri Zaid Syed

SPONSORS

Associated Students of the University of California Iranian Scholarship Foundation Middle Eastern and North African Recruitment and Retention Center Persian Center Middle East Market

A Love Le tte r to S a mi n N os r a t G

rowing up, the easiest way for me to access Iranian culture was through food. Food played a significant role in my childhood and imprinted the taste of Iran on my soul. I distinctly remember the aroma of my mother’s food wafting throughout the house. I loved watching my mother cut herbs, add spices to her pots, and taste stews with her wooden spoon. I was mesmerized by how swiftly she moved throughout the kitchen and how easily she added ingredients to dishes without ever using a recipe.

Unfortunately, I do not know how to cook traditional Iranian dishes.

I can make soy-glazed salmon, creamy mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables, but I have no idea how to properly make kuku sabzi, zereshk polo, or khoresht e bademjoon. This is partly because it is incredibly difficult to access Iranian recipes. Oftentimes, recipes are circulated within families and are unique to specific regions of Iran; there are many different variations of classic Iranian dishes. Aside from that, I have found that many recipes are not well documented in English, and the quantities of ingredients are not easily convertible to U.S. cooking measurements.

When I ask family members for specific quantities, I usually get responses like, “just a dash of salt” or “a handful of zereshk”. Lots of our recipes are dictated orally or written on papers tucked away in kitchen cabinets. If you search up “Iranian cuisine” on the internet, very few results show up. Fortunately, Samin Nosrat, an Iranian-American chef, has come to the rescue.

There are many reasons why I love Samin Nosrat. I first learned of her when I saw my parents binge-watch her documentary series on Netflix titled “Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat.” I remember walking into the living room and hearing her distinctive laugh from the television; her show was not simply about cooking — she would travel the world, befriend locals, and uncover the cultural significance of different cuisines. The way she was able to easily connect with people of various

by ARIANA DIDEBAN

backgrounds caught my attention; she seemed sincere, curious, and eager to learn about different cultures. The more I learned about her and her life stories, the more I couldn’t help but find similarities between us.

Like me, she was raised in California by Iranian immigrant parents and attended UC Berkeley. During her senior year of college, she dined at Chez Panisse, a critically acclaimed restaurant in the Bay Area known for its farm-totable California cuisine. After that meal, Samin instantly knew she wanted to change the course of her life and work in the food industry. She started at an entrylevel job as a busser at Chez Panisse and worked her way up, becoming a famous chef, New York Times best-selling author, and household name.

During quarantine, I decided to follow some of her recipes and attempt to recreate classic Iranian dishes. One night, I made a feast of tahdig, khoreshteh ghormeh sabzi, masteh kheyar, and salade sherazi. I bought all the ingredients from my local grocery store and put my culinary skills to the test. What I loved about cooking from Samin’s recipes was that she gave detailed, clear instructions that were easy to follow.

The first step was to mince the cilantro, parsley, chives, and scallions. My arms ached as I chopped these herbs because of their sheer quantity — the recipe called for a pound of parsley, and another pound of cilantro.

As I was cutting, I gained a new sense of appreciation for my mother, who I had always seen chopping ingredients 6

by hand. The next steps called for searing the lamb with onions and turmeric and cooking the herbs separately in a dutch oven with spices. Gradually, the stew came together and the aroma began to drift out of the kitchen. My parents periodically checked in to watch me cook, and they were impressed with how exact and accurate Samin’s recipe was. She managed to break down a complex dish into manageable steps. After hours of cooking and assembling the different parts of the yogurt recipe, rice, and salad, I called my family into the dining room. I was incredibly proud to have finally learned how to cook the food I grew up eating.

Part of me has always worried that I would never be able to recreate these dishes as an adult. I want to learn how to cook Iranian food for many reasons. Not only is the food delicious, but it is also a great vessel for sharing and preserving history, culture, and flavor. Food allows me to stay connected with my heritage and impart my culture onto my future children. v

Iranian Psychology

The Chasm Between the Profession and the Public’s Mindset

“B

by JANAN MOSTAJABI

ut you would be dealing with ‘crazy’ people all your life!” This is a comment that I have heard over and over, coupled with a snide look, whenever I told my Iranian friends and relatives that I’m hoping to become a psychologist.

As studies by prominent Iranian scholars suggest, there is a pervasive stigma associated not only with mental illness per se but also with the fields of mental health and psychology in Iran.

Broadly speaking, the stigma of mental illness among Iranians leads individuals to perceive those with psychological disorders as “dangerous” and “subhuman.” But why is that? What is the underlying reason for this ubiquitous negative attitude toward all things mental? Perhaps a brief look at the history of psychology in Iran will shed some light on this mindset.

Considering the dominant negative beliefs surrounding both psychological disorders as well as mental health-related fields, one would imagine the mental health field to be relatively new in Iran. However, tracing the historical development of the field of psychology in Iran paints a surprisingly different picture.

The practice of counseling and psychotherapy in ancient Iran is rooted in the teachings of Zoroastrianism dating back to the 6th century BCE, as documented in the religious book Avesta .

In medieval Persia, practitioners focused on the causes of mental illness to inform their treatment strategies. They employed methods that are still used today, such as electrical-shock therapy, psychotherapy, medications, as well as music and color therapy .

In the contemporary era, Iran has continued to make remarkable progress in the field of psychology, specifically in the areas of psychological research, university-level psychology programs, and the availability of mental health resources. A key event was marked in 1933 when the first psychology laboratory was founded in Tehran under the supervision of Dr. A. A. Siyasi, the father of Iranian psychology. This puts Iran only half a century behind the United States, one of the leading countries in psychological research, where the first psychology laboratory was established in 1883. In fact, Iran has been exceptionally prolific in terms of psychological research output since 1995, as it ranked 17th in terms of scientific journal publication in 2012. Regarding educational approaches toward psychology, Iranian students have the option of pursuing Psychology as a field of study at the university level up to the Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. Interestingly, the academic training in psychology programs, specifically the course content and the psychological approaches, is very similar in Iranian universities and American universities . In terms of Iran’s public mental health services, a National Program of Mental Health was initiated in the 1980s with the aim to integrate psychological services into the primary care system and facilitate access to mental health resources. Overall, these events underscore Iran’s notable progress in the fields of psychology and mental health over the past decades.

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Despite persistent efforts by the government and professionals to improve the state of mental health over the years, many Iranian citizens who have access to mental health resources still do not seek psychological care as a result of the ingrained and internalized stigma of mental illness. Many patients suffering from mental health conditions prefer to visit a psychiatrist, who can prescribe medication, rather than a clinical psychologist in order to avoid the supposed shame and stigma of “going to therapy.” Since the topic of mental illness is considered a cultural taboo among Iranians, those who are grappling with psychological disorders may prefer to hide their true experiences and downplay their feelings to avoid potential discrimination and dehumanization. Consequently, although Iran is one of three Middle Eastern countries, alongside Turkey and Israel, that has a robust mental health infrastructure comparable to that in Europe and the U.S., the rate of mental illness in Iranian society is relatively high, with 30% of Iranians suffering from a psychological condition in 2019 compared to only 19% in the U.S.

The root of this pervasive and ubiquitous stigmatized view of mental illness can be traced back in time. By the late 18th century, Europe and the U.S. adopted a more humane and compassionate view of patients with psychological disorders; however, in Iran, until the 1940s, lunatic asylums, dar-ol-majanin, with poor standards still existed in major cities. Despite Iran’s considerable progress in the field of psychology as a profession, there is a temporal lag in the collective acceptance of mental illness in Iran compared to Western countries.

This historically negative attitude may be driving the stigmatizing beliefs about mental health among contemporary Iranians.

A glance at the historical trajectory of Iranian psychology has suggested that mental health in Iran is suffering from a chasm: while professional and academic psychology has made significant progress over the years, Iranian society’s collective perspective on psychopathology and mental health fields is still marked by a discriminatory and stigmatizing attitude. Progress will be a difficult journey because it will require shifting mindsets and unlearning deeply ingrained, rigid attitudes surrounding mental health that have existed throughout generations. To improve the public’s perspective on mental illness, Arsia Taghva and his colleagues at the Psychiatry Department of Tehran University of Medical Sciences propose a comprehensive stigma reduction program that includes public education campaigns focused on raising awareness, targeted use of media, and cultural and artistic efforts, among other strategies. Iranian psychology has already come a long way, despite the country’s economic and political unrest.

By working toward closing the gap between the public’s negative mental health schema and the remarkable achievements of the field of Iranian psychology, we would be connecting the two key agents within the mental health field—the provider-professionals and the clientpatients—and in doing so, we would be taking a crucial step toward improving the state of mental health in Iran. v

Found in Translation ‫ را�س ت�گو‬.‫ م‬by M.RASTGOO

‫چون بشد دلبر و با یار وفادار چه کرد‬

‫دیدی ای دل که غم عشق دگربار چه کرد‬

‫آه از آن مست که با مردم هشیار چه کرد‬

‫آه از آن نرگس جادو که چه بازی انگیخت‬

‫طالع بی‌شفقت بنی که در این کار چه کرد‬

‫اشک من رنگ شفق یافت ز بی‌مهری یار‬

W

hat do you think when you see the three lines above?

