Memorial Day Weekend

I spent a lot of Memorial Day weekend in Central Park on the Great Lawn, eating too many popsicles and getting really sweaty. I also found time to visit the Alexander McQueen exhibit at The Met for a second time (we got to cut the one-hour wait because I went with my fake boyfriend who has a membership—booya!); to watch Terrence Malick’s totally pretentious movie about the meaning of life, “Tree of Life”; and to visit Ryoji Ikeda’s “The Transfinite,” a sound/light installation at The Armory (which redefines the whole meaning of “trippy”—please, please go if you live here!). Rounding it off with Japanese barbeque ribs at Ippudo and dessert at Veneiro’s, all I can say is: I love you, New York.

And the winner of the Oscar is...

Awesome article about the impossibility of love in Iran, found by Ario, written by Kamin—who incidentally wrote articles for a magazine I used to edit, articles about the popularity of MAC makeup in the Middle East, the Islamic values of reiki, and David Babaii’s celebrity hair products (far cries from this):

“This is Iran. Everyone here is acting in a film. Everything is changing, particularly for women who are no longer fitting their traditional roles but society hasn’t caught up, so they just do what they want and pretend they are doing something else all the while to make it palatable. They even lie to themselves. No one can deal with the grim reality, and they prefer the film anyway. There are seventy million people in this country, and they are all giving Oscar winning performances.”

Commitment and other diseases

I often wonder why divorce would be such a horrific crime that it would warrant murdering one's own sister. What is so wrong with divorce?!? You could be killed by your own brother for wanting a divorce two generations ago but, today, the rate of divorce in Iran triples every year. Apparently, conservatives are viewing this trend as a "national threat" on par with prostitution. Last year, the government officially changed "Marriage Day" to "No Divorce Day"--a day where no divorces would be granted. Hilarious! 

Ill-informed "feminism" or deranged sense of humor?

Please, please tell me that "Slutwalk Teheran" [sic] is a hoax and not real.

Due to the repressive nature of the regime in the Republic of Iran, this event will understandingly exclude citizens of that Republic. Slutwalk Teheran will be an event when thousands upon thousands of women from all parts of the free world will descend on the ancient city of Teheran and reclaim the already partly-reclaimed word "slut". [sic]

Because if you don't even know how to spell the city's name correctly, you really have no business "reclaiming" an English word there and excluding the women of that country. This is all kinds of ill-informed and I won't go into it because I have to think nobody is really that stupid and it's just a joke, right?? It just has to be.

Epilogue

Ten years later and three weeks after Osama bin Laden is killed, I return to Notting Hill. It’s night by the time I get out of the office near Lloyd’s in Tower Hill, by the time I get to Queensway and turn on Westbourne Grove—the streets I once knew too well. Ten years ago, I was given a grant to come here and live with Sufis—the mystical sect of Islam that doesn’t believe in the Sharia laws. London was one of a handful of cities I lived in for a year. It was the city I was in when 9/11 happened. Queensway had changed. There were more tourist shops, more middle eastern restaurants. The Starbucks had moved and so had the McDonalds. But there, right where you turn onto Westbourne Grove, was the pub--unchanged.

I had been out on errands when I heard about it. I was passing the pub and saw a crowd gathered around the bar, staring at the television. I peeped inside just in time to see the World Trade Center buildings, to see one crumble and fall. I remember thinking that it had to be a film everyone was watching, not reality. I was so convinced it was fiction that I kept on walking. I went into a shoe store in a state of denial.

At least I know I always have a job...

One of the funniest things about this year's Persian Parade in NYC was the after-party held in Madison Square Park. There was a DJ that pumped really bad Persian techno while people danced and old women in wheel chairs hissed. There were kebab stands swarming with people pushing in line as if food would actually run out. But, most interesting, was a U.S. Army and a Marines recruiting stand! Not only were they awkwardly there, but they were busy. Persians were lining up to get information! It shocked me, but apparently it's a key initiative.

In its effort to recruit culturally and ethnically diverse candidates, the CIA has placed help wanted ads in Arabic and Farsi in American Middle Eastern communities from Dearborn, Michigan, to Los Angeles. A big challenge has been convincing a skeptical Arab and Iranian-American community the CIA is a good place to work.

Well, hell, at least I know I can always screw everything and be employed by the CIA!

Hop across the pond

I'm not thinking straight. I took the red-eye to London last night from New York's JFK Airport for work and, this morning, I went straight to a conference at the Grange City Hotel without even dropping my bags off. After the conference, I finally checked into my hotel and went down the block to my company's office... and I've been here since. There's a reason they call it a "red-eye."

I have to admit that there is a certain sense of relief that I'm not going to Iran after this. Originally, before I found out my passport was expired, that was the plan: to go round-trip to Tehran from here. I feel guilty that I'm happy I'm not going right now, but I know I will go in a few months after the papers are in order so I guess I don't feel too awful. The cobble-stoned streets around Tower Hill, the quintessential black London cabs, the accents... it's a little surreal because of my sleep deprivation. It's time for me to go pass out.

