Books
Short Prose
- "Reckoning with an Uncertain Future in Iran, and Outside It." The New Yorker. March 16, 2020.
- "How We See Iran: A Brief History of Fictions at a Distance." Literary Hub. November 26, 2019.
- "Snow." Prairie Schooner. Volume 90, Number 3.
- “Tehran Times.” Notre Dame Review 39.
- “The War Watchers.” Green Mountains Review.
- "How We See Iran: A Brief History of Fictions at a Distance." Literary Hub. November 26, 2019.
- "Snow." Prairie Schooner. Volume 90, Number 3.
- “Tehran Times.” Notre Dame Review 39.
- “The War Watchers.” Green Mountains Review.
Excerpts
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Snow
The sanctions hit and I told myself, what the hell, man! I found a job on campus at the library. Tried to keep head above water. The library was thirteen floors, plus an endless basement and a mural of Jesus on the southern facade where the giant prophet held up his arms to his sides, forearms bent at elbows, making obtuse angles like he was saying, ‘‘Come to me, from the four corners of the world!’’ or ‘‘Lord, will this snow ever stop?’’. . . .
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Tehran Times
I hit the elevator's GF button, lift my T-shirt and wait for her to lick my stomach.
"I have a stomachache," I say. "Can I have a magical lick?" She gives me her special Ayda look. It could mean a lot of things. I go for a lack of adequate politeness. "Please," I add. "Grow up," Ayda says averting her eyes from my hairy stomach. I am grown up already. I kind of don't want to grow up any more. "And let go of that," she says. "It's inappropriate." I think Ayda watches too much news. She thinks there is a camera hidden in every corner. . . . |
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The War Watchers
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The war goes on. It seems endless. But it should end some day, because everything ends some day. And this war is something. And something is included in everything. There is something in everything.
She opened the door a crack. “The war will end,” I said. “Shut up!” she said. I could see only her eyes, her head a tad slanted. She was still sleepy. “Why don’t you open the door?” “Because I don’t want to.” “But why?” “Because this is my house and I decide who gets in.” I thought this was fair. “This is not fair,” I said and I knew it would not be beneficial to add anything else to that, at seven in the morning, but I shifted my orange towel from under my left arm to under my right arm and said: “We have to help the ones in war, don’t we?” That was the worst thing I could possibly have thought of. . . . |
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