July, 2003 An Empty Room (Magazine) By MuXin | July 1, 2003 As the mountain crested its slope steepened. I was already sweating. A church appeared at the top of the crest. I thought I should rest there a bit before deciding when to descend. The war had just ended. The church was deserted. The altar, tables, and chairs had long been removed. Only the holy statue remained—Christ’s face, covered with dust, revealed an extraordinary quality of steadfast perseverance. Half the keys of an old piano still made a kind of grating sound. If... Existence (Magazine) By Ahmad Shamlou | July 1, 2003 If this is life-how low! and I, how shamed, if I don't hang my lifetime's lamp high on the dusty pine of this dead-end lane. If this is life-how pure! and I, how stained, if I don't plant my faith like a mountain, eternal memorial, to grace this ephemeral earth. Paris Lost (Magazine) By Wladimir Kaminer | July 1, 2003 In the steppes of southern Russia, there once was a city whose inhabitants spoke only French in the summer and English in the fall. Our first official German document, which we got at police headquarters on the Alexanderplatz in 1990, was an East German residence permit. We didn't get any closer to our old dream: the right to travel freely. Right on the first page of the document it said: On departure from the German Democratic Republic, this permit must be... Hitchcock and Agha Baji (Magazine) By Behnam Dayani | July 1, 2003 To my grandmother, and all other grandmothers whom we never treasured as much as they deserved. On that sunny autumn Thursday afternoon, between the hours of two and seven, three unusual incidents took place. From three to five, my friends and I went to Mahtab Cinema to see Hitchcock's Psycho. At six-thirty, Agha Baji came to our house to visit my grandmother. Fifteen seconds later, the tile floor in the bathroom collapsed and I almost fell through into the stone pit below. Apparently,... A Dialogue with MuXin (Magazine) By Toming Jun Liu | July 1, 2003 Toming Jun Liu interviewed MuXin in July 1993 in MuXin's home in a suburb of New York. The complete interview was published in Chinese in Lianhe bao (United Times, Taipei, January 23, 1994). Toming Jun Liu's English translation was published in the North Dakota Quarterly (Spring 1997: pp. 19-28) and has been shortened and rearranged here. Toming Jun Liu: You came to the United States from China in 1982 and have since been living in the New York area. Between 1983 and now, you have... Iran as Cinema (Magazine) By Salar Abdoh | July 1, 2003 The movie theater I found myself in was called Freedom; it stood on the corner of two main boulevards that, like the majority of streets in Tehran, are named after martyrs of the revolution: Martyr Beheshti, Martyr Eslamboli. Several hundred people could have easily fit in that space, but at most only twenty were there. Three soldiers sat a few rows ahead of me, munching on bags of salted melon seeds, cracking jokes every time the film we all were supposed to be watching failed to deliver a... Page 229 of 229 pages ‹ First < 227 228 229
