Search Results for: Iran

Assets of the Ayatollah

Longreads Pick

A Reuters investigation into the Iranian supreme leader’s $95 billion economic empire—which was partly built on confiscating family property from ordinary citizens:

Several other Iranians whose family properties were taken over by Setad described in interviews how men showed up and threatened to use violence if the owners didn’t leave the premises at once. One man said he had been told how an elderly family member had stood by distraught as workmen carried out all of the furniture from her home.

According to this account, she sat down on a carpet, refused to move and pleaded, “What can I do? Where can I go?”

“Then they reached down, lifted her up on the carpet and took her out.”

Source: Reuters
Published: Nov 11, 2013

“Her Husband Had Taken Their Young Daughter To Iran. She Was Determined To Get The Child Back,” Del Quentin Wilber, The Washington Post.

Longreads Best of 2012: Isaac Fitzgerald

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Isaac Fitzgerald is managing editor of The Rumpus, co-founder of Pen & Ink, and uses Twitter.

Disclaimer: I know many of the people on this list. One of the wonderful things / occupational hazards of working for a site like The Rumpus is that I’ve come to meet a lot of great writers. These stories stand on their own regardless.

I.O.U., and U., and U. (Chris Colin, The New York Times)

Chris Colin sells a $50 will call ticket to see Miranda July using Craigslist and never gets paid, spurring him to contemplate all the debts he himself owes (after some anger-fueled internet stalking, of course).

Maybe this is catching him at a hard time, I thought. But truth was, Joe seemed to be having a pretty normal time. With his ample tweeting and active Facebooking — well over 1,000 friends! — he allowed for robust stalking. There he was on a sailboat. On a golf course. With some bros. Dancing goofily. Doing his handsome face. Doing some artsy stuff. He looked like someone you’d gone to camp with. Apparently he works for some progressive-sounding start-up, the kind whose Web site speaks of community and so forth.

Eddie Is Gone (Nicole Pasulka, The Believer)

Nicole Pasulka, a former copywriter for a tourism company in Hawaii, examines the messy history of the Aloha State through the riveting life of surf legend Eddie Aikau.

That night Hōkūle‘a rode fifteen-foot swells. The boat began listing from water leakage, and eventually stopped dead in the water. The panicked crew huddled to one side of the craft in an effort to balance out the lilt of the boat with their weight. Around midnight, a rogue wave capsized the canoe, tossing the crew into the water and destroying their radio. The crew clung to the boat. Waiting to be spotted by a plane, they drifted farther from the flight patterns between the islands. Huge swells hammered the vessel. Less-seaworthy members of the crew were seasick and exhausted from exposure. Eddie eventually asked if he could paddle his surfboard nearly twenty miles to the island of Lāna‘i for help. Captain Lyman refused until, seeing no other option for rescue, he gave Eddie permission to go.

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave (Mac McClelland, Mother Jones)

Mac McClelland jumps into the product-stacked trenches of a major online retailer’s shipping house to expose the truth behind how those little brown boxes get to your doorstep. 

[The shipping company] has estimated that we pickers speed-walk an average of 12 miles a day on cold concrete, and the twinge in my legs blurs into the heavy soreness in my feet that complements the pinch in my hips when I crouch to the floor—the pickers’ shelving runs from the floor to seven feet high or so—to retrieve an iPad protective case. iPad anti-glare protector. iPad one-hand grip-holder device. Thing that looks like a landline phone handset that plugs into your iPad so you can pretend that rather than talking via iPad you are talking on a phone. And dildos. Really, a staggering number of dildos.

How Men Fight For Their Lives (Saeed Jones, The Rumpus)

Saeed Jones recollects being gay bashed by a “straight” man in Phoenix, Arizona, and delves into what it means to put oneself at risk in the supposed name of art.

Daniel’s shift from sucking me to punching me happened so quickly, I could still feel my erection pressed against his stomach even as his arms came down from above me like lightning bolts. Trapped under a body I suddenly realized was all muscle, all I could do was watch the thunderstorm. It all felt so distant. He wasn’t beating me. He was beating the desire I had brought out in him. And this is one of the reasons why the phrase “gay bashing” feels misplaced. There, on the floor under him, when I looked up at Daniel, I didn’t see a gay basher; I saw a man who thought he was fighting for his life.

And, at the risk of turning this post into a longread itself, let me take one last moment to recommend pretty much any essay written by Roxane Gay and Emily Rapp this year.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

The writer, a former American prisoner in Iran, goes inside America’s prisons and examines the solitary confinement system. He discovers “a recipe for abuse and violation rights”:

The cell I am standing in is one of eight in a ‘pod,’ a large concrete room with cells along one side and only one exit, which leads to the guards’ control room. A guard watches over us, rifle in hand, through a set of bars in the wall. He can easily shoot into any one of six pods around him. He communicates with prisoners through speakers and opens their steel grated cell doors via remote. That is how they are let out to the dog run, where they exercise for an hour a day, alone. They don’t leave the cell to eat. If they ever leave the pod, they have to strip naked, pass their hands through a food slot to be handcuffed, then wait for the door to open and be bellycuffed.

