Lady Sun

English section of women in Iran wants to prepare a list of Iranian female bloggers who write in English to add the list to the website (something like what we have in the Persian section of the site). I would appreciate if you let me know about the URL of these ladies' weblogs. You can email me or simply put the URLs in my comment box.

Also, we need volunteer Persian-to-English translators to translate about one page every month for the site. In case you are interested, just drop me an email.

Thx in advance ;)

God! I have feelings rarely had before. I feel I'm somebody else. He has an important exam today. I'm nervous as hell, as if I have the exam myself. Sometimes I'm afraid to accept that I have such feelings. Sometimes it's easier to deny what you feel. I'm a little bit scared. Feeling this much close to somebody scares me. I have always used to set up a wall, an invisible wall, between me and the men around me. I remember I removed this wall only once, and it hurt as hell. The scars of that wound are still there on my soul. What if this is also another tragedy of breaking down the walls?

And then the whole issue is scaring me. I had never imagined it's gonna happen so soon. I always thought it will happen in my thirties. He says I'm very capable to start it. I feel capable too, but I don't know if I'm ready. Living for the rest of your life with someone else, sleeping in the same bed with him, sharing your days and nights, happiness and sorrow�

I sometime like to escape from everything, I like that world inside me. I usually don't let people enter this world. I feel happy with myself. Sometimes I leave everything alone and escape into that inner world. What if one day I feel like escaping again? He's such a lovely human being I will never ever wish to hurt. Will he stand me escaping, getting lost in the middle of nowhere? Will he stand my crazy moments of feeling lost? Will he stand my unreasonable ups and downs?

I feel nervous for his exam. It's such a strange feeling I have never experienced before. What is happening to me?!

I have written a lot these days, but haven't posted them. My friends advise me not to post whatever I write. Sorry if my notes seem like the diaries of a senseless potato, . . .

Here's another weblog writing about the recent events, giving link to different websites and articles in both Persian and English.

On June 16th, 2003 CNN has published an article in its TECH
section titled:

Prostitute diary tops Iran Web hit
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/06/16/iran.blogs.reut/

This article was published based on the report by Firouz Sedarat, Reuters
news agency reporter in Tehran titled:

Iran Internet Use at Risk from Conservatives
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=2943120

This clear fabrication, and manipulation of news headlines can lead to
disastrous results for Iranian Internet users. Such provocative headlines
are the best excuse for tougher regulations on the Internet freedom of
speech, which is currently being discussed in the Iranian parliament and
judiciary. Ironically this comes at a time when personal websites, and
weblogs have become the most valid news source from the Iranian nations
continuing struggle towards democracy.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/20/MN293330.DTL&type=printable

Iranian Internet users have organized a protest, in the form of an online
petition, against this form of biased reporting from CNN. I urge you to
read and consider signing this petition to protect freedom of speech in
the time when it is most needed for the Iranian nation.

This petition is located at:

http://www.persianblog.com/petition.asp

Human Rights Watch executive director's letter to Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, about the recent events

It seems the riots are somehow continuing, this time with a different nature. It's not the peaceful protest of university students anymore. Everyday we hear from a different corner of the city that people, specially the youth, have been out protesting. Of course, wherever the people are, the members of pressure groups are there as well.

If you go near universities and dormitories in the evening, you'll see plenty of police vehicles guarding the area. The Iranian opposition satellite programs cannot be received due to the strong interference noises produced by microwave rays sent from nobody knows where. (There are rumors about the harmful effects of these waves on human reproductive functions.)

. . .

I don't know who is paying and supporting these pressure groups. If the pressure groups go on with their crimes, people will not tolerate them, and the protests will become more serious. Then a bloody revolution may start. It seems strange if all this has been planned by the hardliners. They will dig their own graves by doing so. I don't think they're that stupid. Some strongly believe the pressure groups are supported by US rightists, some say by the monarchists. I don't care who is supporting them. I just want all this massacre to end. I want my childhood play-mate neighbors back home. I want the injuries heeled. I want this disgraced generation of students gain their respect and peace back. It's not only me who wants this, all the Iranians want it. Those who are killing and committing murders and violence, all those heartless members of pressure groups, all those authorities that are supporting them are not considered as Iranian. They don't have the right to be called Iranian. They are the residents of hell; a hell made of their brutality and ignorance.

Women in Iran (English Monthly Edition) is updated!