To many, these lines are merely unintelligible curls; to the Persian speakers among you, they are either comprehensible but not very understandable, or very, very beautiful.

Now. When I read those lines, which I know by heart, I always, inevitably, smile; but how in the world could I possibly explain why, to anyone besides those already fluent in Persian and capable of understanding poetry? The obvious answer is that I could provide them with a translation—or, if one is lacking, translate the poem myself—but that, unfortunately, is wholly, completely, and utterly impossible.

Or so some say.

I, as you might suspect, disagree.

I do concede that translating any poem from any language, while keeping every beauty and nuance and technical achievement and literary device and meaning and connotation intact, is, in fact, impossible. However, I maintain that it is possible to translate a poem while keeping many of these attributes, if only one deliberates thoughtfully and decides early on what to keep and what to let fall to the wayside or to relegate to the footnotes.1

Every transition from one language to another has a price; there is no way to proceed without sacrificing something of the original work’s allure. What the translator must choose at the beginning is what exactly to let go: is it the rhyme scheme that must be different, or the metre, or the really rather clever pun in line three?

As sacrifice is inevitable in this process, what distinguishes a good translation from a bad one, in my opinion, is that the good translation does things in such a way as to minimize the amount of sacrifice made in the transition. The purpose of a translation heavily shapes these decisions: an academic translation is more likely to forsake beauty, phrasing, rhyme, and metre for the sake of meaning and implications, while a translation meant for most readers would hopefully strive to make the poem readable and enjoyable. But this does not mean that if an aspect of the poem is to be sacrificed, it must be sacrificed completely: one can choose not to keep the authentic monorhyme, but still have a different pleasing rhyme scheme. A good translation strives to keep the balance: how much of the meaning, for example, is lost in making the poem rhyme consistently?

If I translate this poem with the intention of keeping it as close as possible in literal meaning and word order to the original (this is generally a bad idea for any kind of poetry, especially Persian), I must thereby disregard everything else: 8

Did you see, o heart/gut/soul, that the sorrow of love, what [it] did?

How went the heart/gut/soul-taker and what with the loyal Friend [it] did?

Oh, of that narcissus [the flower] of witchcraft/magic, that what a game it started [up] Oh, of that drunk, that with the people [who are] aware what [it] did My tear the color of dusk has found (has become) from the unkindness of the Friend The fate of compassion-less-ness see, that in this work, what [it] did

Absolutely exquisite this is not. Most lines border on the nonsensical, and the only reason there’s some semblance of rhyme, beauty, or meaning is that I’ve translated the Persian in literal word order. Fortunately, we can do much better; while the above translation might serve some purpose among academic circles or as a starting point to understand “what on earth is this poem actually, literally saying”, we can make a list of the different features of this poem that are worth translating, and then see how much of each we can incorporate into our end result.

Firstly, we can look at the poem from a purely phonetic standpoint. The repetitions and use of different sounds (assonance/consonance), the poetic metre and rhythm, and the internal and end rhymes all contribute to make a poem something that is beautiful to listen to, not just understand. To get a sense of what these three lines from a Hafez ghazal are doing, we can transliterate it into how an English speaker would probably pronounce it:

Dīdī ey del ke gham-e ‘eshq degarbār che kard Chon beshod delbar o bā yār-e vafādār che kard Āh az ān narges-e jādoo ke che bāzī angīkht Āh az ān mast ke bā mardom-e hoshyār che kard Ashk-e man rang-e shafaq yāft ze bī-mehrī-ye yār Tāle’e bī-shafeqat bīn ke dar īn kār che kard2

Some technical aspects of the poem are immediately apparent. We can see the traditional monorhyme (where the rhyme scheme is in the form AA BA CA DA…) , so common in classical Persian poetry, which, here, is in “-ār che kard”. It is a device that allows listeners to try and puzzle out how the next line will end, and that also gives a constancy to the poem, a point of stability to which every couplet can converge. We can also see Hafez’s prowess with words and sounds; the first couplet is awash with d’s and l’s and e’s and r’s, the two halves of the second couplet start the exact same way (“Āh az ān”) and those lines are full of n’s and m’s. There are a lot of ī sounds in the last couplet, as well as a wonderful pun on shafaq and shafeqat, which shall be explained momentarily.

These technical feats of the Persian language are no doubt impossible to translate directly, but attempts can certainly be made in the translation to mirror them with use of assonance and consonance and occasionally wordplay and puns in English (though the latter are much more difficult to achieve3). Likewise, the metre is not directly translatable — Persian has long and short vowels, so metre depends on syllable length as well as syllable stress and syllable count, while English metre depends only on the latter two — but by using a metre similar in cadence to the Persian4, and

It's lonely down here.

Phonetic guide: ā as in father; a as in cat; e as in gait (geyt); ī as in see; ch as in chair; r as in the Spanish tapped r, like in pero; ‘ is the glottal stop, at the beginning of syllables like ‘uh-‘oh; gh or q as in the initial sound of the French r; and kh as in the Scottish loch.

3 Occasionally, fortuitously, puns in Persian can be reproduced almost exactly in English; a pun in Persian on ghazal (a poetic form) and ghazāl (antelope) can be translated with a pun on ghazal (the name of the type of poem doesn’t exist in English) and gazelle.

4 Iambs for more flowing, common metres, trochees or anapests for the more percussive ones, perhaps.

1 2

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with the same syllable count and breakdown as the original5, we can approximate. Monorhyme, for all its beauty and constancy, is the most difficult of the literary devices to translate in a way which is readable; since Persian has about 8 vowel sounds and English has anywhere from 19 to 22 depending on the dialect, it is much easier to find rhymes in Persian than it is in English. Further complicating matters, the verb comes at the end of the sentence in Persian, which facilitates the monorhyme, while in English such a word order would be stilted and awkward.6

Now, keeping these constraints in mind, we must decide what we want to keep and what to put aside. For this, we must also look at the meaning of the poem, and we can come up with a (quasi) prose translation to help us along; what is this poem actually saying?

Did you see, o Heart, what the sorrow of love has done once more?

How the beloved has gone, and what they have done with the faithful friend?

Oh, those bewitching narcissi, what a game they’ve played!

Oh, that drunk, what has it done to the sober people?

My tears have turned to the color of the dusk from the friend’s lack of compassion Look at the fate of unkindness, and what it has done in this sorry business

This gives a fairly good sense of the apparent meaning of these lines in Persian, but if a few phrases seem odd or unfamiliar, that is because of another challenge that the translator faces: idiom and metaphor. Persian idioms are notoriously intractable, and are very closely related to the language’s common metaphors, so I will not attempt to categorize those in use here, just try and make some sense of them. “Narcissi'' refer to the eyes of the beloved, since the narcissus flower resembles an eye in shape; there is a play on the “eye” scheme in the second couplet, since “drunk” is also used as an ocular descriptor in Persian. Drunken eyes are a feature which are attractive in the Persian culture, with a meaning similar to “come-to-bed eyes” in English. Likewise, the word “game” can also refer to a mischievous or playful gaze, which is also considered very attractive. The frequent use of the word “friend” does not signal that the love being described is platonic; the word yār can mean very close friend, partner, or lover. Finally, in the last line, the pun is on shafaq (dusk) and shafeqat (kindness), words that are pronounced and spelled nearly identically – “tears the color of the dusk” refer to the common metaphor of crying tears of blood, from an immeasurable and deep sadness.7

This is a lot to even process, let alone to try to translate, but try we must. It is here that we must consider the last necessary qualifier for a good translator, especially one who does verse translation. The great Douglas Hofstadter, in his book Le Ton Beau de Marot8, states that a translator need not be fluent in the language they are translating from, but they absolutely must be extremely familiar, if not totally fluent, in the language they are translating to. This is because it is relatively easy to look up what a word means in, say, Persian, but to produce an accurate translation, and especially a worthy verse translation, one cannot be constantly looking for the right word in the target language.

Personally, I take the maxim a step further: If a translator wishes to attempt a verse translation of a poem, they must also be familiar with the poetry of the target language; that is, someone translating a Persian poem into English verse has to be able to write decent English poetry themselves. After all, what is a verse translation but an original poem in the target language, that conforms in meaning and style to the poem being translated?

Persian lines are usually around 14 syllables long, split somewhere down the middle, which Dick Davis makes use of by sometimes translating the couplets into four-line stanzas where the syllable count is 8/6//8/6 6 Some translators, like Paul Smith, have tried very hard to preserve monorhyme, but as a result their language is extremely awkward and the sentence construction is stretched to its limits, reducing the readability and effectiveness of the translations by a large amount.

7 A note of import: there are no gendered pronouns in Persian, so I used “they” above, but the reader is free to insert “he” or “she” or any other pronoun in its place.

8 A book about translating a single poem that I very strongly recommend to the reader who is looking for more of this kind of thing.

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Now, this is not to say that the work of translation is reserved for only the erudite; as a training exercise it is extremely useful, and strengthens the translator’s grasp on both of the languages at play. However, it is certainly not an easy task, and those that produce readable (and beautiful) translations of poems, which stand as great poetry in their own right, in keeping with the original form and meaning, and in good faith,9 must be lauded greatly.

