writing
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Part One. The Moftakhar House in Moftakhar Alley
A vignette describing my mother’s house in Tehran in the 1940s. Most of Part I of my book is set here. 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”…
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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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Little Tree, Prelude to White Mulberries
Mahin Banu Sameni came from a long line of wealthy bazaari merchants. With hair like a soft, swift death and eyes that just knew better, the Sameni women married well above their social sphere. In 1938, at the age of fifteen, Mahin Banu, the most luminous of her sisters by far, married Asqar Aqa Moftakhar,…
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It’s What They Say
April 7th, 2026, 17:45, Landskrona, Sweden Written in response to the President of the United States’ threats today. With notes based on Annie Jacobsen’s book, Nuclear War. They say your skin melts. And your clothes. And your shoes. Melt right off. And your insides become your outsides. I think of their pretty olive skin. Hers…
al-majus 