Lady Sun

The templates are back!

European Football Cup final match ended with Milan's championship. Milan has always been my favorite football team, especially because of Maldini! Handsome good-looking footballers have always been the most attractive aspect of football for me! But another reason for being so much interested in football for me is the challenging nature of this game. It's like a film with a strong suspense. You stay upright till the end of an important final match. If your favorite team wins, you feel like you have watched a happy-ending film, if it loses the match you'll get depressed as if having seen a sad-ending film. Tonight's final didn't give any of those feelings to me since it was not a very beautiful match. Both Juventus and Milan played very conservatively, afraid of being defeated. Anyways it was very nice to see pretty boy Maldini holding the Cup in his hands, smiling brightly with shining eyes ;)

While watching the football match I could hear the sound of rain, dropping on the cooler outside the window.
. . .

I've opened my bedroom's window. The smell of rain has occupied all the room. It reminds me of "Rain" by Jose Feliciano.
. . .

After a few minutes:
Now the drops of rain sound like strikes of a hammer on my head. That's all because somebody has turned me off. When I feel somebody is taking my privacy from me, or is deciding for me what to do, I become angry as hell. When I am writing something and somebody comes and disturbs my peace, I go mad. And when I go mad I should be just left alone till I gain my lost self control back.

Anyways, Listen to the falling rain. . .

Does anybody know what has happened to Blogger's weblogs' templates? Many weblogs' templates have disappeared. I wanted to add a few links to my blog and I saw nothing there in my template box! So where the hell are our posts getting published? Is it a sort of magic or has there been a robbery or somehow a conspiracy of the Blogger+Google system!!?

I went to get my passport today. I had a hectic day and my time got wasted a lot. But among all this one thing really bothered me and that was observing the fact that women in Iran can't leave the country without their husband's permission, and therefore they can't get their passports without their husband's official permission either. There was a woman begging an officer there to let her get her passport. Poor old woman never had heard of such a stupid rule. She was complaining that her husband is a bastard and won't let her go to Syria to visit Saint Zeynab's Holy Shrine. Another lady didn't have her husband's permission since her husband was waiting for her in Italy! And I was wondering why on earth we have such stupid rules in our country in the 21st century. I guess we have to set a campaign against it. Something in the eyes of that old woman moved me. Something familiar, something reminding me of my Mom's friend's face telling me about her husband not letting her get her passport, justifying that she didn't need one; the look of a desperate weak woman that was confronting with the realities of a patriarchal society.

I don't know why I felt so much like singing this song by Elvis tonight:

Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart...

I wish he would sing it for me. We haven't drifted apart actually. But we are far away from each other and that makes me sad and lonesome. I wish he would sing it for me...

A funny thing happened to me on Friday. I'll choke if I don't write about it here! On Friday afternoon I had a business meeting with three friends. We had an appointment at the Homa International Hotel (fromer Sheraton) and the guard didn't let me in, 'cuz I wasn't wearing socks!! As far as I know, in Islam women should cover all their body and hair, except for their face, hands and feet. I don't know why this mf guard didn't let me in. I didn't even bother arguing with him and we went to somewhere else. Recently some shops have been attacked in Tehran for selling short and tight manteus (the mandatory universal cloak raincoat that all women have to wear) to women. And amid these stupid conditions ruling our society, our (used-to-be dear) president Khatami releases a declaration, celebrating Khordad the second (May 22, 1977- his first round election by the highest vote ever recorded in the history of Iran for electing a president). I wonder how he dares to release a declaration! On the first anniversary of Khordad the second we all went to Tehran university. Khatami had a speech and all the youth attending that big gathering were applauding him. He was very energetic and we were all very positive that things were going to change. A lot of things have changed I admit, but look what is going on these days! An ever-growing new trend of arrests, attacks, and restrictions... And Khatami continues to talk about religious democracy in his celebrating declaration this year.

I wish he would resign rather than keeping up his hopes for change. I wish the price of reform wasn't this high.

My work load is really overwhelming these days. I don't know what to do. I wish I had 30 something hours instead of 24 hours per day. I haven't replied to many of your kind emails. I'm really sorry, and I don't mean to be rude or snob. I'll answer all as soon as possible. Thanks for your encouragement.

Finally my weblog looks like something normal, thanks to dear Mr.Hex who spent a whole night working on my blog's template.

During the last year and a half that I was running my Persian weblog, I found a lot of very good friends, among which Mr.Hex was one of the best. I've missed my blog, and that friendly atmosphere of Persian blogging society very much. I'm gonna come back. I will, I know : )

I've missed Kish Island. Last night we were at a party with some of our friends from the Kish tour. We danced and sang songs for almost 4 hours, forgetting about all the work we had to do. Today I didn't get up on time and so I had to cancel my appointment with my private student. I was sleepy and tired as hell today, partly because of the quarrel I had with someone over the phone, someone so important and dear to me who occupied my mind the whole day. I kept shouting at him over the phone while I was in a taxi and the poor driver didn't know what to do. However, the class gave me some energy to go on. I love my classes this term. Nice hardworking students who give me warm shoulders, laugh like hell at my jokes, and look at me with eager eyes, which makes me feel good.

After work I had a meeting with my colleagues in women in Iran website. We have started some rounds of talk over the fundamental basis of feminism. It seems a few of us know what feminism really is. We worked a little bit on thory today, talking about the first, second and new waves of feminism. What I got from our talks was that we are in the third wave of feminism, an eclectic wave including not just one feministic school, but rather "feminisms". We talked about the pros and cons of radical, liberal, and socialist feminism, concluding that we have some bits and pieces of each of these categories in Iran, but we haven't copied any of them blindly. We were in disagreement on whether we have a women movement in Iran or not, getting to the point that no matter what other nations have been through, we can have our own native version of feminism, adapting good ideas from all the theoretical sources we have had.

