Transcript for Fatemeh Keshavarz — The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

April 23, 2009

Krista Tippett, host: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi." The 13th-century mystic Rumi left behind lyric poetry that has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. This hour, we'll delve into Rumi's world and its echoes in our own. He created a new language of love within the Islamic spiritual tradition of Sufism. Rumi also inspired the whirling dervishes. He sought a way to stay centered while moving.




Kate Moos, managing producer: I'm Kate Moos, managing producer of On Being. This week, we bring you this rebroadcast of Krista's Peabody Award-winning 2007 conversation with Iranian American scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz about the life and poetry of Rumi.

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett. This hour, we enter the exuberant world of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian mystic and poet. Rumi’s poems are best sellers in the West, and he’s been celebrated globally by the United Nations this past year. Rumi has long influenced Islamic thought and spirituality, though his Muslim identity is often lost in translation. With an Iranian-American poet and scholar, we'll explore why that matters in our time. And we'll hear the lyrical words Rumi put to the common human search for meaning. He understood searching and restlessness as a kind of arrival. He saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine.

Mr. Soleyman Vaseghi: [Lines of Rumi poetry recited in Persian]

Ms. Keshavarz: [Translating] Wherever you are, whatever you do, be in love.

Ms. Tippett: From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi."


Rumi left behind a vast body of lyric poetry, metaphysical writings, lectures, and letters, which have influenced Persian, Urdu, and Turkish literature across the centuries. Rumi also inspired the whirling dervishes, ascetics who base their practices on Rumi, including the dancing meditation that was part of his spiritual life. And in the late 20th century, Rumi's thought and poetry swept the United States in English translation. Lines from Rumi became widely quoted in diverse settings, lines such as "out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." Those who enjoyed such words often knew little about the man behind them or his Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism.

My guest today, Fatemeh Keshavarz, calls Rumi a world-class thinker, relevant to our painfully compartmentalized world.


Ms. Tippett: Fatemeh Keshavarz will be our guide as we explore some of the large themes of Rumi's spirituality that may be only partially understood even as they echo in modern culture. She is chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a poet and often sets Rumi's words to music. She grew up speaking the Persian in which Rumi wrote, in the Iranian city of Shiraz.

Ms. Keshavarz: I grew up in a family in which people play chess, read poetry, or argued about poetry. That was basically — and only after I left Iran I realized that that's probably not what everyone else does all the time. Yes.



So for me, he came into the picture as someone who said,'OK, you've read the text. You know the words. You've looked at the history. Now, transcend all that. Put it aside and live it. Encounter it.' If you ask me to think of a few words that, for me, describe his poetry, one of them is it's an encounter. You come face to face with something. I never forget, I was once reading a ghazal that described as beautiful birds. You know, he said …

Ms. Tippett: The ghazals are odes, what we would translate as something a little bit different than a poem, right?


Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Keshavarz: So I was reading one of those and he was describing these beautiful birds. You know, some can sing, some are colorful, and so forth. And I was, you know, enjoying the walk in the aviary. And he suddenly said,'Well, what kind of a bird are you?' All of a sudden, I realized I can't stay on the margins. You have to join in. And I think, in a way, the whirling is exactly a reflection of that. So he kind of comes into the tradition with all the intellectual legacy, but he says that's not enough. You have to do something else with it. Face it, play with it, dance it, bring it into your everyday life.

Ms. Tippett: You know, something that strikes me, there are a lot of themes in his writing, in his poetry, that you might call ascetic. You know, he's very aware of the limits of the physical …

Ms. Keshavarz: Sure, yeah.

Ms. Tippett: … and of the importance of the spiritual in that equation. And yet, there's something incredibly sensual at the same time that, when you mention the whirling …

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: … the weeping of the whirling dervishes. There's dance and music.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. I would say that it's all on the same continuum of human experience. We are not divided into body and soul in a way, although he does talk about body and soul and there's no question about the fact that the soul is exalted. Ultimately, the goal is to purify the soul and so on and so forth.

But we don't have to think about the rest of ourselves as base or as not — in fact, it's a tool. It's a part of us that's very important. He does say, in one verse, he says, "Love, whether of this kind or that kind," and obviously, it's either, you know, the kind of divine, spiritual, or the human-to-human love, "ultimately leads you to the same king." The body is not an obstacle on the way of the soul. It's a tool to be used for that journey.


Rumi imprinted that movement with a vividly sensual and poetic practice of spirituality that has been provocative and controversial across the ages. He crafted some of his most religious ideas in the form of erotically toned love poetry, which seems at once addressed to Allah or God and to an earthly beloved. Rumi inspired the practice of the whirling dervishes by spinning around a column as he recited his poems.


Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And, you know, and I do some speculation in my work. Does this have something to do with the fact that he traveled so young when he went all the way westward from the province of Khorasan to where is the city of Konya today, present-day Turkey? And the journey lasted about two years. He must have encountered so many different people and cultures and incidents. So it may have something to do with that.

But he's certainly very appreciative of the ability to change your vantage point. You know, at some point, he says, in his discourses, he says,'If you don't plow the earth, it's going to get so hard nothing grows in it. You just plow the earth of yourself. You just get moving. And even don't ask exactly what's going to happen. You allow yourself to move around, and then you will see the benefit.'



Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Keshavarz: But then the master standing in the center doesn't have to do it because he supposedly has tamed his ego. But all of these things have been interpretations later, done of the activity of whirling. Beyond that, you know, to me, it comes across as something much broader and more universal than Islam or any other religion. It's a kind of getting in tune with the moving earth.


Ms. Keshavarz: Yeah. The imagery is very often almost identical with profane, you know, mundane love poetry. By this, I don't mean to give any negative connotation to it, but love that is purely sensual and emotional, and human love. To me, I think it's a statement by poets like Rumi and others like him that there isn't really a boundary between the two. It's the same thing. It's the same human experience.

And, you know, there is another medieval Sufi, actually a bit later than Rumi, who says that you can't look at the sun directly, but you can look at its reflection in the water. Now, our humanly experience of love is that reflection in the water of our senses. And it's God's way of teaching us and guiding us from this to the actual looking at the sun when you have gained the ability. I was just thinking of a particular ghazal.

Ms. Tippett: Yes, I wanted to ask you if you had anything you would read or recite, yes.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yeah, yeah. I think that that actually could help see how one would lead to the other, and actually the ambiguity between the two. It's a source of great poetic force.

Ms. Tippett: And you mean, one and the other would be divine — human love and divine love?

Ms. Keshavarz: Human love and divine love, exactly.

Mr. Vaseghi: [Lines of Rumi poetry recited in Persian]

Ms. Keshavarz: [Translating]

If anyone asks you about the huris, show your face, say: like this!
If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: like this!
If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance,
If anyone talks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair [and] say: like this!
If anyone asks: "How do the clouds uncover the moon?" untie the front of
Your robe, knot by knot, say: like this!

If anyone asks: "How did Jesus raise the dead?" kiss me on the lips, say:
like this!

If anyone asks: What are those killed by love like?" direct him to me, say:
like this!

say: like this!

Ms. Keshavarz: So the whole ghazal is a description of the physical beauty of the beloved, but at the same time, it's a fairly long poem. At the end, it leads us to blind with envy the one who says, "How can a human being reach God?" Give each of us a candle of purity, say, "Like this." In the end, human beings can get to that candle of purity and reach God, and all human beings can do that.


Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly. Exactly. There's a famous Sufi tale that this young disciple who approached the master to enter the order day after day. And finally, the master said,'Have you ever fallen in love with a woman?' He said,'No, not yet. I'm only 18.' He said,'Well, go try that first.'

Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. We’ve selected more of Rumi’s poems for you to hear and read on our Web site,, along with images and explanations of the whirling dervishes. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, we’re dipping into the ideas and spiritual background of Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic whose poetry is celebrated by an array of modern readers.

Ms. Tippett: In the "Song of the Reed," Rumi reflects on the human spirit through the metaphor of the ancient reed flute or ney that is popular in Middle Eastern music. This poem opened the Masnavi, Rumi's compendium of rhyming couplets that explored issues of Sufi theology and the spiritual journey.

Ms. Keshavarz: [Reciting]

Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.

Since I was cut from the reed bed,
I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.

At any gathering, I'm there,
mingling and laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few
will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes. No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit out from body, no concealing
that mixing. But it's not given us

to see, so the reed flute is fire,
not wind. Leave that empty.

Ms. Tippett: There's a theme that is part of that, that runs all the way through, about separation and longing as part of — well, not just the spiritual life, but being human, and also a kind of sense that the separation and the longing themselves are a kind of arrival.

Ms. Keshavarz: On one level, you have to get on the road. You have to get started. You know, just like the earth that, you know, have to plow the earth, you have to get moving. On another level, time and again, he reminds us that the destination is the journey itself. So there isn't a point where you say,'OK, I'm here, I've reached, I'm done, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything anymore.' In the incompleteness of that, the need to move forward is inherent in that incompleteness, in the process of going forward, that you make yourself better and better and you, in a way, never reach. So the separation is the powerful force that keeps you going. If you ever felt that,'I have arrived, I've reached, this is it,' then you wouldn't go any further.


Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, yes.

Ms. Tippett: And …

Ms. Keshavarz: And we want to meet it really fast and perfect. Yes.

Ms. Tippett: Yes, because, somehow, the feeling of longing and separation from whatever it is, especially if we don't know what it is we want, that that is unsatisfying and there's something wrong with that.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: And yet, what Rumi is saying is that, you know, the longing itself is redemptive and is progress, kind of.


Ms. Tippett: I also have a feeling that Rumi is saying we also, though, at the same time need to be intentional about what we choose to be perplexed by. Does that make sense? I mean, there's this poem, "Stay bewildered in God and only that. Those of you who are scattered, simplify your worrying lives. There is one righteousness. Water the fruit trees and don't water the thorns. Be generous to what nurtures the spirit and God's luminous reason-light. Don't honor what causes dysentery and knotted-up tumors. Don't feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the body carry different loads and require different attentions."

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. Yes. I think the energy can't go in all directions completely uncontrolled. And you have to choose because we have one life. You have to spend it wisely. So absolutely, he would say choose, be selective, recognize your own value. At another point, he says,'You are an astrolabe to God, you know? Don't use yourself for things that are not worthwhile.' But I want to linger a little bit on that idea of being scattered because that's a key concept in Sufi thought.

Ms. Tippett: OK.


Ms. Tippett: Right, right.

Ms. Keshavarz: You know, what do I do about this student’s paper? And, you know, whatever else is you are — that you're concerned with — my family, my kids, my future. So it all invades your life. And so in a way, you're pulled in all directions. You're scattered. So one of the purposes of his poetry and one of the concepts the Sufis talk about is to collect that scatteredness.



Ms. Keshavarz: [Translating]

When pain arrives side by side with your love
I promise not to flee
When you ask me for my life
I promise not to fight

I'm holding a cup in my hand
but God, if you do not come
till the end of time
I promise not to pour out the wine
nor to drink a sip

Your bright face is my day
Your dark curls bring the night
If you do not let me near you
promise not to go to sleep … nor rise
Your magnificence has made me a wonder
Your charm has taught me the way of love
I am the progeny of Abraham
I'll find my way through fire







Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. This is Speaking of Faith. After a short break, how Rumi might speak to the spirit of Islam, past and present.

In many ways, our radio program is just the beginning. Our Web site,, reveals the world of Rumi from many directions. You can see a video performance of our guest, Fatemeh Keshavarz, and the Lian Ensemble, with Rumi's poetry set to the ney, santur, and other classic Persian instruments, or download my entire unedited conversation with Fatemeh Keshavarz through our Web site, our podcast, and our weekly e-mail newsletter. All this and more at I'm Krista Tippett. Stay with us. Speaking of Faith comes to you from American Public Media.


Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi," the 13th-century Persian poet and mystic.

In recent years, English translations of Rumi's poetry by the American poet Coleman Barks have sold more than half a million copies in the U.S. UNESCO has declared 2007 International Rumi Year to honor the 800th anniversary of his birth. Rumi has been the subject of creative work by contemporary artists from composer Philip Glass to pop icon Madonna.

But such popular renditions of Rumi often give little hint of his Islamic identity. He was the son of a Muslim teacher, born in the center of Persian Islamic civilization. He spent time as the head of a madrassa, religious schools, which were also designed as centers of great learning, and the sciences and philosophy. Rumi's themes of separation and longing come straight from the heart of Islamic theology. There is no idea of original sin, but rather of a human tendency to forget and thus become separated from Allah or God. Islam imagines faith as zikr or remembrance of a knowledge that is embedded in human beings. My guest, Fatemeh Keshavarz, finds resonance in Rumi for the deepest challenges before the world and Islam today.

Ms. Tippett: I'd like to talk about Rumi's Islamic grounding and identity.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, yes.

Ms. Tippett: That gets lost in 21st-century translations.

Ms. Keshavarz: Absolutely.

Ms. Tippett: Coleman Barks' translations are the ones that many people have read, that became popular, I assume.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, yes.

Ms. Tippett: I was reading his introduction to The Essential Rumi. You know, he suggested that with a mystical writer like this, you know, he suggested that placing this person in historical and cultural context is simply not a central task. And he wrote, "My more grandiose project is to free his text into its essence."