The time has come to attempt a verse translation, given what we have put forth above; the decision to only translate these three couplets (as opposed to the whole poem’s seven), will change how I approach the translation, in particular with regards to the monorhyme. In this specific case, I managed to keep the radif (the repetition of a phrase and the end of each couplet) intact, but sacrificed the actual rhyme that came before it. I lost a bit of the nuance in the third line, but added a few of my own words in the same vein; there is some consonance with s’s and l’s and r’s in the first couplet, but not as clear or striking as in the original, and the phrasing is slightly unnatural. I did manage, however, to keep the 14-syllable lines intact with my use of iambic heptameter, and overall, it manages to flow well. I also managed a pun10 and some internal rhyme in the last couplet, but at the expense of an unusual apostrophe.

The task of the translator is a difficult one, and often thankless, but it is a job worth doing, no matter how many people say it is impossible. In the end, the goal is to spread the joy and interest generated by remarkable works of art and literature to people who would not have initially been exposed to or understood them; and that, I think, is not only possible, but is an absolutely wonderful thing to do.

O Heart, did you see what, once more, love’s sorrow’s gone and done?

What that sweet lover, with the loyal friend, has gone and done?

Oh, those bewitching narcissi, those eyes, what games they play!

Oh that drunk gaze! To sober men look what it’s gone and done!

My tears flow with the dusk’s red tint; my friend’s unkind to me She tears my heart apart; look what unkindness’ gone and done

What I mean by this is that ultimately, I believe, a good translator’s goal, first and foremost, is to share the literature they love with the world, and to do so with their translation as close as possible to the original. There are some who call themselves “translators” who do not even know the language they are translating from, publish books and poems with barely any relation to the original and no reference to the source material they purport to translate, and do all this solely for recognition and profit. These are not good translators.

10 Of which I am quite inordinately proud.

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KHUDA-HAFEZ:

Farsi, Firangis, and the Fall of Persianate India

by ZAID SYED I am from India: Persian is not my native tongue;.

I am like the crescent moon: my cup is not full.

Do not seek from me the charm of style in exposition.

Do not seek not from me Khansar and Isfahan.

Although the language of Hind is sweet as sugar, Yet sweeter is the fashion of Persian speech.

‫هندیم از پارسی بیگانه ام‬ ‫ماہ نو باشم تهی پیمانه ام‬ ‫حسن انداز بیان از من مجو‬ ‫خوانسار و اصفهان از من مجو‬ ‫گرچه هندی در عذوبت شکر است‬ ‫طرز گفتار دری شیرین تر است‬

— Muhammad Iqbal (Eghbal-e-Lahuri) in Asrar-i-Khudi

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A

sk anyone alive today to describe the Indian experience and they might bring up the strikingly magnificent Taj Mahal in Agra, spicy kebabs fresh out of a tandoor, or even the iconic, yet sappy Bollywood movies beloved by audiences around the world.

While all of these things capture the essence of Indian culture, one cannot help but acknowledge that what we recognize today as uniquely Indian did not emerge out of a vacuum. It is rather the direct result of centuries of cultural exchange and the mass movement of people, ideas, and traditions between the two great cultural juggernauts of medieval Asia: Greater Iran, and Hindustan, consisting of modern-day Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Kashmir. Through the establishment of vast Persianate dynasties straddling both worlds, Persian culture begins to flirt with Indic traditions at the frontiers of empire, producing the culture we recognize today. Without Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s endearing love for his Iranian wife, the Taj Mahal would not exist today, and without the influence of the Persian language, most Bollywood songs today would be unrecognizable.

And yet, the Persian roots that have co-influenced much of Indian culture have been ignored or erased as religious nationalism has taken hold across much of South Asia.

We can trace perhaps the earliest significant example of meaningful Iranian-Indian interaction to the vibrant court of Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, the first independent ruler of the namesake Turco-Persian empire spanning central Iran to northern India. Among his courtiers was an erudite Iranian scholar by the name of Biruni. Born in modernday Uzbekistan, Biruni was a famed polymath and astrologer who joined the company of Sultan Mahmud as a middleaged prisoner of war, later accompanying Ghaznavi on a series of raids throughout northern India. While his imperial patron Sultan Mahmud was busy looting northern India to finance westward imperial ambitions, Biruni spent his time working on his seminal work Tarikhul-Hind (History of India, in Arabic), a comprehensive survey of Indian society, geography, culture, and religion. As part of his research, Biruni became fluent

in conversational Sanskrit, speaking to native Hindus in order to facilitate the translation of Sanskrit works into Arabic.

Biruni’s work fit perfectly into Mahmud’s vision, who sent along Tarikh-ul-Hind to the rest of the Islamic world to boast of his eastern conquests. Tarikh-ul-Hind joined famed Iranian poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh among the impressive collection of works that Mahmud gave patronage to.

Not long after the decline of the Ghaznavids, a series of Turkic, Afghan, and Indian Muslim dynasties established themselves in the center of northern India at Delhi. Regardless of whether the dynasty in power was Turkic, Afghan, or Indian, these large imperial structures heavily courted Persian administrators to help run the empire, which conducted its affairs largely in the Persian language.

While today Farsi is widely perceived as a ‘Muslim’ language, in medieval India, it was seen as a secular yet refined alternative in comparison to the Arabic of the Islamic scholarly elite or the common Hindavi of the Indian peasant class. By 1700, India would become the world’s leading center for the patronage of Persian literature and scholarship, with an estimated seven times more Farsi speakers than in Iran.

Against the backdrop of recurring Mongol invasions throughout much of Central Asia and Iran, there was no shortage of educated Iranian refugees coming into India, which defended itself against the Mongol threat in large part due to the work of multiethnic coalitions.

These Persianate sultanates were heavily responsible for introducing a great deal of Persian literature to Hindustan, such as the poetry of Iranians such as Ferdowsi, Rumi, and Saa’di. At the same time, Indian poets began to write in Persian, and the work of writers like Amir Khusrau Dehlavi spread throughout the Persianate world as far as Iran. While the Delhi sultanates were influential in propagating the Persian culture and language throughout its dominions, the most cutting-edge cross-cultural exchanges were happening on the frontiers of the empire in regional kingdoms such as Kashmir, Gujarat, and Bengal. In Kashmir, Sultan Zain-ulAbidin was a famous patron of Sanskrit works, having classical Indian epics such as the Mahabharata translated into Persian, while simultaneously engaging 13

in the translation of the Shahnameh into Sanskrit.

It was not until the reign of the Mughals that Iran itself became a powerful player in the fate of India. Following Shah Ismail’s conquest of much of Iran, many Zoroastrian and Sunni Iranians fled to India, finding opportunities working for the administration of various Persianate sultanates. In 1540, after Emperor Humayun lost his empire to an Afghan noble, he fled to Safavid Iran, where he was taken under the wing of the Shah Tahmasp. After nominally converting to Shia Islam at Tahmasp’s behest, Humayun returned to reconquer India with the help of the Shah’s forces, forging a strong bond between the Mughal Empire and Safavid Iran for years to come. The Mughal Empire would continue to be the most significant patron of a distinct Indo-Persian culture until its decline in the eighteenth century.

It was not long before the Persian language would reach its zenith under the Mughal Empire. Following years of rule under the East India Company and a failed Indian rebellion, the British Raj officially established itself in India in 1858 after ousting the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Seeing Farsi as a ‘Muslim’ language foreign to India, they replaced it immediately with English in most high-level administrative use, while also institutionalizing the creation of two separate languages for Hindus and Muslims who would otherwise speak Hindavi. In state-run schools, Muslims were taught Urdu, a significantly Persianized version of Hindavi, while Hindus were taught a heavily Sanskritized Hindi. The British also gave patronage to newly-founded universities which would train Indian Muslims in English literature alongside Urdu — the most prominent being the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, which exists to this day as the Aligarh Muslim University in the modern state of Uttar Pradesh. Following the imposition of new British language policies, the Persian language was quickly displaced from the tongues of thousands of educated Muslims, championed only by a receding elite class of old-money Indians.

And yet, even during the darkest periods in India’s history under British rule, the Persian language was used by freedom fighters and independence

activists as a symbol of resistance and struggle against the British Raj. In this time, groundbreaking poetphilosophers such as Allama Muhammad Iqbal emerged, whose writings served as the spiritual inspiration for the modern state of Pakistan. Iqbal’s works are still popular today across South Asia and as far as Iran, where he is known as Eghbal-e-Lahuri.

Today, decades after Indian independence from Britain and the 1947 partition, South Asia’s unique Persianate heritage is dying out. In the modernday Republic of India, which encompasses over two thousand ethnic groups, Persianate history has been erased and undermined for the sake of constructing a pan-Indian identity, with Hindi as an official language.

