life
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Part One. The Moftakhar House in Moftakhar Alley
The Moftakhar house snaked itself around Moftakhar Alley with all the wiggling hips of a Wednesday market girl. When they first assigned surnames in Tehran, Asqar Aqa’s father, Ali Aqa, chose the name “Moftakhar” because he had studied Arabic and in Arabic moftakhar meant “proud.” In Persian, it lent itself rather easily to ridicule and…
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Preface to White Mulberries
Every family member who visited us from Iran in my youth, with their smoky blazers and suitcases full of embroideries, pistachios, handmade trinkets, saffron, and gold for our future wedding days, also brought with them a far more precious collection of family folklore and personal memories that were shared over cups of tea as we…
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The Night Mare
I struggle to keep up with the speed that global tragedies are hurled at us these days. There is simply no time to process every devastation or threat of devastation, so they get filed away into a cobwebbed cupboard in my psyche, only to resurface later in some other unholy way. Panic attacks, altercations with…
al-majus 