Faegheh atashin biography of mahatma

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Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges

Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges persian poesis in the

transnational circuitry

michael m. j. fischer Duke University Press

Durham & London

2004

∫ 2004 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $ Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Contents

By Way of Acknowledgments: Divided Selves and Doubled Genealogies vii Prelude: I.

After Epic, Writing, Painting, and Film 1

Speaking After Zarathustra: Ritual, Epic, and Philosophical Forms of Reason Prologue 17 1. Yasna: Performative Ritual, Narrative Mnemonic 25 2. Shahnameh: Parable Logic 66 Coda: Illuminationism: Philosophical Allegory 131

II.

Seeing After Film: Textual and Cinematic Forms of Ethical Reason 3. 4.

5. Coda: Epilogue:

Awaiting the Revolution: Surrealism Persian Style 151 Filmic Judgment and Cultural Critique: The Work of Art, Ethics, and Religion in Postrevolution Iranian Cinema 222 War Again: Qandahar, 911— Figure and Discourse in Iranian Cinematic Writing 259 Balancing Acts (After 9/11) 355 Beyond ‘‘Mobile Armies of Metaphors’’: Scheherezade Films the Games 370

Notes 395 Bibliography 433 Index 449

By Way of Acknowledgments: Divided Selves and Doubled Genealogies

In a world of divided selves, I count myself fortunate to have one of mine be indelibly Yazdi and even Qumi, Persian and Iranian. I still enjoy the snap of response when Iranians ask me how I know this or that about Iranian culture, and I reply usually, ‘‘Bacce Yazd-am’’ [I’m a child of Yazd; I’m from Yazd], and occasionally, ‘‘Va yek sol dar Qum zendigi mikardam dar mahalleh-ye Ayatullah Marashi-Najafi ruh-be-ruh-ye Hawza-ye

Maureen Nehedar is taking a trip down dear old Memory Lane and taking us along for the associated musical ride. Over the past couple of decades, forty-something Nehedar has cemented her place as one of the country’s foremost exponents of Persian classical music and while she has been at it, a sprinkling of other extracurricular projects.

Nehedar is part of this year’s Jerusalem International Oud Festival (November 18-27) that in its 22nd edition takes place, as always, under the aegis of Confederation House and its CEO-artistic director Effie Benaya. It will come as some surprise to audiences that have become accustomed to her evocative delivery of the aforesaid traditional and liturgical material. This time round Nehedar dips into her earliest formative years to feed off some of the pop and rock numbers she heard with her keen infant ears before her family made aliyah from Isfahan, Iran, when the toddler was barely three years old.

For Nehedar the Iranian Pop and Rock show, scheduled for Zappa Jerusalem on November 22 (10 p.m.), is far more than a nostalgic trip. The preparatory preliminaries to the onstage execution takes her right back to the most primal stage of life, at a time when sounds just enter our ears, filter their way into our developing consciousness in an unsullied manner, free of the judgmental clutter that tends to pervade and muddy our perception as we progress through life.

“I am happy that, at long last, there is a twist in my storyline, my musical storyline,” she declares. It has, she says, been a long time coming. “When you think about it the things I heard as a baby and an infant, yes there was the Oum Kulthoum-like Persian music, with authentic instruments,” she says, evoking the iconic image of the Egyptian classical music diva by way of referencing the classical side of her birth country’s culture, “but there was also a lot of pop