This phenomenon has been further exacerbated by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which paints Muslims as foreign invaders as part of its Hindutva ideology. Since 2014, the BJP has been aggressively pursuing a revisionist approach of renaming major Indian cities deemed too ‘Muslim’. In 2018, the city of Allahabad was officially renamed to the Sanskrit-origin Prayagraj, and the party has since set its sights on the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad. This erasure of Indo-Persian history extends to major monuments too — in 2019, a BJP Member of Parliament even suggested that the Taj Mahal itself was originally a Hindu temple dedicated to the deity Shiva. Nevertheless, one can still find remnants of the Persian culture among the Indian people, whether in the traditions and customs of the Muslims themselves; the Irani cafes run by the small but prosperous Zoroastrian community; or the uniquely Indo-Persian traditions of kayastha Hindus who had once served in Persianate administrations. The reverse is also true: you can find small South Asian communities across Iran, including a tiny but prominent Punjabispeaking Sikh community in Zahedan.

Despite the undeniable legacy of Persian culture in shaping the modern Indian identity, historical revisionism and erasure of Indo-Persian and Muslim narratives continue alongside the political marginalization of Indian Muslims. State-sanctioned mob violence against Muslims have resulted in tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced across India, and an emboldened Hindu nationalist regime continues to disenfranchise Muslims through the abrogation of Kashmiri autonomy and de jure 14

discrimination against Muslim communities.

Counterintuitively, a similar story can be found on the other side of the border in Pakistan.

Turning away from a rich Persianate Islamic history and Allama Iqbal’s vision of a safe haven for all Muslims, the Pakistani state under military dictator Zia-ul-Haq instead deferred to a Saudi-influenced Wahhabist orientation, distancing Pakistani society from its Persian heritage as part of its Saudi-backed Islamization policies. The lasting effects of the Zia-ul-Haq regime has meant that in some corners of Pakistani Muslim society, it is looked down upon to even utter the phrase khuda hafez, literally “may God be your Guardian," with many preferring Allah hafez instead—the reason being that khuda is considered a Persian term, not an Arabic one. And despite the founder of the Pakistani state, Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself being a Shia Muslim, Pakistan has seen the troubling rise of antiShia extremist groups such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba and its more radical offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, making large parts of Pakistan inhospitable for its sizable Shia Muslim communities.

In more recent years, however, the Saudi soft power in Pakistan has slowly started to wane. In its place, Turkey has emerged as the cultural model for Pakistani society, buoyed by prominent cultural exports such as the Diriliş: Ertuğrul television series, which received high praise from Prime Minister Imran Khan, in addition to the wistful, predominantly Sunni Muslim nostalgia for the Ottoman caliphate. Almost seven decades after the Pakistani national anthem, Qaumi Taranah, was written almost entirely in Persian, between the clashing soft powers of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Pakistan’s Persian heritage also finds itself falling through the cracks.

Despite enjoying centuries of transnational paramountcy, with the rise of religious nationalism in both India and Pakistan, South Asia’s Persian heritage is slowly being edged out of relevance. While in so many ways Persian was central to the South Asian imagination both before European colonization and in the movement leading up to independence, in their respective nationbuilding projects, Persian was left behind by both states in their dominant historiographies. And yet, even as it has lost its prominence in popular society, the Persianate world retains a loose grasp through its heavy influence on South Asian architecture, cuisine, language, and music — you just have to know where to look. v

15

The Father of Iranian Nationalism

by FARZAND-E-VATAN

“We are the enemy of injustice and oppression, of evil and of cruelty. We fight aberrant and ignorant beliefs and actions.” – Ahmad Kasravi

O

ne would find it difficult to find an Iranian in the twenty-first century, whether in the Islamic Republic or in the diaspora, that has never heard the name Mohammad Mossadegh. Many view the former Prime Minister as the founder of modern Iranian democracy and a martyr for the causes of anti-imperialism and Iranian selfdetermination. That being said, the ideas behind Mossadegh’s political philosophy predate him by at least several decades.

While it would be Mossadegh who finally put theory into action by forming the National Front and nationalizing Iran’s oil industry to protect it from the prying hands of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, credit should be given to the forefather of secular liberalism in Iranian political theory, Ahmad Kasravi (1890 – 1946). Indeed, it is ultimately Kasravi whose conception of nationalism, cultural preservation, antiimperialism, and self-preservation for the Iranian nation can be credited with formulating much of the intense pride Iranians young and old have for their homeland, regardless of their views on American, European, or Iranian politics.

Born in Tabriz during the reign of Nasser ad-Din Shah Qajar, Kasravi was raised in a religious household wherein his father, though not a cleric himself, groomed Kasravi from childhood to succeed his grandfather as a Shiite cleric or mullah. From the ages of six to twenty, he was sent to an Islamic school, maktab, after which he entered the seminary in Qom as per his father’s wishes. Several years later, however, Kasravi drew denunciation from ayatollahs and hojatoleslams in the Shia establishment for his non-traditional form of preaching and attire, which distanced him from his peers.

After one particularly public condemnation, he withdrew from the seminary entirely, abandoning his religious career.

Simultaneously, Kasravi became enamored with movements supporting the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of the early twentieth century. Combining his extant knowledge of the Arabic language and the Quran, Kasravi immersed himself in both Western and Eastern ideologies and sciences in an effort to become a polymath in the letters and sciences. It was at this pivotal moment that his education and political beliefs would change his life forever, as moral differences between him and religiously conservative local political leaders in Tabriz would prompt him to migrate to Tehran for work.

For the remainder of his life, Kasravi would rotate positions in the Justice Department of Iran, working in various judiciary positions in Tehran, Tabriz, and Khuzestan.

Meanwhile, he dedicated himself wholly to arguing for the 16

reformist position of governance many would consider to be the precursor to modern Iranian nationalism. This political theory incorporated radical change at every level of Iranian society, idealizing a purely constitutional monarchy operating through secular liberalism to achieve its socioeconomic goals.

The foremost of these aforementioned goals was protecting and promoting the unique Iranian identity. Crucially, Kasravi employed extremely strict guidelines for what is Iranian and what is foreign, centering his political theory around secular liberalism as only a means toward his end of achieving a government that promoted a truly Iranian nationalist ideology.

For example, utilizing his knowledge of Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian, Kurdish, English, and French, Kasravi embarked on a crusade to cleanse the Persian language of all non-Iranian roots. Interestingly, despite the fact that he was an Azeri (Iranian Turk), his “pure language” (zaban-e pak) initiative sought to remove Arabic, Turkish, French, and English loan words from the Persian lexicon; the fact that he also utilized this philosophy in his writing makes deciphering his political theories quite strenuous as he often would implement virtually unused Pahlavi (Middle) Persian words as a replacement for more common phrases that had foreign roots.

That is not to say, however, that Kasravi was by any means a Persian supremacist in the traditionally Western notion of ethnic and racial boundaries. To the contrary, he was in favor of promoting an Iran for all Iranians, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or social class, through the establishment of a system of equal representation and transparent governance. This is evinced most clearly in his work detailing the history of the Azerbaijani people, in which Kasravi justifies the inclusion of Azerbaijan into the Iranian nation – a concept later advocated by supporters of Greater Iran – by explaining how Azeris operate as one branch of a larger Iranic people group while simultaneously advocating the continued survival and promotion of their separate cultural heritage, language, and traditions. Azeris, by Kasravi’s definition, are a critical part of the larger Iranian panethnic identity and thus should be united with other Iranian peoples under the same national governing structure.

Therefore, critiques of Kasravi, both among his contemporaries and those of today, generally stem from one of two issues raised by readers of his philosophical essays, speeches, or articles. First, many in Iranian intelligentsia have decried Kasravi for his derision of the tradition of poetry in Iranian art history, as he believed classical poets such as Omar Khayyam, Molavvi, and Hafez to be advocates of wasteful spiritual obsession, kharaabaati, and drunken madness, masti-o divaanegi. Former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad

Ali Foroughi took such offense to some of his literary theories that he went so far as to ban Kasravi from publishing or contributing to the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, Farhangestan. Fortunately, for the Iranians of today, powerful court figures such as Abdolhossein Teymourtash and Hossein Fathi prevented his arrest for continuing to write.

More prominently, however, Kasravi has historically been criticized for his views on organized religion, which he views as completely contrary to progressive thought and government.

Much like his foray into linguistics, Kasravi was strongly opinionated in his view that Iranian nationalism had no room to coexist with organized religious doctrine. Just as he valued the promotion of a pure language, he also subscribed to the concept of a pure religion, din-e pak, one that was at once completely separated from governing apparati, individualized, and free from foreign influence. His incendiary opinions regarding Shia Islam in particular mark a sharp contrast between his idea of the Iranian nation along with its values and what he perceives to be the consistent, foreign threat of the presence of such faiths. In other words, Kasravi viewed Islam to be simultaneously not inherently Iranian and a tool of foreign powers used to religiously justify corrupt political ends.. It should be noted that at no point did Kasravi express an inkling of the Islamophobia that is often falsely credited to his ideology; instead, Kasravi’s sharp rhetoric was almost entirely aimed at the clerical establishment that arbitrated between the original faith of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the people of Iran and produced the Shia religion as it was practiced in the 20th century. Moreover, he launched numerous attacks on the Sufi and Baha’i faiths, which he viewed as an irrational stagnation and an immoral bastardization of alreadymalformed Shia notions of saviorism, respectively.