I’ve been corresponding with at least 20 inmates in SHUs around California as part of an investigation into why and how people end up here. While at Pelican Bay, I’m not allowed to see or speak to any of them. Since 1996, California law has given prison authorities full control of which inmates journalists can interview. The only one I’m permitted to speak to is the same person the New York Times was allowed to interview months before. He is getting out of the SHU because he informed on other prisoners. In fact, this SHU pod—the only one I am allowed to see—is populated entirely by prison informants. I ask repeatedly why I’m not allowed to visit another pod or speak to other SHU inmates. Eventually, Acosta snaps: ‘You’re just not.’

“Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons.” — Shane Bauer, Mother Jones

More from Mother Jones

The Scariest Little Corner of the World

Longreads Pick

A look at the city of Zaranj, near the Iran-Afghanistan border, where Afghan migrant workers are smuggled into and deported from Iran:

“A few years ago, Iran designated the province that borders Nimruz a ‘no go’ area for foreign residents and shortly thereafter began erecting a 15-foot-high concrete wall that now runs more than half the length of its 147-mile border with Nimruz. The Iranian border police — manning guard towers, each within sight of the next — were also said to have changed. There came increasing reports of Afghans being shot and killed by the same authorities who once benignly waved them through. While most of these stories are unverified, they nevertheless reinforced a growing sense that the old road to a new life was now closed. Today migrants who come to Nimruz must travel another 10 hours south into Pakistan, then cross from there into Iran. The journey consists of three legs. Afghan-Baluchi smugglers take you part of the way; Pakistani-Baluchi smugglers take you a littler farther; Iranian-Baluchi smugglers finish the job. For the first stretch — a narrow dirt road through uninhabitable, lunar flatland — roughly 300 drivers share a rotating schedule, each working one day a month. These were the men preparing to depart from Ganj, bristling at my questions about the bomb.”

Published: Oct 18, 2012
Length: 33 minutes (8,366 words)

An oral history of the Beltway sniper attacks that occurred during three weeks in October 2002. Ten people were killed, three people were injured, and many people were too afraid to leave their homes:

Iran Brown, victim, now 23: ‘I remember every detail, down to what I ate for breakfast: chocolate-chip waffles. My aunt drove me to school, and it was very early because she had to go to work. I was the first to arrive.

‘I got hit right under my left chest. I fell to the ground. A teacher came out to help me. I had my hand over the wound, but it wasn’t like in the movies with blood gushing out. I explained that I’d been shot and needed help, but it didn’t seem to register in her brain.

‘My aunt heard the shot and reversed the car when she saw me on the ground. I got up on my own and walked to the car. Of course, I’m panicking and praying. Reality is kicking in. My aunt was a nurse, so she knew more than the average person. She rushed me to a clinic.

‘I had been watching the news. I was aware of what was happening. I had asked our PE teacher why we were going outside if the sniper was in the area.

“Terror in October: A Look Back at the DC Sniper Attacks.” — Alicia C. Shepard, Washingtonian

More from the Washingtonian

Terror in October: A Look Back at the DC Sniper Attacks

Longreads Pick

An oral history of the Beltway sniper attacks that occurred during three weeks in October 2002. Ten people were killed, three people were injured, and many people were too afraid to leave their homes:

Iran Brown, victim, now 23: ‘I remember every detail, down to what I ate for breakfast: chocolate-chip waffles. My aunt drove me to school, and it was very early because she had to go to work. I was the first to arrive.

“‘I got hit right under my left chest. I fell to the ground. A teacher came out to help me. I had my hand over the wound, but it wasn’t like in the movies with blood gushing out. I explained that I’d been shot and needed help, but it didn’t seem to register in her brain.

“‘My aunt heard the shot and reversed the car when she saw me on the ground. I got up on my own and walked to the car. Of course, I’m panicking and praying. Reality is kicking in. My aunt was a nurse, so she knew more than the average person. She rushed me to a clinic.

“‘I had been watching the news. I was aware of what was happening. I had asked our PE teacher why we were going outside if the sniper was in the area.’

Source: Washingtonian
Published: Oct 1, 2012
Length: 31 minutes (7,862 words)

Vicissitudes, CA

[Fiction] A story about an unemployed ethnomusicologist, gray whales, and Miranda July:

‘Garfield was my favorite president,’ said Brandon.

‘James A. Garfield?’ said Kara. ‘President from March to July of 1881?’

‘From Ohio?’ she said.

‘That’s the one,’ said Brandon.

He said: ‘I think he would have proven to be an effective leader if he’d been given the chance.’

Charles put his hand on Kara’s knee.

‘That’s funny,’ said Charles. ‘Garfield’s killer, Charles Guiteau, is my favorite presidential assassin, and it’s not just because we share a name.’

“Vicissitudes, CA.” — Bryan Hurt, New England Review

More fiction

Vicissitudes, CA

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A story about an unemployed ethnomusicologist, gray whales, and Miranda July:

“‘Garfield was my favorite president,’ said Brandon.

“‘James A. Garfield?’ said Kara. ‘President from March to July of 1881?’

“‘From Ohio?’ she said.

“‘That’s the one,’ said Brandon.

“He said: ‘I think he would have proven to be an effective leader if he’d been given the chance.’

“Charles put his hand on Kara’s knee.

“‘That’s funny,’ said Charles. ‘Garfield’s killer, Charles Guiteau, is my favorite presidential assassin, and it’s not just because we share a name.'”

Author: Bryan Hurt
Published: Sep 12, 2012
Length: 29 minutes (7,431 words)

The author of The Satanic Verses on the fatwa issued against him in 1989 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

“The Disappeared.” — Salman Rushdie, New Yorker

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