Sonia

“Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extent that millions of years of natural disaster could not. Roads have grow like a manic fungus and the endless miles of ditches that bracket these roads serve as hasty graves for perhaps millions of plant species extinguished in the name of progress. Planet Earth is nearly a Dr. Seuss book made real: every year since 1990 we have created more than eight billion new stumps. If we continue to fell healthy trees at this rate, less then six hundred years from now, every tree on the planet will have been reduced to a stump. My job is about making sure there will be some evidence that someone cared about the great tragedy that unfolded during our age.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“خدا كند انگورها برسند
جهان مست شود
تلوتلو بخورند خیابان‌ها
به شانه‌ی هم بزنند
رئیس‌جمهورها و گداها

مرزها مست شوند
و محمّد علی بعد از 17 سال مادرش را ببیند
و آمنه بعد از 17 سال، كودكش را لمس كند .

خدا كند انگورها برسند
آمو زیباترین پسرانش را بالا بیاورد
هندوكش دخترانش را آزاد كند .

برای لحظه‌ای
تفنگ‌ها یادشان برود دریدن را
كاردها یادشان برود
بریدن را
قلم‌ها آتش را
آتش‌بس بنویسند .

خدا كند كوهها به هم برسند
دریا چنگ بزند به آسمان
ماهش را بدزدد
به میخانه‌ شوند پلنگ‌ها با آهوها .

خدا كند مستی به اشیاء سرایت كند
پنجره‌‌ها
دیوارها را بشكنند
و
تو
همچنانكه یارت را تنگ می‌بوسی
مرا نیز به یاد بیاوری .

محبوب من
محبوب دور افتاده‌ی من
با من بزن پیاله‌ای دیگر
به سلامتی باغ‌های معلق انگور”
― الیاس علوی

“The “F Word” My cousin’s name, Farbod, means “Greatness.” When he moved to America, all the kids called him “Farthead.” My brother Farshid (“He Who Enlightens”) became “Fartshit.” The name of my friend Neggar means “Beloved,” although it can be more accurately translated as “She Whose Name Almost Incites Riots.” Her brother Arash (“Giver”) initially couldn’t understand why every time he’d say his name, people would laugh and ask him if it itched. All of us immigrants knew that moving to America would be fraught with challenges, but none of us thought that our names would be such an obstacle. How could our parents have ever imagined that someday we would end up in a country where monosyllabic names reign supreme, a land where “William” is shortened to “Bill,” where “Susan” becomes “Sue,” and “Richard” somehow evolves into “Dick”? America is a great country, but nobody without a mask and a cape has a z in his name. And have Americans ever realized the great scope of the guttural sounds they’re missing? Okay, so it has to do with linguistic roots, but I do believe this would be a richer country if all Americans could do a little tongue aerobics and learn to pronounce “kh,” a sound more commonly associated in this culture”
― Firoozeh Dumas, Funny In Farsi: A Memoir Of Growing Up Iranian In America

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play