Even though later scholars such as Ali Shariati and Ahmad Fardid acknowledged and respected Kasravi’s extensive knowledge of numerous faiths, especially Shia Islam, many unfamiliar with the compedium of Kasravi’s writings follow the narrative explicated by his enemies throughout the years, labelling him as a radical Western Islamophobe instead of a reformer. The existence of Kasravi’s unjustified reputation is made clearest in the treatment his works have received under the censorship policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where his perspectives on history and linguistics are valued and respected but those on philosophy, religion, and literature are banned. His history on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, for instance, is still considered the seminal narrative of that event by modern scholars.

The misappropriation of his works as anti-Islamic rather than anti-clerical netted Kasravi a large number of enemies later in his life, including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s ideological predecessor, Ayatollah Abol-Qasem Kashani. The irregularly nationalist cleric began to harbor and protect the terrorist group Devotees of Islam (Fadaayaan-e Eslaam), whose leader Navvab Safavi eventually ordered Kasravi’s death. In March 1946, in an open courtroom, Kasravi, about to be acquitted of slander against Islam, was stabbed to death alongside his faithful assistant Mohammad Taghi Haddadpour. His assassination was followed by those of Prime Ministers Abdolhossein Hazhir, Haj Ali Razmara, and Education Minister Ahmad Zangeneh, actions that caused strict crackdowns on and executions of members of radical Islamic factions throughout Iran.

Soon after, Kasravi’s philosophical successor, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, was appointed Prime Minister by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in order to quell the disorder resulting from the crackdowns; to achieve the nationalist view of Iranian self-determination against both colonial and internal opposition, Mossadegh did what Kasravi would have done in his stead and began to compromise. Kashani demanded that those assassins still in custody be pardoned and that he be placed as Chairman of the Iranian Parliament, both terms that Mossadegh accepted. However, it soon became clear that Mossadegh would not comply with Kashani’s orders to implement Sharia law in the country, place powerful religious leaders in important government posts, and officially commemorate the Devotees of Islam. In typical fashion, Kashani betrayed the National Front and the nationalist cause, practically giving Mossadegh up to the imperialist hands of the Central Intelligence Agency that kept the Shah in power. Thus, the forces of organized religion twice stifled the voice of secular liberalism in modern Iran.

Nevertheless, the legacies of men such as Mohammad Mossadegh and Ahmad Kasravi survive at full strength in the hearts and minds of Iranian nationalists around the world. From the young idealist first learning the story behind the nationalization of oil and Mohammad Mossadegh, to the wiser adults in the nation and diaspora curious enough to inquire about the origins of secular liberalism and nationalism in the writing of Ahmad Kasravi, to the aged elders of our nation looking to the past with sorrow and regret yet toward the future with hope, the spirit of Iranian nationalism has never, can never, and shall never fade into oblivion. v

Mohammad Mossadegh & Abol-Qasem Kashani

Ahmad Kasravi 17

Mohammad Mossadegh

Iran and The Im p eri a li s t T h re at

by MESEAN SADRI

I

ran has been playing an increasingly prominent role in global politics.

Imperialist superpowers like the United States and China have weaponized Iran for geopolitical aims as the country experiences a humanitarian crisis due to U.S. sanctions. Companies cannot conduct business in Iran without the threat of losing access to the international banking system. Foreign trade and investment in the country have stifled, and the Iranian people are bearing the brunt of this economic warfare. The economy and currency are in tatters, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated existing hardships. As the United States fans the flames of war with Iran and the economic conditions for civilians continue to deteriorate, China has offered a strategic lifeline to the Iranian government. With every diplomatic avenue closed, the question remains: Will Iran succumb to imperialist annihilation by the United States or become an indebted client state to the People’s Republic of China?

limiting Iran’s uranium usage. In exchange for compliance with these terms, global powers like the U.S., Russia, China, and the E.U. agreed to roll back sanctions on the Islamic Republic, freeing up billions of dollars in assets and revenue. Despite several international institutions’ claims that Iran was adhering to the terms of the deal, the U.S. illegitimately withdrew from the deal in 2018 to the dismay of all other signatories.

The Washington foreign policy establishment is gleeful at these belligerent moves and the prospect of war with Iran, especially given that Trump has “hired notorious Iran war fanatics Gen. James Mattis, John Bolton, and Elliott Abrams,” according to Sarah Lazare and Michael Arria of Jacobin Magazine. These hawkish advisors have a vested interest in war with Iran because they represent the interests of the military industrial complex (MIC). The MIC refers to the informal relationship between a nation’s military and the defense industry that supplies it. Following the assassination of Soleimani, “the stocks of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and other war profiteers have rallied. After all, Iran’s function as an obstacle to U.S.-Saudi-Israeli designs across the region is a central reason for the U.S. ruling class’ violence against Iran,” according to media studies Professor Greg Shupak. Saudi Arabia and Israel routinely purchase weapons from the lucrative U.S. arms industry and are allied with the United States in robbing countries like Iran of their main source of revenue: oil. Iran acts as a regional buffer against these rapacious and warmongering interests, so the United States is eager for a military response from Iran that justifies going to war.

Escalating Tensions

Tensions began rising in early January when the Trump Administration unilaterally assassinated high-ranking Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike. This reckless and illegal escalation of U.S.-Iran relations serves as yet another effort to provoke Iran into war. To provide some context, this assassination comes almost two years after Donald Trump’s decision to “scrap an international agreement that a) was working and b) offered an easy path toward de-escalating US-Iran tensions and stabilizing the Persian Gulf,” says American foreign policy analyst Derek Davison. This international agreement, known as the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, aimed at nuclear non-proliferation and

The Sanction Regime

Sanctions have inflicted profoundly devastating harm to the Iranian economy and people. To make matters worse, Iran was one of the hardest hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is worth noting that these sanctions are not solely a construct of the Trump Administration. “[It] was only during Barack Obama’s first term that the current comprehensive sanction regime was established. A key move came in 2011, legalizing the cessation of U.S. financial transactions with any institution caught doing business with Iran. This provision is at the core of many of the chronic economic dysfunctions that are vexing Iran during the current COVID-19 outbreak,” according to Iranian foreign policy analyst Valentina Pegolo. The disincentive to conduct business in Iran is directly tied to the shortages in medical supplies and life-saving medicines currently observed in Iran. In fact, reporter 18

Negar Nortazavi “notes that sev­er­al com­pa­nies were reluc­tant to sell test­ing kits to Iran over con­cerns about vio­lat­ing a com­ plex web of sanc­tions, until the WHO stepped in and instruct­ ed them to.” Moreover, a team of Iranian pediatric oncologists warned in The Lancet, “Re-estab­lish­ment of sanc­tions, scarci­ ty of drugs due to the reluc­tance of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ nies to deal with Iran, and a tremen­dous increase in oncol­o­gy drug prices (due to the plum­met­ing val­ue of the Iran­ian rial by 50 – 70%), will inevitably lead to a decrease in sur­vival of chil­ dren with cancer,” reports Sarah Lazare. The brutal nature of these sanctions is manufacturing a humanitarian crisis in Iran.

It is unconscionable that medical suppliers and pharmaceutical companies are afraid to provide basic necessities out of fear of retaliation from the U.S. government. Pegolo writes that even organizations like “the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are facing US obstruction over Iran’s request of a $5 billion loan to finance the purchase of medical equipment, and it is scrambling to circumvent the impasse through alternative channels.” Relief International, one of the few humanitarian organizations aiding the crisis in Iran, has noted that extreme medical shortages are a consequence of U.S. sanctions. Nonprofits on the ground are confirming the United States’ violation of human rights, so why has the Trump Administration exhibited such a callous attitude towards the crisis?

When asked about the reimposition of economic sanctions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded, “‘Things are much worse for the Iran­ian peo­ple, and we’re con­vinced that will lead the Iran­ian peo­ple to rise up and change the behav­ior of the régime.’ The goal, in oth­er words, is to col­lec­tive­ly pun­ish the pop­u­la­tion based on the unproven the­o­ry that this will make the peo­ple rise up against their gov­ern­ment,” according to Lazare.

In a stunningly heinous admission, Mike Pompeo concedes that the sanctions killing kids with cancer are intended to foment an uprising of the Iranian people."This foreign policy strategy fails to recognize that the Iranian people cannot simply rise up and overthrow their government, given the recent protests over rising fuel prices."

Despite the atrocities of the American government and the inaction of Europe, the Iranian government is not completely absolved of their role in worsening the crisis. Pegolo mentions the regime’s lack of political leverage, writing, “COVID-19 has not prompted Iranian officials to revise their nuclear strategy in an attempt to win greater European cooperation. Instead, the Iranian Parliament has threatened to continue uranium enrichment unless the EU can ‘guarantee that Iran can sell oil no less than before US withdrawal, i.e. 2.6 million barrels a day.’

