Merry Christmas
Every year, at this time, I would write a summary of the work I had done in the past year and plan for the coming year. Also, I encouraged my students and readers to write their resolutions. However, 2022 is not like every other year. It is different. Iran is involved in the women's revolution, and the streets are still wet with the blood of our loved ones. Prisons are full of young people who want freedom and a normal life, and the cemeteries are full of fresh graves of those young people who were buried without letting their families see them for the last time. The Islamic republic is kidnapping Iranians on the streets and arresting them even in their houses, and nobody knows where they are taken. Hospitals are full of young men and women raped by the molarity police and the torturers.
This year was a strange year. My achievements are not as many as in 2021:
1- On April 12th, I opened an online office and invited my students to come and join me. We connected via zoom four days a week, and everybody worked on their assignments (articles, novels, memoirs, short stories, or research).
2- In the first four months of 2022, I worked on my poetry. I thought I could publish a collection of my poems again, like the Busker, which was a bestseller on Amazon for three months (among foreign languages; published in 2015)
3- In April, I decided to publish my newsletter. I regularly published my novel, and I had Sunday posts in English. This newsletter worked well until the Islamic morality police killed Mahsa Amini, and everything changed.
4- I had the Memoirs Writing class every other Sunday and I still do.
5- I published two stories. The Last Mission (in English) on the city of asylum website, and the other is in Farsi in my newsletter, "Your Name Will Be Coded."
6- I wrote the beautiful long poem "Sleeping Beauty" in English, which was left half-finished after Mahsa's death.
7- There were private coaching sessions, and the results were excellent. Still, even the coaching classes were influenced by the women's revolution
8- I researched and studied the signs of Iranian culture in this revolution which was mentioned in a panel at New York University.
9- I had a panel with Bruce Isaacson and Rodney J. Lee, at the Las Vegas Book Festival.
10- I had a presentation about Hafez in a poetry promising group.
I didn't do anything else, or I don't remember. I was awake for almost 24 hours and followed the news. I tried to show my readers any sign of Persian mythology and the belief I saw in the revolution.
We are at the end of 2022; I don’t have any resolutions for 2023 except that I hope it will be the year without the Islamic Republic.
The world will be a better place without them.
Merry Christmas
Source: Substack