I brought Goje Sabz to the meeting, a green round sour fruit which is actualy an under-ripe plum, and is very popular here when is spiced by salt. The meeting was very fruitful, ended with the sour taste of Goje Sabz :)

I'm back. I had a great trip to Kish, a beautiful island in the south of Iran, on the north coast of the Persian Gulf. We had to participate in Moj Short Film Festival, held by the House of Young Filmmakers (HYF), which is an active successful NGO that gives support to young filmmakers who are hardly ever supported by governmental organizations.

HYF had invited some cinematic webloggers and online journalists to cover the news of the festival over the internet. None of the journalists of the public press were invited. What HYF did was a completely new step. No other event had ever been covered like this over the net. The interesting point to me was their attitude to the coverage of their festival, an NGO-type of coverage by NG websites!

We had to watch over 34 films during 4 days. We saw some very good films, with new ideas, beautiful casting, new or rather radical techniques and subjects. Some celebrities were also invited. We stayed at a 5-star hotel, and all the 120 participants became friends with each other. One night we had a party, dancing till morning in one of our friends' house who lives in Kish. One night we went cycling at 2 am and the other night I went to the see with 3 of the participant directors at 2 am. There was a boat that had a glassy bottom with underwater spotlights through which we could see the beautiful magic of the under-the-see world easily. We saw wonderful fish and plant species, and were facinated by the beauty and wonder of the underwater world.

Kish is a city that never sleeps. You hardly can ever have such a night-life in Tehran. My dad never lets me go out so late at night. I felt completely independent there. All by myself, no one telling me 'Do this', 'Don't do that'. Police give complete freedom to the tourists and let everyone enjoy their trip. The only problem with this city is that it's really hot and humid. Of course I love humid weather, but people are rarely as crazy as I am!

In the long hot afternoons we went swimming. There is a beach sheltered for exclusive use by women. No man can enter this area. The whole area is covered with plastic walls. You can wear your bikini there, go swimming in the salty transparent water of the Gulf, or sunbathe under the strong life-giving rays of the lady sun. We collected a lots of shells among the hot sands, filling plastic bags with them to bring back as souvenirs.

All in all, the trip was enjoyable but tiring. We had a lot of things to do, as well as participating in the festival. I really needed this trip, since I had a hard time in the last few weeks. Our Women in Iran website has been banned by the government, and people in Iran can't see the site. Our magazine's IP is also banned by some I.S.Ps and we have lost a great number of our visitors. I have my thesis to work on, classes to teach, sites and weblogs to update, and a heart to take care of. I needed a great deal of energy to do all this, which I got from the giving lady sun while I was in Kish.

Finally, after the painful marathon we have all been through, especially Sina and his wife, Sina was released a few minutes ago. I can't express my feelings now, I'm somehow speechless.

Sina! We missed you so much.

I'll be busy for a while since I'm going on a trip. I'll be back next week and promise to write more.

As Sting says, I'm so happy that I can't stop crying

Gee! Where did those long posts come from? Sorry for eating your brains out! Promise to write shorter next time ;)

It seems the doom of this week is not going to end. Sina is still in prison. Nobody knows what's going on. They have summoned Alireza Alavi Tabar, journalist and university professor, for interrogations. In the interrogation paper they have mentioned Alavi Tabar's title as the editor of the electronic news site Emrooz (a radical political website). It seems arresting Sina has been their warm-up, and they have started paying attention to internet sites. My fears are growing, both for our e-zine and for our Women in Iran (Persian _ English) website. Of course we have been very much careful and conservative in our magazine, but Women in Iran is not a conservative site. The site is concerned with women issues. It includes a variety of topics such as problems and limitations occurring to women due to their gender, legal deficiencies that exist in the law concerning women's rights, and the deficiencies and lacks existed in our governmental institutions concerning such issues.

…

I've become tired of all this fear and worries. I've decided to start posting in my Persian weblog again. The bewilderment of these days is pressuring me too much. I thought and thought and thought and came to this conclusion that I haven't done anything wrong at all. I haven't crossed any political red lines to be worried about. I have to forget about those people who are trying to identify me. It takes a long time to find me. And in case they find me, they can't accuse me of anything.

If I start my Persian weblog again, I'll definitely write here less. But I won't stop it for sure, since the feedback I received in the last few days was incredibly positive, thanks to Iranian Girl who gave me a link in her popular weblog.

Well, it was really a difficult week. We had our weekly session of our e-zine on Thursday. Almost everybody was present. I was energetic. I had some new ideas. I wanted to start talking about our next edition. But suddenly I found out that I was too much of an optimist. Talking about the new edition turned out to be a hot discussion over the issue of closing down our 11-month-old electronic magazine. It's almost like my baby. We started this magazine where no one else was doing any similar work in Iran. We were a fresh group of young Iranian webloggers, almost all willing to become famous. We made our first mistake by becoming public. Before then we were all writing in our blogs anonymously. Many of us had nicknames, even those with real identities were not known to the public. For I really don't remember what reason we started writing with our own identities. At the beginning everything was ok. But then we started to improve. We became famous, our hit increased. After 11 months of successful friendly teamwork, after months and months of crazy days with each other, going out to restaurants, going on holiday trips with our gang, becoming ironically famous as Persian internet mafia, days of fight and laughter, days of hard work to release unique editions, after all these things we were talking about closing down our magazine on Thursday. All my energy was drained out on my supposedly weekend day. I still don't know what we're going to do. Everybody was hesitant. We don't want to close it down, but we are scared. We didn't come up with any conclusions, but sooner or later we have to make a serious decision about it. I hope that decision will be to keep on publishing our magazine.