This pattern of behavior is hardly that of a state faced with an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Instead, it seems that Iranian policymakers have opted to protect the regime and safeguard their geopolitical interests over protecting their people.” Despite their unjust treatment on the world stage, Iranian officials must be willing to compromise in order to improve the material conditions for their citizens.

international condemnation. In fact, the power dynamic between the two nations may be to blame for the early spread of the coronavirus in Iran. As Pegolo highlights, since “fear of disrupting economic ties with China, one of its only remaining trading partners, had prevented Iran from discontinuing flights from Wuhan sooner,” Iran may have mistakenly opened its doors to the deadly virus. Iran’s desperation is further highlighted by their trade relations with China. “According to figures by the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), China accounts for 37 percent of Iran’s imports and 31 percent of its exports, in spite of the sharp drop in China’s import of Iran’s oil since 2018. Iran’s economic overreliance on the People’s Republic has been manufactured by the sanction regime; if the sanction regime had not left Iran hooked to Beijing as its only trading lifeline, the political and economic cost of closing the borders to China would not have been as high for Iran.” China is Iran’s last hope, and diplomatic talks about a long-term military and trade partnership may be their saving grace. The irony is that U.S. sanctions may have actually brought these two U.S. adversaries closer together.

A document recently leaked to Farnaz Fassihi and Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times outlines that China and Iran are entering a strategic partnership in trade, military, banking, infrastructure, and telecommunications, with China offering $400 billion over the next 25 years in exchange for heavily discounted oil. Oil is the largest source of revenue for the Iranian economy, and China, the world’s largest oil importer, is eager to secure a guaranteed oil supply from Iran. However, the terms of this partnership could determine the direction of the Iranian economy and country for decades to come.

China has already conducted joint military exercises with Iran, but they are looking to expand their military presence in the Middle East, a region the United States has long dominated. The deal aims to construct several port facilities in the Persian Gulf. One port facility at Jask, just outside the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf, would give China a vantage point on the water through which much of the world’s oil tankers travel. Additionally, China is looking to construct airports, high-speed railways, subways, and other infrastructure projects throughout Iran. Nearly 100 projects are cited in the drafted document, and these bold infrastructure goals could transform the lives of millions of Iranian citizens within a few decades.

This newfound partnership fuels greater geopolitical tension between the United States and China. As China conducts imperialism through development and debt collection, the U.S. subverts its adversaries with brute force and a bloated military budget. Iran is caught in the middle of this battle for global hegemony, as the United States seeks to isolate the Iranian government for its military ambitions and China seeks to establish a new client state in a strategic part of the world. Either way, Iran’s options are limited. The U.S. government is eager to start a war with Iran due to the massive influence of the military industrial complex and the profitability of war. On the other hand, China is conducting a new form of imperialism which focuses less on military power and more on indebting countries and absorbing their sovereignty. If Iran decides to move forward without engaging either superpower, conditions are bound to get worse for the Iranian people. The ball is in Iran’s court, and their decision will likely determine the direction of the country for years to come. v

The Imperialist Alternative

There is practically no chance that the U.S. government will lift sanctions and change its hostile tone towards Iran. The military industrial complex has sunk its claws into both major political parties, so Iran is backed into a corner regardless of how the U.S. presidential election turns out. However, China has been noticeably willing to engage with Iran, despite 19

Science and God in an Islamic Iran

by KYLE NEWMAN

I

n 2012, the National Institutes of Health reported that “the Islamic Republic of Iran ranked 17th in terms of scientific production in the world,” outcompeting itself compared to the year prior with a record number of 34,155 scientific journal articles produced. This metric has made Iran the fastest growing nation with regards to scientific output. Some would assume that Iran’s recent scientific boom can be attributed to the Islamic Republic’s aspirations toward becoming an internationally recognized nuclear-weapon state. Although this is a reasonable assumption, especially given that Iran’s publications in nuclear engineering “grew 250 times faster than the world average,” Iran’s nuclear ambition is not the only motivation for scientific advancement, since publications in other fields such as agriculture and medicine have also significantly increased.

Iranian goals for scientific achievement are rather propelled by an Islamic faith-based passion for scientific discovery, inspired by Iranian polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age and operating under a largely anti-Western ethos originating from revolutionaries like Ayatollah Khomeini.

In September of 1979, only a few months after Ayatollah Khomeini’s return from exile and the revolution that shook Iran, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci traveled to Iran to meet with the leader of the Islamic Republic. After being granted permission to interview Khomeini at the Faizeyah religious school in Qom, she probed Khomeini about the seemingly ironic nature of his utter distaste for the West, noting that everything from “the telephone [he] uses to communicate with,” to “the air conditioner which permits him to remain cool in the desert” are products of what he refers to as the “evil West.”

Khomeini replied that “there are good things from the West.

And we are not afraid to use them, and we do.” He explained that it was Western social, political, and cultural values and practices, rather than science and technology, that threatened to weaken the ideology of his followers. After Iran’s Islamization through the Cultural Revolution from 1979 to 1983, Khomeini supported education in the sciences and technology as a means of furthering the revolutionary cause, strengthening it against Western opponents. The Islamic Republic “reopened higher education” by allocating university slots to “war participants,

families of war casualties, and members of revolutionary organizations.” Enrollment in higher education, where maths and engineering dominated, increased from 160,000 to 200,000 between 1977 and 1988. Within this revolutionary context, the impetus for Khomeini’s support of scientific achievement in the Islamic Republic arose from a desire to rapidly elevate Iran’s technological development to match the western world while retaining Islamic and revolutionary values.

There is no explicit evidence to suggest whether Khomeini supported science because of a passion for honoring the legacy of Islamic polymaths, as many Islamic scholars often do. It is transparent, however, that Khomeini revered philosophers like Plato and Aristotle and did not cite their work in science nor use it to encourage his followers to pursue science. Instead, Khomeini used Plato’s work to defend the political legitimacy of an Islamic Republic, citing his conclusion that “until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, . . . cities will never have rest from their evils.” Khomeini’s lack of recognition toward Plato and Aristotle’s scientific works emphasizes the uniqueness of Khamenei’s perspective on science and Islam.

Iran’s victory in the Iran-Iraq war and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini ushered in a new and unique perspective on scientific achievement promoted by Ayatollah Khamenei, who often cites the works of polymaths from the Islamic Golden age to illustrate the connectedness of science and Islam. The 8 years long Iran-Iraq war—sometimes referred to as Defa e Moqadas, or The Holy Defense—marked a turning point in Iran’s revolutionary zeitgeist. Many revolutionary leaders, including the current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, admit that “while the earthly and spiritual sacrifices of the imposed war were high, the achievements of the nation of Iran in the eight years of Holy Defense, when compared to its sacrifices, were quite great.” Iran’s victory in the war proved that the fledgling revolutionary state could defend itself and inspired a new national culture rooted in the fight against “cultural invasion.” The emergence of these paradigms after the war coincided with the death of Ayatollah 20

Khomeini and the subsequent transfer of power to Ayatollah Khamenei. Thus, Iran’s motivation for scientific achievement and technological innovation shifted away from the need to defend its revolution. Instead, Ayatollah Khamenei would end up cultivating a new perspective on scientific thought that revolved around defending the revolution against western cultural invasion and featured a novel focus on the achievements of ethnically Iranian and devoutly Muslim polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age. Just six months into his leadership, Khamenei notably extolled the historical interconnection between religious and scientific advancement in Iran, citing figures like Avicenna and Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi whose extensive advancements in science, mathematics, and medicine was matched by their religious scholarship. Khamenei has criticized the Western world for politicizing science and separating it entirely from religion.

The value in practicing science according to Khamenei therefore exists in a disregard for the politics of the West whom he views as “trying to destroy the Muslim world” - just as much as it does in the glorification of religiously devout Iranian scholars motivated by Islam to seek knowledge through science.

Khamenei’s perspective on scientific discovery has a direct impact on funding and support for scientific institutions in the Islamic Republic. Scientific studies in Iran have to be approved for their accordance with the guidance and teachings of the Quran by one of the few Shia Marjas (prominent religious scholars including the Ayatollah Khamenei himself.)

Khamenei also allocated funding for the Rooyan Institute, which has grown since its founding as a fertility clinic to become a world-class stem-cell and cloning research facility. In 1991, the archconservative Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi founded the Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute in Qom, a center for studying cloning and embryonic stem-cell research. Mesbahi has frequently expressed that his motivation for running a scientific institute comes from a desire for isolation from the West and absolute self-dependency in Iranian technological affairs, reaffirming the vehemently antiWestern impetus that frames Iranian scientific achievements.

Despite Khamenei’s strong view that science and religion are inextricable and perhaps even symbiotic, the Coronavirus pandemic has without a doubt led his followers to question and seriously challenge this unique outlook. On the eve of the Iranian New Year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Khamenei gave a sermon declaring that “human enemies” as well as djinn or “evil spirits” are responsible for the pandemic viciously hitting Iran, inspiring the belief that these evil spirits causing the virus could be countered with prayer and religious devotion. Nonetheless, Khamenei and his regime took pragmatic considerations into account and closed the shrines of Imam Reza in Mashhad and Fatemeh Masumeh in Qom. These decisions stoked the flames of anger among more religiously inclined Iranian citizens, who “gathered in front of the two sanctuaries and tried to break through the gates leading to the shrines” on March 16th of 2020. Iranian followers of Khamenei have not only fallen victim to conspiracy theories attaching the spread of coronavirus to djinn, but have also glorified religious clerics spreading falsehoods about home remedies for curing the coronavirus. These phenomena together have revealed the weaknesses and flaws of Khamenei’s view that religion and science in the Islamic world must go hand in hand.