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. I think one thing that Coleman Barks has done, he has written Rumi's ideas in the American poetic idiom. He's made it accessible to the broad readership, and that should definitely be valued.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Keshavarz: And, you know, don't hear me saying anything else on that. But I don't think you can free people from the context in which they live. And I don't think even if you try to do that, that that serves a useful purpose. I don't see Rumi as detached from the Islamic context at all. In fact, I see his work as utterly and completely immersed in the Islamic tradition. I tell you, it would be hard to read a single ghazal, not even the Masnavi, which is expressly a work with theological and mystical intentions. But even a ghazal, it would be hard to read a ghazal and not find quite a few allusions to Qur'anic verses, to sayings of the prophet, to practices in the Muslim world, so I don't think we need to separate him from his Islamic context.


Ms. Tippett: Good.

Ms. Keshavarz: You know that in his discourses — I try not to use the word sermons because sermon brings such a specific connotation that's probably not there. But the discourses are when Rumi is sitting in a local mosque, in a local gathering, talking to people. It's very interactive, it's very informal, and he kind of steps down the pulpit in a way and reaches out to the people and it's very poetic even though it's in prose and he didn't write it down. His students and, you know, people around him took it down. On one of these occasions, he quotes a Qur'anic verse, if I might quote the Arabic, is [recites Qur'anic verse in Arabic]. "We" — this is the royal we, God — "we sent down the zikr and we will be its protector." Now, the word zikr in Arabic means remembrance. And traditionally, the commentators have defined the word zikr as the Qur'an itself, and they have good reason to do so because elsewhere in the Qur'an, the Qur'an refers to itself as zikr and remembrance, in part because humanity is described as forgetful, so the Qur'an is a way of remembering.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Keshavarz: Now, he says the commentators have said that this verse refers to the Qur'an itself, that God says, "We have given you the Qur'an, and we are, that I am the protector of it." And he said [foreign language spoken]. That's fine. [Foreign language spoken], but there is this interpretation, too, that God says [foreign language spoken]. "We have put in you a desire and a quest, and I, God, am the protector of that desire." That's a very different interpretation. First of all, it opens it immediately to all humanity.

Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm. I think that there is something in Rumi's writing which is so large, so generous.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: I don't like the word universal because, I think, in some ways, it waters things down.

Ms. Keshavarz: I agree with you. Generous is a very good — yes, yes, yeah.



Ms. Tippett: Before you can subvert it from the inside.

Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly. And you have to love it for you to think that'I want to open it up. I want to make it better, and then go forward with it.' And, you know, you can't break laws in an acceptable way unless you know them really well and practice them with tradition. That's the only time. And that's what I think he does. He's so well rooted in the Islamic tradition, so completely aware of the nuances, that he says, you know,'Hey guys, we can open it up here. Look. Look at this. This is what you always thought, but now look one step beyond.' And he can do that precisely because he's rooted in the tradition.

Ms. Tippett: And I think it's true also that around the same time that Rumi was entering popular imaginations by way of poetry, there were images of Islam suddenly in the news in this post-9/11 world, which were so very different from that.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: I mean — and, you know, you've written that Rumi is "a true child of an adventurous and cosmopolitan Islam." And, you know, those are not two words that you would associate with headline Islam that we've had these past years.

Ms. Keshavarz: I'm actually, you know, really glad you bring this up because, I think, one thing that's desperately needed at this point, to show the adventureness, the surprise, the play, the aspects of his work that now are not normally associated with that part of the world. You kind of think that, you know, people just — it's all religion, and it's religion followed in a fairly institutionalized and stylized and, you know, planned form. Not at all. I mean, he's playing with it all the time. So I think another contribution he could do for us right now, exactly in this post-9/11 environment, is to bring out that side of the Muslim culture, that contribution to the world.

Ms. Tippett: Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. I'm Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi."

Ironically, just as Rumi has been rediscovered in the U.S. and Western Europe, the Sufi brotherhood formed by his followers has been banned in periods of recent history in Turkey, where Rumi did most of his writing and where he's buried. The whirling of the whirling dervishes, which Rumi first innovated as a form of dancing meditation, has been reduced, some say, to mere entertainment. I asked Fatemeh Keshavarz about Rumi's legacy in Iran, where she grew up, the center of the Persian world of literature and culture to which Rumi also belonged.

Ms. Tippett: Is Rumi still as much alive in Iran now as when you were growing up? How does that look?

Ms. Keshavarz: Well, I tell you I can't keep up with the books that are published in Iran about him. Yes, absolutely. You know, there's this debate whether he was a Persian or a Turk or an Afghan, you know?

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Keshavarz: It is completely really irrelevant again. But for Iranians, he’s just such a household name. You will have, in your house, you will have the Qur'an, you will have the volume of poetry of Hafez, another great figure from the little bit later period, and the Masnavi of Rumi. And then depending, of course, like any other culture, you have people who more immersed in his work and more familiar. They know him at different levels obviously. But, yeah, I wouldn't say that the interest in him has changed or lessened at all.