I was surprised by my last post's feedback. The most interesting point for me was the fact that my post was not political at all, but it has been interpreted as a political post mostly.

I was angry and sad when I wrote that part, mostly because of seeing the pictures of that boy who was beaten in his dorm while sleeping, and I have to confess that I was more emotional rather than logical while writing that.

Loving or hating Bush or any other foreign politician doesn't do me or my nation any good. I have no right to judge Bush's administration unless it is related to my country; and unfortunately it is related somehow. Bush is claiming to set the global order in the world while I have heard from many people, including both my Iranian friends living in US or American friends, and I have read in the press, that Bush has cheated in the elections. That's none of my business if he has cheated or not. This matter should be taken care of by the American nation. But I don't want a dishonest person who is quite notorious in his discourse to decide what is right and what is wrong for my country and for the rest of the world. I do want people to support the students in Iran, but I see no point but disturbance in Bush supporting the students. When he supports them, bells start ringing in the minds of the hardliners here that most probably the riots are getting nourished by Bush and his gang. The forgotten point here is that students didn't start rioting. Everything started from their peaceful marching to protest against the privatization of universities. Suddenly the members of the pressure groups attacked them out of nowhere hitting the students. Everything started when the innocent students were unfairly beaten by the members of the pressure group who seems to be immune by a secret power.

When they start hitting you, massacring you, and disrespecting you, you will become defensive. That's exactly what happened to the students. But when the defense started it turned out into a riot.

I strongly object anyone who claims that students had plans from before to oppose the government, and I don't see any point in some of the foreign media's interpretation of the case as a revolution to oust the government. But when Bush becomes so excited in defending the students, the truth hides behind the attractive interpretations and everyone thinks that students have started a revolution against the regime.

I don't see any point in revolutionary riots. I believe we have to go gradually with the reform, start changes from the basic structures of the society, and we should start it from ourselves. I see no alternative for the present regime for the time being; any government is going to be the same for our country unless we change. Unless we change ourselves, nothing will change. History has proven to us that, at least in our country, democracy is unreachable by the help of a foreign power. If we want change, reform, or whatever, we have to gain it ourselves, and we should not beg it from a foreign power.

Bush attacked and occupied Iraq, but do you really think he is The Savior? Look what has happened to Iraqi people. Are they better off? Look at the injured and dead children; look at the picture of the little child killed yesterday by American troops; look at the national museum of Iraq; look at � Is that kind of freedom Bush wants to give my country?

Where was he and his fellow neo-conservative friends when the same Saddam Hussein (who is now the most despised figure in the world) was bombing Iran with chemical weapons? Where was this philanthropic president 'for all seasons' when Iranian girls have been raped and buried in mass graves by Iraqi soldiers? Who was caring about Iranians' freedom, democracy and solidarity when cities of Iran were hit by US made Iraqi missiles?

Why is Bush listing Iran as a country that supports terrorism, and even if he is right, why is he setting limitations for Iranian ordinary people who have suffered the most from terrorism? Why are our movie directors being rejected to enter the States to participate in film festivals (1 , 2 )? Why are our sportsmen fingerprinted while entering the country? Why? What kind of support of the Iranian people is this?

Let us Iranians be suspicious and resentful about any green light Bush and his gang show us. Let us take care of our own diverse society and freedom ourselves�

The riots are declining. Dormitories are evacuated and in ruins. Examinations are suspended. Students are wounded, not only physically, but very much emotionally and mentally.

They were sleeping. I'm talking about students of Tarasht dormitory. They were sleeping while in the middle of midnight pressure groups attacked them like wasps. He was probably dreaming of his wife whom he claims to love more than God when he was hit by the thunderstorm, thunderstorm of the so-called pressure groups. He was running in the middle of midnight, injured, scared, and helpless. People helped him, took him into one of the houses in the area, trying to attend to his injuries. Members of the pressure groups followed him, entered the house, and asked to take the wounded student with them out. The residents of the house didn't allow them, shouted, and the other neighbors came to help. They sent the pressure groups out. The boy was dying. They asked for help. The emergency center had run out of ambulances. Police came and took him to the hospital. Where is he now? How is he now? No one knows� What is his wife whom he loves more than God doing? What is God doing?