Iran as an Islamic Republic has shifted its regard for science as a tool for revolutionary defense before the IranIraq war to a religious duty incurred by Islam that embraces the great polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age. Khomeini revered science as an enabler of cultural isolationism which aided his effort to avoid technological dependency on the West, while Khamenei embraced his predecesor’s rhetoric and simultaneously created a culture around the interconnection of science and religion in Islam. Ayatollah Khamenei’s high regard for science has resulted in direct policy initiatives that have boosted Iran to its current status as the fastest growing nation in science among the developing world. Although the position on science and religion adopted by the Islamic Republic regime has left some of its more religiously devout followers bewildered and susceptible to conspiracy, it nevertheless continues to defy the rationale largely adopted by the Western world that science and religion are completely at odds. v 21

PAYTAKHT AS A FORM DECOLONIAL MEDIA A Departure from

Western-Influenced Television

F

rom Shahrzad to Ham Gonah, series on Iran’s Home Videos Network, or Shabake-ye Namayesh-e Khanegi, have dominated the Iranian television sector in recent years. Depicting affluent Tehrani families, modern romantic relationships, and action scenes popularized by Hollywood, these series rival foreign TV competitors, namely Turkish soap operas, by alluring secular families who may not conventionally consume state television programs. Home video series are not publicly broadcasted on state television channels, subjecting them to less stringent content restrictions, but are nonetheless reviewed by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

While more flexible standards on Home Videos Network have contributed to their series' exponential growth in popularity, IRIB statesanctioned television channels remain popular among viewers who do not have access to state-television alternatives.

These IRIB programs are broadcasted during prime time, often incorporating both Iranian and Muslim thematic elements. Meanwhile, home video series have captivated audiences nationwide and in diaspora. From depictions of romantic relations to extortion to

by SEAN ADIBI unabashed wealth, a diverse array of themes take center stage and illustrate an image of urban life that is exceedingly individualistic and rapacious. In mimicking the thematic undertones presented in Turkish and Western media, directors of these less stringent programs produce content that is equal parts lawabiding and refreshing. Given recent growth of Iran’s Home Videos Network, nearly all state-sanctioned television series have waned in popularity — save one.

Director Sirous Moghadam’s six-season series, Paytakht (Capital), follows the quotidian experiences of an extended family who reside in the village of Shirgah in Mazandaran. The series premiere, which aired on IRIB Channel 1, follows protagonist Naghi Mamouli alongside his wife Homa, two twin daughters, father, and cousin Arastoo, as they relocate from their hillside village to Tehran in pursuit of Homa’s university education. In a series of unexpected events, the Mamouli family find themselves homeless and seeking refuge in the back of Arastoo’s cargo truck for the duration of their time in Tehran until they decide, rather spontaneously, to return to Shirgah and resume their rural lifestyle.

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Several extended family members, including Naghi’s sister Fahimeh, brother-in-law, and two nephews, join the Mamouli family in subsequent seasons. Moghadam aimed for each season’s tumultuous ordeals to be equal parts comedic and dramatic, including the family’s cross-country journey to deliver a minaret and dome in the back of Arastoo’s truck, Arastoo’s marriage with a Chinese woman who is killed in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Naghi’s illegal activities during Homa’s term as a city council member, and the family’s run-in with ISIS after their hot air balloon floats over the Mediterranean from Turkey to Syria. Simultaneously egregious in scope and exaggerated in scale, Paytakht pushes the boundaries of situational comedies, captivating audiences through Naghi and Arastoo’s often irrational decisions, the family’s intimate albeit convoluted relationships, and broader social commentary and banter.

Through Paytakht, Moghadam illustrates the stark lifestyle disparities between Tehran and Shahrestan, or outlying counties, while challenging stereotypes associated with extended family arrangements, gender roles, and living standards in lower-income

communities. With its depiction of rural lifestyles, Islamic principles of family and tradition, and working-class forms of employment, Paytakht represents a unique form of decolonial media. For one, the Mamouli family’s daily interactions depict a departure from Western norms regarding relationships and employment.

Through their experiences, Paytakht offers an alternative to capitalist notions of success, individualism, and selffulfillment that have been popularized

by Westernized media and subsequently adopted in both Iran and in the Iranian diaspora.

Several moments illustrate the Mamouli family’s divergence from capitalist ideals. At the opening of Season 2, Naghi stands alongside a major thoroughfare in Shirgah as a construction contract worker. One day, a visibly wealthy woman arrives to select a contractor among several workers and chooses Naghi to take to her villa in an affluent neighborhood. Once they arrive, she invites Naghi to sit beside her and calls her middle-school aged son to join their discussion. She proceeds to ask Naghi a series of intrusive questions about his background, which he initially considers a preliminary interview for his work as a contractor. Naghi explains that he never graduated from high school, but that he has accrued many technical skills and extensive work experience in low wage jobs over the years. She then turns to her son, who is not fully engaged in the conversation, and warns him that if he does not focus on his studies, his future will be much like that of Naghi, who “must stand on the side of the road from morning to night so that maybe someone will take him to work.”

Upon hearing her degrading remarks, Naghi becomes immediately aware of her judgement. Clearly humiliated but trying to uphold his

dignity, he departs from the woman’s home, returning her the small stipend she attempts to provide him. When Naghi’s family hears about this incident, they are appalled and decide to confront the woman. In their discussion with her, Homa turns to the woman’s son and explains with candor:

“My husband did not study much, but he has learned lessons about life that are very important, like being a good, honorable, and hard-working person, in addition to earning noon-e halal, or honest provisions from honest work.

Most importantly, he is khanevadehdoost, one who supports his family.”

By expounding on human qualities important to her, Homa aspires to instill in the young boy an alternative interpretation to the underlying purpose attaining a higher education and accruing wealth. Her focus on making noon-e halal and being khanevadeh-doost are illustrative of her focus on collective support networks as opposed to personal economic prosperity. These characteristics overtly contradict the wealthy woman’s moneyoriented narrative, which is frequently

23

associated with urban households in Iran.

Ultimately, Homa emphasizes the dignity and sense of empowerment associated with employment positions that affluent elites often conflate with hashie-neshinan, or families who reside in informal settlements on urban peripheries and rural communities.

Homa attempts to reclaim the wealthy woman’s discourse on lowincome labor by humanizing Naghi as a son, husband, cousin, and most importantly, a father who is capable of supporting his family’s unassuming lifestyle with adequate financial resources.

The Mamouli family, with their intimate familial relationships, enduring commitments to promises, and satisfaction with their financial standing, defy the pervasive definition of success as economic prosperity that is often accepted in urban Iran and in diaspora.

Conversely, home video series like Mankan, Del, and Ham Gonah celebrate capitalist economic definitions of success and further valorize Tehrani elites, whose social capital enables them to promote self-interests and take advantage of those in their surroundings. Series broadcasted on the Home Videos Network rarely humanize the experiences of low-income Iranian families and instead uphold the very profit-oriented systems that relegate workers like Naghi to a position of inferiority on the basis of socioeconomic standing.

The Mamouli family’s socioeconomic status automatically results in their exclusion from many of these social networks of affluence, yet they derive satisfaction from building intimate relationships as opposed to expanding personal assets.

Homa’s encounter with the wealthy woman is emblematic of her unwavering support for Naghi, primarily confronting the success-failure binary

so prevalent in urban Iran. This is particularly noteworthy given Homa has attained a college degree and Naghi has not graduated from high school.

Homa presents a groundbreaking model of womanhood, one in which women are not only equal stakeholders in their marriages and relationships but are also breadwinners within their families.

The conception of these strong, capable female characters is just one way that Paytakht has broken common tropes about religious women in rural societies.

Through Homa, Moghadam contends that rural traditionalism does not serve as a barrier to women’s employment opportunities, let alone their equal position in marriages and households. While Naghi Mamouli, the strong-headed, strict, and self-proclaimed “head of the family” is employed in various low-wage positions including as a factory worker and chauffeur, Homa’s form of employment is more steady.

Having completed her Bachelor’s Degree after commuting between Mazandaran and Tehran, Homa holds a number of well-regarded positions throughout her career, including serving as the first female representative on Shirgah’s city council and as a reporter for a regional news network. Moreover, as the primary caretaker of the Mamouli household, Homa supports and bolsters her two children, husband, and father-in-law who struggles with Alzheimer’s Disease, in addition to various extended family members. Beyond her high profile career, Homa’s grit, empathy, and confidence set her apart from her husband, who frequently finds himself in precarious circumstances that preclude him from completing the duties of his various jobs.

