only Borges can offer a parenthetical this is not a work of history after providing a historical background complete with references and even--just moments earlier--a footnote.

"Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden." Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 208.

the other day, i correctly translated/identified טעים (ta'im, tasty) based on my knowledge of the persian (which i realized at that moment is actually arabic) طعم (ta'am, taste).

whoa.

someone looking over my shoulder in transit cannot be faulted for coming to a certain conclusion: news on Middle East, Persian Twitter feed, Persian Telegram ("what's Telegram??"), Persian music, keyboard, notes-to-self.

who would guess the heart of this Russian-Canadian Jew.

a dream last night that a lady--a former drug addict--went looking for someone (or something) at her dealer's home. she had a suitcase with her and a plan to disappear into another (cleaner) life. as she walked away empty-handed, someone approached her with an offer. she confidently shook her head and turned towards the elevator, preparing to leave. the doors opened. she placed her suitcase in the elevator and, without hesitation, quickly returned to the apartment.

Who is دونing pomegranate at 1am
.
.
.
I am.

there is a girl who boards the streetcar--olive skin, dark hair, small, thin. homeless. i first saw her a year ago: overly talkative but good-natured; generally neat; generally coherent. every month or two i'm witness to the dramatic deterioration...

i started writing this two months ago.

last week, with exactly these words in mind, i stumbled on her in the queen subway tunnel. as if she'd lived 200 years. as if all the chaos, fear, entropy of the street had run through her head and out her mouth...

it took hours to stop shaking, to stop the tears collecting in my throat..

i still haven't recovered from that scene. i'm not sure i ever will.

x

милая

i have no idea where you came from

but here you are, ten years later

and i couldn't be more blessed

<3

there is no english equivalent for the time i spent with this spreadsheet yesterday.
apparently english speakers, on the whole, have little experience with мучения ...

تولدت مبارک

جان دلم

my همنفس

warmest birthdays
happiest wishes

<3

I didn't know until I opened it that it was my grandparents' dictionary--those neat rows of page numbers corresponding to each English letter; the characteristic script, easily identifiable among Russian immigrants of a certain age. I had forgotten our assembly in the apartment, taking this dictionary and Esenin, two volumes, light-grey hardcovers with emerald green print on the binding.

I had forgotten that the cemetery was old and beautiful; I had forgotten the family of deer who disappeared as quickly as they had emerged from the gaps in the shifting sunlight, seemingly, or the trees.

I was struck, as I stared at this once-blank separator, by the irony: My grandmother always hoped I'd translate. All my resistance. All my doubt. And here I am, Oxford dictionary in hand......

Instead of This

for another (or the same?) reader in Lebanon:

مَمْنونِة عَزْيارْتَك

I am my manager's official proofreader, and I really couldn't be happier.

A reminder while scrolling through Twitter this morning: the sad fact that I know people--friends, loved ones, acquaintances--who were once imprisoned, either in Iran or in Israel, for one political absurdity or another; that there are countless friends of friends who either served or are currently serving equally ludicrous sentences, who've been killed over some Kafkaesque abstraction or other; that nobody should know this, in this day and age, and yet we do.

Why isn't this over yet

it was something like a food court, and everything felt tense; edgy; like the shooting crack before an avalanche. i notice three young men--orange shirts, red, yellow, with checkered bandanas covering all except their eyes. i pull my friend away, worried about a fight, about what these men might do.

a few minutes later, we're outside. a quick glance down a dark alley, and my stomach flops: two rows of people on either side, their backs against the wall. my first and only thought is, they've already started separating people. my friend is gone. as i turn to run, i realize that i didn't even notice the galloping horse between the hostages, its masked rider swinging an axe.

i'm caught on a steep set of stairs between two buildings--more horses, militia, again an axe. i duck into a hole in the wall, find myself surrounded by darkness, cement. a faint light in the middle of the room. a young girl on an operating table who calls the surgeon father, who thinks his experiments are routine, ordinary expressions of love. she's been here since childhood, i think. he pauses his incision to walk toward me, huddled behind a barrier. a cold, gentle smile, pleased with his new subject, the scalpel already touching my arm. during our struggle i manage to point it into his stomach, which takes the blade in a thick, bloodless fold, like the bending of a rolled-up carpet...

word of the day: panicle

f's courtroom win of the new year:

me: Are you sleeping with your necklace on?
f: Yes, why?
me: Well, it looks like a choking hazard.....
f: Have you ever heard of anyone choking on their own necklace in their sleep?
me: Well...... no.
f: I rest my case!

In honour of all who lost their lives, all who mourn, all who fume and suffer and despair
Yesterday and every day of the past 70 years

Ligamentum

I pray for boredom.

You bored people: You don't know how lucky you are.

Let this year be remembered as the year of cancer, I once wrote.

This year, then, is the year of broken lives... the year of the survivors--

Behrang, a patchwork image of calamity pieced together through friends, loved ones, through the empty corners of that slowly emptying apartment, through the practical trivialities we waded through together following the sudden death of his wife...

Tahmaseb, who escaped the executions of post-Revolution Iran only to lose his wife to cancer, a lifetime, a grandchild later, in their beloved Berlin; who wrote of nothing but his Iran and his Farzaneh; whose short stay with us left a long mark on my life and my memory... whose kind, smiling eyes are unimaginable in grief...
.
.
.
Raheleh, for whom I have no words--none--to express how sorry, how heartbroken, how hurt for you... how vividly I can imagine... how I can't bring myself to... how every letter trips over itself, sinks, implodes before it gets to the page
.
.
.
Lost to us, now, but at peace

Shadi
Farzaneh
Gino

May you rest in the warmest, most golden calm

May your memory be blessed