He was sleeping when the wasps came; many other students were sleeping as well when they were beaten in the same way. Other students were protesting peacefully when the thunderstorm hit them out of nowhere. People in Iran were living their lives when the thunderstorm hit them. Mortal impact I name it. Where did it come from? Where does it get nourished? Who is supporting all these wasps, all this thunder; all these pressure groups; you name it? No one exactly knows. Or we know and we don't want to admit, or we know and we are afraid of admitting, or we know and we can do shit about it!

I am bitter, sentimentally angry, and dreadfully sad. Monarchists are killing themselves rambling about a new revolution, a protest, an opposition� I hate monarchy, we hate monarchy, we hate any sort of dictatorship. I hate this stupid Bush who is releasing statements in support of the students. I hate him who has no idea what kind of people Iranians are. I hate the monarchists who think we are that stupid to put the red carpet for Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah's sun. I hate the pressure groups who are literally massacring their fellow Iranian citizens. I hate our reformist government who can do shit about all this chaos. I hate our 'real' Government who has closed its eyes on the reality and seeks for popularity and stability in suppressing people. I hate all the students including myself who can do nothing. The biggest thing we can do is just playing the role of scapegoats, victims of the ignorance, brutality, whatever...

If only they knew how small the amount of freedom we are seeking is�

Cappuccino, our electronic magazine, has celebrated its first birthday. It was about a year ago that five other bloggers, and I, gathered in a coffee shop, talking about creating Iran's first online weekly. In a week the design was ready and we released our issue no.0 right before the FIFA World Cup, to have an exclusive issue for the occasion.

We named our magazine Cappuccino, since we had our weekly meetings in coffee shops. Now the magazine itself looks like a coffee shop to our readers, where they can come and have a cup of our magazine, reading our articles about different issues such as cinema, music, internet, social reports, stories, satire, panorama, and etc.

It's really hard to believe my eyes, seeing our 53rd edition as our anniversary edition. My baby cappuccino has successfully overcome all the problems, and now is ready to start its second year of existence more professionally.

Khodadad, one of our friends residing in London, has written a piece in English in our special edition about Cappuccino called Cappuccino and I: The Chronicle of a Love Affair.

This evening Women in Iran website had a meeting at Women Internet Cafe in Banoo Cultural Center. We invited Nina Kristiansen, the director of Norwegian Information and Documentation Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research (Kilden), to have a speech about the rights of women in Scandinavian countries.

Our audience was almost entirely women from different NGOs and there were also some individuals interested in the rights of women as well.

Nina talked about very interesting things, including the equal participation of men and women by all means in Norway. For example she talked about bringing up the children and the equal maternity leave offered to both mothers and fathers. She talked about rape and she mentioned the most common type of rape in Norway, and supposedly any other country, is getting raped by husbands, i.e. a woman getting forced to have sexual relationship with her husband against her own will. It was really interesting since you hardly ever hear about such a thing in Iran. As far as I have seen, and heard in my life, women have no special right in their sexual relationships. They hardly talk about it, and hardly ask themselves if they really want to do it or not. If their husbands wish to have sex with them, they obey automatically, and gosh nobody ever talks about women getting raped by their husbands here!

Another interesting point she mentioned about rape was the law they have in Norway for raped women that prevents an investigation of a woman's background prior to being raped. That means no one can accuse a woman for her conduct or the kind of clothes she wears; no one can say that a woman has deserved to be raped because of a special conduct (e.g. being tempting or wearing tempting clothes.)

About the women movement in Iran she said our movements are mostly connected with the government and that won't work in the long term. She said women in Norway have struggled so hard to reach their goals, and at the beginning of every movement, every campaign, there were so few women participating. She said after a while, after any success they've reached, people have started to approve their causes gradually, and I'm sure by that she meant that we haven't struggled enough in Iran and I do agree with that.

She recommended the women movements in Iran to do documented research, submitting the facts resulted from the research to the government, and base their struggles on those documented facts so that they won't be opposed by the government.

She talked about so many other things and the women presenting there were so amazed by all the types of freedom or equality a woman can enjoy in her life. The meeting ended up with the audience's questions about women rules in Norway at 8 pm, while most of the audience was late to go home and cook their husbands and children's dinner!