Ms. Tippett: I mean, I hear in my conversations that Islam in Iran is — there's great intellectual discourse and study and, you know, that's just not a story that we hear.

Ms. Keshavarz: Right.

Ms. Tippett: So I mean, I'm just curious, you know? This subversive, playful, cosmopolitan quality of — are those also part of the discourse in Iran?

Ms. Keshavarz: Absolutely. You know, I send out lists to my friends called "Windows on Iran" precisely for that. Just once a week, I send out information about Iran that they don't get to see in the media. Like in the month of June, for example, there's a book fair in Iran. You know how many people visited this past book fair in June in one week? Two million people visited the book fair.

Ms. Tippett: Oh, my God.

Ms. Keshavarz: You know, I send this out and then I get these messages,'Wow, this is happening in Iran?' Or I send pictures. I just realized afterwards that our visual vocabulary has been affected. If we think of Iran, we only have certain visions of unfortunate moments in recent history that get repeated. And our language — Rumi is so aware of that. Language can take over our lives and make us not see things. He actually has a fabulous verse, he says [Persian spoken]. "Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world." I mean this is the most sophisticated, philosophical approach to language. Now we talk of language as being constitutive of experience, but that's exactly what he said. You know,'Get yourself a new language and then you will be able to see a new world.' And that's definitely what we need to do in relation to that part of the world and certainly with Iran, to see the dynamics. A tremendous amount is going on that we don't get to hear about.


Ms. Keshavarz: [Translating]

To speak the same language is to share the same blood,
to be related
To live with strangers is the life of captivity

Many are Hindus and Turks who share the same language
Many are Turks who may be alien to one another

The language of companionship is a unique one
To reach someone through the heart is other than reaching
through words

Besides words, allusions, and arguments
The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak

Ms. Tippett: You know, I can't help but look at Rumi's life and be struck by how the poles of culture and place in terms of, you know, where he moved and where he lived and settled, are all such important poles in our world today. There's Afghanistan, there's Turkey, which is somehow becoming symbolic of the struggle to define what is Western, right, what is not.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: There's Persia, there's Iran. Do you ever think about that, about Rumi's legacy and where he came from and how that echoes in the world today?

Ms. Keshavarz: I consider myself tremendously lucky to be able to grow up with that language. But to tell you the truth, I think that all parts of the world have their own Rumis. I believe that we just need only to explore those traditions and look for them. So in a sense, I think he is just one other giant, you know, one other figure who is very important right now. I agree with you, it's very important to read him, to look at the vision that he has for humanity, because it's so healing, it's so needed to correct some of our shortsightedness and, you know, some of the problems we have with not being able to see the larger picture. So in that sense, I agree with you. But I don't know if I want to think of that part of the world as having any kind of monopoly on this.

Ms. Tippett: OK.


Ms. Tippett: You ask a question in something you've written: "How is one to nurture this God buried like a ruin in the treasure of one's being and let it permeate all of life?" How does your encounter with Rumi, your ongoing encounter with Rumi, how does it help you live with that question, answer that question in your life?


Ms. Tippett: With Rumi's words.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: Uh-huh.

Ms. Keshavarz: And, you know, depending on where I am and who I am at that point and what I'm doing, I get something out of it. It actually has a fascinating verse. He says [Persian spoken], says, "I am fire. If you have doubts about that, bring your hands forth." That's the dramatic flare I was talking about, you know?

Ms. Tippett: Right, right.

Ms. Keshavarz:'Bring your hands forth. Touch me and I'll tell you what I'm about.'

Kate Moos, managing mroducer: Fatemeh Keshavarz is professor of Persian and Comparative Literature and chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She's the author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, now in paperback.

Visit us online at If you've encountered Rumi's writings, tell us how they've spoken to you. What in his spirituality surprises or draws you in? Look for "Share Your Story" on our Web site. While you're there, learn much more about Rumi's world and his writings, watch video of musical performances of Rumi's poetry, and listen to readings from his poetry in Persian and in English. Also, download Krista's entire unedited conversation with Fatemeh Keshavarz. Continue the conversation in your classroom or study group with compelling questions about "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi" in our downloadable discussion guide. Also, look for Speaking of Faith on iTunes U, an enriching resource for teachers and lifelong learners. This free collection is organized by subject and features additional tools for learning. Look for links to iTunes U and our discussion guides at

Special thanks this week to Houman Pourmehdi, Soleyman Vaseghi, the Lian Ensemble, Omid Safi, and Stanford University's Continuing Studies Department.


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