interview with nooshin azadi

nooshin azadi , writing as "human being", was one of the first people i made contact with when i began blogging about two and a half years ago. it was quickly apparent that blogging was a different proposition for her than for me. she was posting from iran at the time of the elections, and the reaction against them, which were receiving so much coverage in the non-islamic world. much of the coverage focused on the supposed role of the internet on the protests, and the iranian governments efforts to suppress and counter the internet's influence. i didn't have an e-mail address for her at that time, and communication was carried out through comments on our blog entries. contact was spasmodic, apparently due to the censorship. the political situation seemed (to me) to be always in the background. she would sometimes refer to it directly. i was more cryptic than she, being afraid of compromising her. from my cosy spot in america, it seemed like something out of a john le carre novel. (i don't mean to give the impression i was her only western contact - far from it. her own blog had a lot of followers, and they left a lot of comments and messages.) the following interview includes some of the questions i never asked her directly then. 1) when you first started blogging - any particular reason? was it connected to your teaching job?  . one day i found myself speaking but not talking so i started writing i was a child then and still i am . 2) do you find a very different attitude toward blogging in iran and the western countries? . geographical directions happen on flat pages our planet is a globe spinning around the axis of love . 3) just from looking at the list of followers on your blog - which can be misleading - and from the comments i get the impression you get most readers and response from the united states and other western countries. true?  . some people are less biased and more tolerant perhaps because they know  what bias is  and how intolerance feels . 4) have you attempted to publish your poems and stories in print? i am pretty ignorant as to how publishing works in iran - it seems not to controlled outright by the government, but heavily overseen and censored?  . publishing  works like fishing i love the serene sight of a calm angler  but not the hideous scene of a hooked fish . 5) your site includes work in both english and farsi, but more in english. is this because you have more readers in english? my language (dec. 21, 2007) . to tell the truth i talk in my mother tongue to dwell the truth i walk in my other tongue . 6) the work that appears in english, do you just write it in english, or farsi first and then translate it? . words are unique they happen just once water is different from /aab/ and /aab/ is different from l'eau i'm always thirsty sometimes i drink water sometimes /aab/ and at times a bit l'eau translation is half of the truth half of the truth is a lie i rarely lie . 7) are there any particular writers or groups of writers that influence you?  . i'm enslaved by words they have chained my emotions and fettered my thoughts like all slaves  i fight for freedom .  8) about two years ago, at the time of the iranian elections, when iran was in the news every day in the united states, the american media constantly ran on about how the web was disturbing and distressing the iranian government. was this really true? how effective was the censorship? did it increase then or was it already in effect? . some people don't like webs spiders weave they have never seen a dew-dropped cobweb they wipe them constantly to clean the house but spiders are numerous and so hungry . 9) how effective and pervasive is the censorship now? my impression is that it works in a blanket manner, by slowing everything down, rather than by targeting individuals. is this true? . a good tailor always keeps his scissors sharp but some fabrics are so tough, you know a good tailor always measures every one of his customers but some of them are are oversized or undersized, you know a good tailor always makes you look different  . 10) if there were no censorship, would you blog more? i mean, really a lot more?  blog (jan 19, 2009) . a cozy corner in the colossal cosmos to cast skin exhibiting the curious child within to cage the tyrannical eagle for a while and make love with prometheus unbound .