Nina is a very interesting woman, a type of woman I could make friends with if we were living in the same area. She came late because of the mad traffic. I asked her to relax out there in the park for a while. We smoked and then went for the speech. I was her translator

There was one woman in the audience who was a pain in the neck! All through the session she kept nagging at my translation, and mocking my mistakes! I finally got angry in the middle of the meeting and asked her to come and translate if she could do better. After that she shut up and I gained my self-confidence back. I was wondering what that woman was looking for by showing off her English. I translated everything very simply and informally, since the meeting was casual and relaxed. Everybody was pleased and I tried my best to convey the meaning correctly.

I guess it is inevitable to omit some sentences while doing oral translation, trying to help the communication take place and the meaning conveyed. That girl sent so much negative energy that my migraine came back.

But after the speech people came and thanked me and we had some delicious vegetarian sandwiches in the Cafe, smoked outside since the Cafe is a Green one, and had a friendly chat with Nina.

She was very impressed by Iranian people's conduct. She's going to write an article describing all her observations, trying to show the truth about life in Iran. I hope her article will make a change in the attitudes of majority of people in Norway _which I assume are the same negative attitudes that many people in other Western countries share_ towards Iranians.

Strange people, strange days, strange feelings…

I wish you were home, not among that crowd of people… When you are in the crowd, you are strange too, far, far away. I wish you were home when I called you. At least I could talk to you about that unbearable lightness of being that is hurting me as hell. I wish you were there helping me out of this chaos.

Sometimes it seems as if I don't know any of them; those whom I have spent my life in the last few months with. Why does everybody seem so strange? Bewildered I am sitting here, and feeble I am since I need your presence right now and you are not here. It's stupid to need someone. 'Need' makes you dependent; 'need' makes you weak. I wish I could get over all this nightmares I am suffering from night and day. I wish the story would end soon.

I resigned from being the editor of our online magazine to have more time to work on my thesis. Never thought it would be so difficult to do so. I can't help being worried about our magazine, although I know the new editors are much more capable than me .I also resigned from the meta-weblog I was a member of. I used to report about Iranian women weblogs there. I guess I should stop my other online activities as well, since I have a very little time left. Difficult times are to come, but I have a feeling inside that makes me go on; the feeling of being loved...

I was ready to kill someone yesterday, anyone. I went to my Masters school in Mirdamad Street. They asked me to bring them a proof that I have passed my Islamic Ethics courses during college. That's not my job. They have to do inquiries about it themselves. Anyways, they gave me a letter written by our university's dean to submit to my B.A college in Shari'ati Street. I went there, they said you have to go to our headquarter in Pasdaran Street. I went there, first to Block A1, Block A1 directed me to Block A3, Block A3 directed me to Block A2. And all the people working in different departments refused to give me that paper that included my ethics transcript, justifying that the letter is written by my college's dean and that's not valid! It should been written by the head of our branch headquarter! The funny thing is that the college that I got my B.A in, and my M.A. university are both different branches of the same university called Azad University! I started shouting and yelling at the first person at hand. This is because our university's headquarter is such a chaotic place that it would take them ages to do any kind of work. Thank goodness that one of the employees recognized that I am about to burst, and took the letter and promised he'll do something for me. After I got back home I had the feeling of a person coming back from war, wounded and tired. I slept for 4 hours, dreaming crazy angry things.

My Iranian readers are completely familiar with this university, but I guess our foreign visitors have no idea what kind of place this asylum is. Some years ago, some members of the government decided to establish this university as a non-governmental private university, that would charge tuition from the students, and provide the opportunity for everybody to study at university. (Due to the high number of volunteers to study at universities and due to the lack of enough number of universities in Iran, a great number of candidates couldn't enter universities every year.)

Azad University started its work with a small building in Tehran, continued its work till now, having thousands of branches in every corner of the country, even in some rural areas. The idea was a good one and still is, since a lot of people can go to university now. But there are a lots of logistical problems as well, that make you doubt about the nature of this university. In contrast to the very high tuition they charge, and the terrible bureaucracy ruling there, along with many other problems that severly damage the educational facilities available makes many people such as me regret studying at this university.

I have a long way to go to finish my work here. For defending my thesis I have to spend hours and hours going from one branch to another one, getting near murder stage, and eventualy even bribing some people. And along all this I have to forget what my friend told me about that bureaucracy issue in universities of America. He just told me that if I were in the States they would have got my ethics course marks and submited them to my department in just 20 minutes! Isn't that just funny that I have to wait for the next four days and then call to see if any progress has happened to my work till then?

God I want to get out of this asylum!