Arash Zeini

According to the Persian Wikipedia, I was one of the first advocates of FOSS in Iran. The little entry continues to claim that Chapar Shabdiz was the first Iranian company to base its commercial business plan on FOSS. It also mentions the FarsiKDE project, Shabdix GNU/Linux and linuxiran.org!

Well FarsiKDE’s website expired long back and few days ago linuxiran.org! expired too. To be verbose: I created linuxiran.org! on April 20, 2001 and it expired on April 20, 2007. linuxiran.org! was the first Iranian portal dedicated to FOSS and at a time, was very active. It’s gone now and with it FarsiKDE and Shabdix. We had a good time trying to create something that we believed could benefit Iran.

Last Thursday I received two CDs, which I had been looking forward to hearing very much. One was “In the shade of the wind” by Massoud Shaari (or Sheari مسعود شعاری) and Arash Mitooie (آرش میتویی), the second was “Zarathustra”. While I feared that the latter would be a disappointment and assumed the former would be a nice surprise, it turned out to be more complicated than that. In my opinion “In the shade of the wind” is not a rich and unique musical experience. Ostad Lotfi is of the opinion that an exploration of other musical styles and their combination with Iranian art music can be successful only if it retains its Iranian identity. This is certainly not an easy task, but it makes sense to me. Ostad Khaleqi has a similar opinion on the use of harmony in Iranian music. “In the shade of the wind”, as an attempt to combine different musical styles, in my opinion partly lacks identity.

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Days with breathable air are rare in Tehran. This day (April 16) was one of them and since the weather was pleasant I decided to take an extended walk with Hourmazd. Hanging in his BabyBjörn and sucking comfortably on his fingers, he too seemed to enjoy the clear, cool and sunny day. As I was passing by my old school, I stopped and paid attention. The old brick walls of the school and the memories of those days made me stop and listen. I could hear the children screaming inside, so I decided to go in and take a look. I had attended the Hedayat school in 1980, four years before we left for Germany. I had not gone back to this school ever again. This time I noticed the walls and the old windows and wanted to take a look from inside.

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Talking to an Armenian friend, who has relatives in the UK, Canada and the US, he mentioned that many Armenians are emigrating from Iran. I assumed, naturally, that they would immigrate to Armenia, a country that many Iranian Armenians love and appreciate. But I was wrong, most of them immigrate to Canada and the United States. While I had assumed that they would chose to leave on grounds of religious harassment, I was again mistaken. They feel protected in Iran and I was told that in times of unrest in Azerbaijan, provoked by Turkists from Turkey and the other Azerbaijan, the government forces had cared to protect them against the pan-Turkish activists. No, they leave over economical and educational concerns, just like so many other Iranians. So it occurred to me to ask how big the Armenian community is in Iran. According to him, some 30 years ago there were around 150,000 Armenians in Iran, mostly in Azerbaijan and around Isfahan. Their number has declined to below 20,000 and villages that used to be inhabited mainly by Armenians are vacated and left behind. He estimates that there are only 80 Armenians left in Tabriz. It is sad to see how the religious diversity of Iran is declining due to the economic and educational mismanagement of the country.

An interesting post about the origins and development of the Malay Nobat. Take a look at the blog and don’t forget to watch the videos. The Nobat seems to be a forgotten musical tradition of Iran, that has survived in Malaysia

Over 15 years ago, I received a cassette of folk music from Iran’s Fars province. All I knew about it was that it had been arranged by by Ata Jankuk (عطا جنکوک). It was a copied cassette and not an original, and so I was unable to gather more information. Originally from Fars province, Jankuk began his musical career as a Tar instrumentalist. I don’t know how active he has been throughout the years, and am only aware of two or three recordings. Recently he published a Setar solo in Dastgah Nava, with the interesting title: “Nava bi nahoft”. I don’t own it, but it could be interesting, especially if the title is a poetic reflection on Dastgah Nava.

Back to the cassette. Since 1991, when I resumed travelling to Iran, I have searched but have not been able to find that cassette anywhere. I have also not met a single person who is even familiar with the work. Still stuck with my old copy, I have kept this cassette like a treasure and have always kept it with me. I love it. In my opinion, it is a humble but sincere interpretation of folklore music. Below I include the verse of one of my favourite songs from this beautiful but somehow forgotten work:

یک چراغی سیت بسازم شیشه‌اش خورشید نشون
یک فتیله روش بزارم شعله‌اش ظلمت شکون
با کلیدی از سپیده قفل شب را وا کنم
از تو صندوق صدهزار تا مروارید پیدا کنم
ابر سرکش، ابر تیره یکه تازی می‌کنه
آسمون پر ستاره نیزه بازی می‌کنه
من رفیق باغ و آبم با بهار همسایه‌ام
من به دستت از دل خود یک سبد گل داده‌ام
رفته کاکام از بهار و برگ گل بی اضطراب
حرمتش کن، حرمتش کن تا دم شاه چراغ

Yesterday I visited Ostad Lotfi. Once the meeting was over, I thought I should use the chance and take a walk around the University of Tehran. The book shops around the university are known for their access to rare books. I was searching for Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšēr ī Pābagān. Compared to some years ago, the area has changed drastically. There are so many people on the streets that you can barely walk straight. The streets around the Enqelab Square reminded me of India. A lot of the old book shops are gone and have been replaced with newer shops specialising in modern books or illegal copies of CDs.

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When you do not live in a city, you are better able to notice how it changes. But the changes in Tehran are so drastic that even people who live here feel as if they were not. The entire city is a big construction site. Over the past two and a half decades, Tehran has undergone a complete face lift, not unlike that experienced by Iranian noses. People began to build huge apartment buildings as if they knew how the population of their capital city was going to explode. The building frenzy spread in a ruthless manner, such that even the Alborz mountains were not spared.

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Today about ten soldiers and two police officers arrived at the house of my parents to confiscate the entire building’s satellite dishes. They were targeting the entire street, and the doorman made the mistake of permitting them inside the building. My five-year-old nephew was devastated at the loss of his cartoon channel, especially his beloved show “Power Rangers.” I heard him crying from two floors below, and only a large amount of ice cream and several DVDs calmed him down. This evening I thought of watching a film on MBC2, before I realized that the building is now satellite dish-less. I never liked TV anyways.

Update: I heard from my mother that some of the neighbours were successfull at keeping the satellite dishes by just not opening the door. One relative bribed them with 30,000 Tooman and kept the dish.

If you have ever visited a Zoroastrian fire temple, you will have noticed the big and beautiful fire holders. They are kept in an isolated and consecrated room inside the temple. The room has usually one entry for the moabad (Zoroastrian priests, as they are called in Iran) and a viewer’s window for the visitors. It was only recently, during a conversation with a moabad, that I found out that these fire holders, while essential to the practice of Zoroastrianism, are not made in Iran. They are made in and imported from India. All fire holders in Iranian temples are from India.