{"quotes":[{"text":"Zoe stopped one last time in front of the mirror, adjusting her new American dress. She didn’t see the dress, however. She saw what the big Russian did to her. She saw what al-Qaeda did to her. She saw a person shunned by her Persian village. She saw ugliness. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw deficiency.","author":"Michael Benzehabe","tags":["al-qaeda","american-fashion","benzehabe","deficiency","depression","immigrant","insecurity","iran","outsider","persian","rape","russia","shame","shunned","unassimilated","western-fashion"],"id":2793,"author_id":"Michael+Benzehabe"},{"text":"The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth — Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu.","author":"Joseph McCabe","tags":["babylonian","christ","copy","egyptian","forgery","gospels","greek","hindu","jesus","jesus-christ","jewish","morality","old-testament","persian","pharisees","plagiarize","sentiments"],"id":28127,"author_id":"Joseph+McCabe"},{"text":"But Khair did not need such proof of her husband's love for her. Over and over again,James had risked everything for her. Most relationships in life can survive - or not - without being put to any really crucial, fundamental test. It was James's fate for his love to be tested not once, but four times....At each stage he could easily have washed his hands off his teenage lover. Each time he chose to remain true to her.That, not the words of any will, was the evidence she could cling onto.","author":"William Dalrymple","tags":["british","history","hyderabad","india","islam","persian"],"id":130848,"author_id":"William+Dalrymple"},{"text":"Woman is the light of God.","author":"Jalaluddin Rumi","tags":["god","persian","persian-poetry","religion","rumi","rumi-poetry","women"],"id":165199,"author_id":"Jalaluddin+Rumi"},{"text":"Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flightThe Stars before him from the Field of Night,Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,and strikesThe Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.","author":"Omar Khayyám","tags":["dawn","end-of-night","heaven","new-day","persian","poet","poetry","stars","sun","sunrise"],"id":211128,"author_id":"Omar+Khayy%C3%A1m"},{"text":"A unified Iran is constituted not only politically but also affectively. Liberty and constitutional rule bring 'Affection among us.' The affective sentiment- that of bonding among differing brothers-produces political bonds of national unity and was associatively linked with other desires. Perhaps foremost was the desire to care for and defend the mother, in particular her bodily integrity. The same words were commonly used to discuss territory and the female body. Laura Mulvey calls these words keys 'that could turn either way between the psychoanalytic and the social' (1980, 180). They are not 'just words' that open up to either domain; they mediate between these domains, taking power of desire from one to the other. More appropriately, they should be considered cultural nodes of psyhosocial condensation. Tajavuz, literally meaning transgression, expresses both rape and the invasion of territory. Another effective expression, as already noted, was Khak-I pak-I vatan, the pure soil of the homeland. The word used for 'pure,' pak, is saturated with connotations of sexual purity. Linked to the idea of the purity of a female vatan was the metaphoric notion of the 'skirt of chastity' (daman-I 'iffat) and its purity-whether it was stained or not. It was the duty of Iranian men to protect that skirt. The weak and sometimes dying figure of motherland pleaded t her dishonorable sons to arise and cut the hands of foreigners from her skirt. Expressing hope for the success of the new constitutional regime by recalling and wishing away the horrors of previous years, an article in Sur-o Israfil addressed Iran in the following terms: 'O Iran! O our Mother! You who have given us milk from the blood of your veins for many long years, and who have fed us with the tissues of your own body! Will we ever live to see your unworthy children entrust your skirt of chastity to the hands of foreigners? Will our eyes ever see foreigners tear away the veil of your chastity?","author":"Afsaneh Najmabadi","tags":["feminism","iran","iranian","iranian-feminism","persia","persian","persian-feminism","qajar"],"id":215601,"author_id":"Afsaneh+Najmabadi"},{"text":"There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.","author":"Idries Shah","tags":["experience","knowledge","persian","saying","sufi","sufis","sufism","wisdom"],"id":230008,"author_id":"Idries+Shah"},{"text":"Beauty is dad kissing mom's hand when it cramps.Beauty is seeing a Persian woman dance.Ugly is not the absence of beauty.Uglyis the inability to identify it.The inability to be surprised by it.It is the persistent reluctance to be made a child by it.Beauty is simplythe manifestation oflove.","author":"Kamand Kojouri","tags":["absence","awareness","beauty","child","consciousness","dad","dance","experience","hand","harmony","humanity","identify","inspirational","kamand","kamand-kojouri","kissing","kojouri","love","lover","manifestation","mom","oneness","persian","persistent","philosophical","psychology","quote","reluctance","surprise","truth","ugly","union","unity","woman","world"],"id":275102,"author_id":"Kamand+Kojouri"},{"text":"Even women deeply committed to the emancipatory promises of modernity were alarmed by the 'inappropriateness' of unrelated men and omen socializing in the streets. In the women's press, articles exhorted young men to treat women respectfully in public. Other articles encouraged women to act as their own police and to be more observant of their hijab and public modesty.From the beginning, then, women's entry on the streets was subject to the regulatory harassment of men. The modernist heterosocializing promise that invited women to leave their homosocial spaces and become educated companionate partners for modernist men was underwritten by policing of women's public presence through men's street actions. Men at once desired heterosociality of the modern and yet would not surrender the privileged masculinity of the streets. Women's public presence was also underwritten by disciplinary approbation of modernizing women themselves whose emancipatory drive would be jeopardized by unruly public conduct.","author":"Afsaneh Najmabadi","tags":["afsaneh-najmabadi","feminism","iran","najmabadi","persia","persian","persian-feminism"],"id":275751,"author_id":"Afsaneh+Najmabadi"},{"text":"Interpreting dreams for Iranians was just as much a sacrament as reading coffee cups was for Turks.","author":"Soroosh Shahrivar","tags":["dream","dreams","iran","iranian","persia","persian","the-rise-of-shams","turkey","turks"],"id":322877,"author_id":"Soroosh+Shahrivar"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":12,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}