Absolute Random Nonsense

One Thursday before the last period, Mr. Jalaei called me into his office. I hadn’t done anything and wasn’t sure what this would be about. He lead me down to the prayer room and once we were there we noticed Mehdi, my former 4th grade classmate, lying down on the ground. Mr. Jalaei went up to him. “What are you doing here?” “I have a stomach ache so I’m just lying down.” “Who gave you permission to come here?” “No one gave permission.” Mehdi was sent back to class. Mr. Jalaei took out a pen and a piece of paper and scribbled something on it and showed it to me. “What does this mean?” It was a number, six digits in total. I thought it might be a phone number but it didn’t look familiar. I stared at it and finally said, “I don’t know what that is.” “Don’t play games with me.” “I don’t think I have ever seen this.” “You are actually capable of thinking?” I thought about giving a smart-ass response but judging by Mr. Jalaei’s harsher than usual demeanor I assumed things were serious, ev...

He’s best known by his first name…. Kia. His life is remarkable. Kia Zolgharnain was born in Iran in 1965. His family was wealthy and lived in a mansion with maids and servants. He was not allowed to play in the streets, so he watched kids play soccer from his window. He learned the game in his mind. When he was six, his father took him on a trip to Spain, Germany, and England where he watched professional soccer teams like Manchester United play. “That was the turning point for me,” he said. “It was soccer 24-7 in my mind. That’s what I wanted to do.” The family came to America where Kia said they were met with culture shock. “Our hotel had a television with like 200 channels,” he said. “I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to watch TV.” He said watching shows was his motivation to learn English because he wanted to know what the “Fonz” was saying on Happy Days . By 17, he was coaching and playing the sport he watched from his mansion in Iran. In 1983, he turned pro right out of hig...

When I was a kid I used to bite my upper lip to the point where it would turn red and look like a third lip. Once someone asked me why I did that. I said it was because when I grew up I didn't want any facial hair so that my face could look young and this was my way of burning the yet to grow hair. They pointed out that if this worked it would only be effective for the area right above my lip and thus a bit higher, the sides and the entire beard area would still remain. I said I would just shave those areas. They mentioned that if I was gonna shave anyway why not just shave the whole thing instead of trying to allegedly burn some parts. I told them to shut up.  

Dareo Shahrdar was on Judge Judy twice. The first time he sued for the return of an engagement ring in which he was successful but in the counter suit he had to pay $3,000 that he had borrowed from his fiance for bail money. The next time he was on Judge Judy he sued his landlord who let him sit in jail as a result of her not fessing up that a gun that police found belonged to her and not him. She then evicted him and kept his rent money while he was in jail. He won $5,000.

I was in Boston visiting a relative. Once there they told my relative's friend that there is a restaurant that shows Iran's games and if I wanted we could go there to watch this one. So we got up at around 3:00am and went there and it was packed with Iranians (and one Australian guy). The owner kept trying to get the game on his TV but the signal wasn't working. In the meantime someone got on the computer and found a site that reported the game every minute or so. So he kept reading us what was going on and just about every line was an Australian attack. Finally Australia scored. The owner was still trying to get us a signal but was unsuccessful. The second half started pretty much the same as the first and when Australia scored the second goal (that again we only were able to read about) everyone pretty much got up to leave as we figured it was over. I came back and went straight to sleep but in the morning my relative started waking me up to tell me that Iran...

Sheida Soleimani Iranian artist raised in Cincinnati. Her upcoming solo show will feature multi-media installations centering on her parents’ escape from Iran, memory, identity, and transnational experience. "And I remember my dad was like, really excited about that at the moment and was like, “Oh, Papa, we should find a ghostwriter to write a story about our life.” And I knew that he would never do it. And lo and behold, he never did. And so I remember calling them and asking them, after a lot of thought, “Is it OK if I ghostwrite your story and photograph? And they said, “Yeah.” And they said under one condition: our faces remain anonymous. And I said, absolutely. You know, thinking about also how I experience and think about the medium of photography, the faces aren’t important to me. People don’t need to see faces to understand, like, you know, the trauma that they’ve experienced or their pain or their stories."   

Googling people from my past is both good and bad. On one hand I can get updates on people I was close with but haven't heard from in a long time. On the other hand I sometimes find out that they are dead. Some of them died way too soon. Victoria R. (aged 25) - college classmate/friend Allen A. (aged 38) - elementary school classmate/friend Benjamin B. (aged 42) - college classmate/friend Jennifer H. (aged 45) - coaching course classmate Kathi M. (aged 53) - college friend

The head of OU’s Center for Middle East Studies says federal immigration officers detained an Iranian studies professor while he was traveling to a conference.  Joshua Landis said Doctor Vahid Abedini, the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies, was taken into custody Saturday while boarding a flight to Washington, D.C. Landis said Abedini was wrongfully detained because he holds a valid H-1B visa, a visa category commonly used for university faculty. State Representative Jacob Rosecrants wrote on Facebook that no one appears to know where Abedini is being held. He said he has been in contact with the professor’s family. It is unclear why he was arrested or what he has been charged with, as ICE have not released any information on his status or whereabouts. Abedini came to the US after being expelled from graduate school in Iran for opposing the government and supporting the 2009 Green Revolution. He did his PhD at Florida International University on elite formatio...

We returned the very next day, a few hours earlier, and while my mom quickly went to find a luggage cart, we drove around to find a parking spot. Having found one we then walked around the parking lot to find my mom. Irene commented to me, “Look for something big and gray.” I initially assumed she was referring to the luggage carts but she clarified she was talking about mom. The extra few hours made it a little easier to proceed although at one point we realized we hadn’t had breakfast. My dad bought a few raisin-sprinkled cakes for 7.5 tomans each which did not go too well with me as I did not like raisins. I chose not to say anything in order to not hurt my dad’s feelings and quietly left my cake on a napkin in the spot we had been sitting outside the airport, hoping that one of us would assume it’s theirs and finish it. Some time later I checked on the spot and saw that a janitor whom had started his sweeping route further ahead had reached our spot and in the process discarded o...