Red tape of the dual life

Okay, so this is somewhat disturbing: Recently, the Persian-American journalist "D. Parvaz" from Seattle (she used to write for the Seattle P-I) was reported missing in Syria where she had gone to report for Al Jazeera. Syria passed her on to Iran, the country of her nationality, and now Iran won't confirm that she's even there. Apparently, the reason she was arrested is that she was in Syria without a visa (like me, she uses a U.S. and Iranian passport interchangeably--and her Iranian passport had expired even though she was there on an Iranian visa, since I guess it's easier to be there as an Iranian citizen instead of as an American one). The part that made me raise my eyebrows was the Iranian Foreign Ministry's statement about having multiple passports:

Disappearing Act

It was a friend's birthday Thursday night and Rick had hired a second bartender at Lolita on the LES to accommodate the crowd. Even then, the bartender served too slow. I sat in a dark corner with our ladies and, as I talked to one about the secrets she had recently unraveled about her grandparents, we both came to the same conclusion: Every single family has an outlandish story that is stranger than fiction.

She writes

Dear [Persian Perversion],

I was waiting for your mail consisting of your arrival time to Iran. I am sad to hear your passport expired and we will not see you for another few months. We have lots to talk about!

I'll be looking forward your next mail and see you hear.Again sorry for my poor English!

[father's uncle's son's wife]

What women wear

The great thing about playing hookie in New York City is there is always amazing stuff you can do while skipping out on work: Yesterday, I opted out of the cubicle to sit on the front steps of The Met, basking in the spring sun with an ice-cream until my friend Misha showed up so we could catch the Alexander McQueen exhibit sans weekend crowds. It was easily my favorite art show of the year thus far, although Maira Kalman at the Jewish Museum is a close second.

Everyone has seen McQueen’s famous armadillo heels (cut to Lada Gaga “Bad Romance” music video), but I had no idea about the actual *breadth* of his oeuvre—he works with everything from fur to bone, using unexpected materials including human hair, duck feathers, sculpted wood, taxidermied crocodile heads, vulture beaks and eye sockets, worms, fresh flowers, oyster and clam shells, gazelle horns… *everything*. Ridiculous detail and quality was in every cut, every shape, every play on style, every medium method from exquisite lace, ruffles, tulle, sequins, beads, palliates, feather and silk and leatherwork--I mean, it was indescribable and truly challenged every notion I may have once had about clothing and beauty. I walked through the whole show with my jaw dropped, speechless (and I'm not saying that just to be dramatic--the experience really is like that, and the way they have curated the show with haunted house music, clips of his theatrical collection shows, and apropos Lord Byron-esque room settings only heightens the emotion). It's equal parts awe-inspiring and oftentimes highly disturbing. You walk away with a new-formed realization of women’s clothing—a woman’s body—as a living canvas, a clearinghouse or central billboard of wherever society is at the moment.

The Conundrum

I have three female cousins. Two of them have had nose jobs--and neither of them were rich either. In Iran, instead of getting your driver's license at 16, you get your nose smashed in. "Nose, Iranian Style" is a documentary by Mehrdad Oskouei that is totally fascinating and one that I would recommend.

When the present is too hard, turn to the past

My library card is being put to good use these past few months. These days, I am reading a lot about honor killing, which has led me to an interesting discovery: Did you know that the word "assassin" originated in Iran because there was a group called the Order of Assassins?

The absurdities

Perhaps one of the more absurd tasks of my lifetime was having to call the Embassy of Pakistan the day after the most wanted criminal in the world was killed there.

"Hi, I'm inquiring about an Iranian passport renewal."

Where I was

There is a small 50-person theater on the ground floor at the IFC on 6th Ave. I'm not sure why "Stake Land" didn't warrant a larger theater or a wider distribution, but that's where we were watching it. It's Cormack McCarthy's "The Road" except with zombie vampires. And I was watching it with The Ex--which is post-apocalyptic in and of itself (the fact that eleven years have passed since the events that split us, the fact he randomly moved to New York three years ago, the fact he randomly happens to work in the same building as I do, forcing us to face each other). Being in each other’s presence after everything we've been through, after eleven years of not speaking, is always an out-of-body experience, a testament to the flexibility of human possibility, the comedy of life. On the screen, a vamp/zombie attacks a Southern family and sits in the barn rafters feeding off a baby before dropping the small body to the ground. The guy next to The Ex nudges him and shows him his cell phone. Why was this dude looking at his cell phone in the middle of this movie and why was he showing it to the stranger sitting next to him? There is blood and guts, gore and staking. The Ex leans over to whisper to me, “Osama bin Laden is dead.”