“Persian? That’s just what people who are ashamed of being Iranian call their language,” I once heard a metro guard in Amsterdam promulgate with the old “You’re an Amu Tom” accusatory stare. I asked him if an English-speaker wanted to know what language someone spoke in Morocco, would he answer, “Arabi” or “Arabic?” He fist-bumped me.

“I-rain-ian? Jaysus, are ya gonna blow me up?” a young man in Warrenpoint spat in my face one time at a party, in-between his mouthfuls of cheese and onion Taytos. I handed him an Irish car bomb, but it wasn’t after the second round that the old toman finally dropped.

I hopped on a Lyft in Los Angeles once and my driver, a fellow Iranian, asked me if I was Iranian. “Sometimes,” I said dejectedly in Persian – or maybe it was Farsi. He smiled as I explained my dilemma and then said, “You think you’re confused. Try adding Armenian to the mix.”

Al-Majus is a blog dedicated to all my fellow Iranians, Persians, Iranis, Parsis, Farsis and Tajiks, including those who have recently lost the plot. Are you guilty of waving a sun and lion flag at a protest in February only to realise in March that your nutty vegetarian cousin who hasn’t brushed her hair since 2023 and only leaves the house when she’s out of drugs was right all along when she told you that you would rue the day that you prayed for the likes of Beelzebub and Moloch to bring your people flies and democracy? Are you a diaspora dick who is pretending currently. In addition to sharing my own writing and art, my goal here is to bring awareness to our region’s rich literature, language, history, philosophy and art and to promote solidarity in our communities in the face of divide et impera. With unity and pride, we stand with the people of Iran, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq and all its be in their fight against the Epstein Empire.