A pulpit is an intricate blessing; having a voice a frightening gift.
One never truly knows the scale of the valley until one has spoken, nay, shouted one’s words and the echo returns.
This is a reality that Sam Samiee and I discuss often, be it on a video call or on a warm Kashan evening amidst the call to prayer from a nearby mosque.
While we have divergent pasts, Sam and I share a calling: we are “contaminated with the Persian life”. And that, without asking for approval, makes us East-Westen messengers, from Iran to the rest of the world. It is a shade of color we were never able to shed - Sam as an artist and myself, amusingly, as a decade-long Austrian diplomat.
Under the attentive eye of “the West”, we both went full circle. One must understand something fully before attempting to undo it. Only after mastering our lines in…