Naghi’s sister Fahimeh, who is headstrong and impsulve, deviates from Homa's collected persona, representing Paytakht’s diversity of womanhood — a facet not frequently presented on state television programs. After her husband, Behbood, is captured by Somali pirates for two years, Fahimeh makes the unilateral decision to remarry. When Behbood is eventually released and returns to Mazandaran, Fahimeh has already set up a hair salon business in

order to support her two sons. Both Homa’s and Fahimeh’s ability to adjust to immediate changes presented by their respective husbands is indicative of their equal stake in the family. Moreover, the complexity of their characters surpasses conventional IRIB media portrayals of women as accessories to their husbands.

The importance placed on their decisions and desires demonstrates their relative equality and value in public and private spheres.

With its focus on traditional family relationships, Paytakht opposes Western and urban perceptions of rural piety as oppressive. Instead, Moghadam has cultivated a series of complex female characters who have achieved selfactualization in their careers and home lives where their male counterparts have fallen short. Beyond its comedic relief and social commentary, Paytakht places value on women, challenging the ways in which women have been objectified and undervalued in both Western and Iranian media. This is especially remarkable to Western audiences in the context of the Mamouli family’s traditionalism and piety, which in no way impedes on the professional and personal achievements of women.

While female characters in Paytakht align with the cultural and religious tenets of IRIB, their modern and innovative portrayal appeals to a variety of audiences, particularly those who might conventionally consume home video programs as opposed to state television. Paytakht has managed to captivate audiences regardless of social class, ethnicity, or religion, speaking volumes to its more complex treatment of rural living and religiosity compared to its Channel 1 precedents. Widespread acclaim for the program is what makes it a successful decolonial medium — one that displays traditional Iranian values in a modern framework that consumers both appreciate and envision in their lives.

Paytakht’s widespread popularity and success in promoting IRIB’s decolonial objectives is possible in part due to the series’ deviation from archetypes regarding employment as solely profitdriven and women as primarily reserved.

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Given IRIB’s objectives in producing decolonial media, Paytakht is an effective form in achieving this goal while simultaneously providing comedic relief to a broad swathe of Iranians in Iran and in diaspora. State-sanctioned television programs in Iran have aimed to challenge Western productions for decades, yet most have not garnered significant attention. Paytakht, with its equally moralistic and modernist value system, demonstrates the confluence of tradition and contemporary urban life. Furthermore, while not weaving overtly Western values into the Mamouli family’s experiences, Moghadam’s anticapitalist approach to employment, the empowerment of women, and extended family relations makes consuming more conservative media increasingly accessible to audiences throughout Iran, regardless of religious identity or socioeconomic status. For instance, depictions of religion as a foundational aspect as opposed to a domineering part of the Mamouli family’s lives makes individual characters particularly relatable to audiences who may not identify with an Islamic religious identity. This challenges IRIB television precedents that focus on religious morals and value systems as opposed to more robust character and plot development.

In turn, Paytakht’s unique approach to balancing traditional perspectives with contemporary themes serves as an asset to IRIB, renewing Iran’s state programs competition with more liberal Home Video programs.

Paytakht has withstood the test of time, captivating audiences regardless of religious background or socioeconomic status throughout its ongoing nineyear run, and has maintained sweeping popularity among households who otherwise do not consume state television programs. Moghadam’s overarching themes of humility, familial relationships, and piety outperform home video programs, which conversely depict personal development and egoism. With Paytakht, the viewer removes themself from daily engagements to the Mamouli family’s unconventional life where frugality, collectivism, and altruism are paramount. v

Nowruz Behind a Mask

by YAAS FARZANEFAR

N

owruz: the time of the year when flowers bloom, families reunite, winter ends, and spring begins.

For me, Nowruz has always been more than starting a new year in the solar calendar. Nowruz smells like rose water mixed with fresh chai on the stove, like newly bloomed flowers in the garden and freshly baked Iranian pastries in the oven, like green herbs, saffron, and orange blossoms, tied with love, hope, and new beginnings.

Nowruz has always brought with it the joy of assembling the Haft Seen: coloring eggs with watercolor, growing the sabzeh, tasting the samanu, and smelling the sonbol. Usually, Nowruz entails the excitement of reuniting with extended family, cousins, and friends. No matter when Saal Tahvil fell or where in the world we were, our friends and family would always gather for the countdown. Once the timer hit zero, everyone would go around embracing each other with kisses on the cheek.. The older friends and family members would give eidi to the younger children in the room, and our spring would begin with laughter, big smiles, and new hopes for the upcoming year.

This Nowruz, however, was different. As COVID-19 encroached, hand sanitizer, masks, uncertainty, fear, and a loss of hope took over the sounds, smells, and colors we were all anticipating. Nowruz was greeted with a worldwide pandemic followed by a lockdown. A time usually marked with celebration, embracing friends and loved ones, traveling, good food, and visiting extended family members was replaced with shelter-in-place, a plummeting economy, and healthcare protocols. For many of us, Saal Tahvil was spent alone in isolation and many of the traditions and customs were absent.

Phone calls and video chats replaced Eid-Deedani, and Sizdah-be-dar was abandoned among many other traditions. To me, Sizdah-be-dar has always been a symbolic way of channeling our hopes for the new year into the universe. My family and I would tie our sabzehs with wishes for the upcoming year and then release them with other family members into the river back to nature.

Ironically, as our sabzehs took shelter in our homes, our hopes and wishes stayed in our hearts.

With Nowruz spent indoors, the pastries were baked behind closed doors, the Haft-Seens were made without leaving our households, and our balconies, patios, and windows became the getaway to the outside world.

Just one year earlier, my widespread family was all together. But now we were scattered around the globe. With my grandparents in Iran, my aunts in France, my uncles in Britain, and my family in California; we had to turn to our

phones for our annual Nowruz reunion. Nowruz poems were shared through WhatsApp, new year wishes were sent through Telegram, family and friend reunions took place on Zoom, and Facetime was the new form of Eid-deedani.

The first person to call me when the new year began was my grandfather, Baba Amir, from Iran. My best memories of Nowruz were in his home. I have never seen anyone who loves Nowruz more than my grandfather. He knows where to buy the best pastries, find the best sabzeh, sonbol, samanu, and other Haft-Seen objects in Tehran.

Thanks to my grandfather’s exquisite taste, their house had always been the most beautiful with various colorful flowers and Haft-Seen items during Nowruz. As long as I could remember, their garden was always filled with newly bloomed roses, orange blossoms, daffodils, grape hyacinths, and tulips. This year their garden was bare, and their lastminute “Haft-Seen” was composed of household items.

As they wished us a happy new year through Facetime and hoped we stayed safe, I could not help but notice that it was raining over their empty garden outside their window. Tehran was weeping—weeping for all of the hardships Iranians have encountered in 2020. 2020 has been an exceptional year for Iranians, from the uprisings and internet shutdown in November, to the assasination of Qassem Soleimani, to the Ukranian Airlines plane crash in January, and then the coronavirus pandemic. I was hoping for the new year to restabilize hope in our community.

Maybe the sky was crying to wash away all the pain this year has burdened us with. Simultaneously, it started drizzling in Los Angeles as I hung up the phone.

Nowruz came as a gift to us in these unprecedented times full of grief and sorrow. In a way, the pandemic made clear what Nowruz has always been about. All of the uncertainty we experienced shows that Nowruz, with all of its beautiful customs, goes beyond the family gatherings, the baked goods, and the smell of fresh flowers. It was never the extravagance and abundance, the fragrances and colors, not even the togetherness, but the love and empathy that holds us together and keeps us alive. In a world where we must stay indoors and cover ourselves with masks, Nowruz has confirmed that, as interconnected beings, no distance can keep our hearts apart. No matter where in the world we were, no matter what time it was when Saal-Tahveel hit, our hearts were collectively embracing each other through thoughts. Even if uncertainties pour over another year, even if more challenging obstacles fall in our paths, our hearts will once again come together in solitary for the love of Nowruz. v 25

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”.۹۹ ‫»; بهرتین رسیال نوروزی سال‬6 ‫“پایتخت‬

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APPENDIX A Love Letter to Samin Nosrat Kuku sabzi: Herb frittata Zereshk polo: Barberry rice Khoresht e bademjoon: Eggplant stew Tahdig: Crispy rice Khoreshteh ghormeh sabzi: Green herb stew Masteh kheyar: Cucumber yogurt Salad shirazi: Cucumber, tomato, and onion salad

Paytakht as a Form of Decolonial Media Image courtesy of Kama Press Nowruz Behind a Mask Chai: Tea

Haft-Seen: (Haft: the number 7, Seen: the letter s ‫ )س‬A tradition during Nowruz where Iranians set up a symbolic arrangement of whose objects start with S

Sabzeh: Referred to as “Nowruz Sprouts," Sabzeh is the symbol of rejuvenation and new life and is one of the present items on the Haft-Seen Samanu: A sweet paste made from germinated wheat that represents strength and fertility Sombol: Hyacinth flower that symbolizes the coming of spring Saal Tahvil: The exact second of the beginning of Nowruz, or the astronomical beginning of spring which is usually celebrated with family and friends Eidi: A custom to exchange gifts, usually money at Nowruz Eid-Deedani: A custom to visit and spend time with family and friends on the days after the first day of Nowruz Sizdah-be-dar: The last day (thirteenth day) of Nowruz, when Iranians gather together

27