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Thursday, April 12, 2007

posted by Lotus Reads @ 7:48 AM

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Notes on Komiteh: Iran Awakening, Shrin Ebadi

"...The komiteh, or morality police, harassed all Iranians - Muslims as well as Iranian Christians and Jews, old people as well as the young - but they preyed upon women with a special enthusiasm. Slowly we learned to cope with the obstacle course that was public space. Dating couples socializing ahead of marriage, for example, would borrow a young niece or nephew on their evenings out, to appear as a family, and pass through checkpoints unmolested. We monitored everything from our personalities to our wardrobes, careful not to express opinions in public, to wear socks with our sndals. But often the harrassment was arbitrary and senseless, and thus impossible to anticipate. When most look back on those years, their memories are of antagonistic scenes that left them with headaches and a reservoir of resentment. Some recall encounters so wounding that neither their bodies nor their spirits every quite recovered." [p. 56]

posted by Lotus Reads @ 2:50 PM

Notes on Emigrating Iranians from Shiren Ebadi "Iran Awakening"

"...If you ask most Iranians what "keeneh", what grievance , they nurture most bitterly against the Islamic Republic, it is the tearing apart of their families. Memories of war fade, but the absences of a loved ones - the near-permenant separation of sister from sister, mother from daughter - is a pain that time does not blunt."

" Each generation needs to stay in the place it was raised . Here we're somebody. We're accomplished and have worked to reach a certain position in this society. OUr friends, like us, are bright and educated. If we go abroad, do you think we'll be accepted - with our foreign degrees and foreign accents - with open arms? Our kids are young, and they'll absorb the culture of their new world. And after some time passes, we'll lose them too." pgs. 78-79

posted by Lotus Reads @ 2:24 PM

Notes on "Why Iranians Distrust the Americans". Iran Awakening, Shrin Ebedi

"...I must linger on the war just a bit longer, because its impact is largely what has shaped current Iranian attitudes about ouer future and our place in the world. First, the skepticism and mistrust it reinforced in us about America's motives in the region. Imagine if you were an Iranian and watched the boys in the neighborhood board the bus for the front , never to return. Iamgine staring in mute horror at the television screen as Saddam rained chemical weapons down on your boys, his death planes guided by US satellite photos. Fast forward 15 years. Now you are watching faded video footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussien's hand, smiling at the butcher who made our capital's cemetery a city. Now you are listening to GeorgeBush promise he wants to bring democracy to the Middle East. You are hearing him address the Iranian people in his State of the Union address, telling them that if they stand for their own liberty, America will stand with them. Do you believe him?" pg: 92

posted by Lotus Reads @ 4:33 AM

Islamic Penal Code from Iran Awakening Shirin Ebedi

Islamic Penal Code (Shirin Ebedi)

"The grim statutes that I would spend the rest of my life fighting started back at me from the page: the value of a woman's life was half that of a man (for instance if a car hit both on the street, the cash compensation due a woman's family was half that due a man's) a woman's testimony in court as witness tio a crime counted only half as much as a man's; a woman had to ask her husband's permissioin for divorce. The laws, in short, turned the clock back 1400 years, to the early days of Islam's spread, the days when stoning women for adultery and chopping off the hands of thieves were considered appropriate sentences"....pg 51

posted by Lotus Reads @ 4:30 AM

Monday, November 20, 2006

Blog Intention: Study Notes

Well, I'm hoping this blog will be a place I can store all my notes (from books I read). Spoilerphobes beware, there are bound to be spoilers galore!!! :)

posted by Lotus Reads @ 5:19 PM

About Me

Name: Lotus Reads
Home: Ontario, Canada
About Me: Book fiend,culture-vulture, world traveller, daughter of the tropics now living in the Great White North.
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