On this Memorial Day, we remember every soldier, every civilian, every mother and child whose life was taken by war — American, Afghan, and all those whose names history forgets. We honor the fallen most truly when we refuse to let their sacrifice be in vain...

I could not sleep last night, and I will not pretend otherwise. This morning The Times of London printed a sentence that should have stopped the world: "Taliban legalise child marriage for girls as young as nine." The decree — thirty-one articles signed by the Taliban supreme leader and published in the official gazette this month — removes any minimum age for the marriage of girls and declares that the silence of a virgin girl is to be treated as her consent...

My father, Lal Zereh, came to California twice in his life. The first time, he was a teenage exchange student from Afghanistan — full of curiosity, living with an American family, learning what the world looked like from the outside. The second time, he came as a refugee. The Soviets had taken his homeland. He packed up our family and started over at 43 — from nothing. But here is what the newspaper didn't say: He chose California specifically. Not by accident. Not just

To my sisters in Iran and Afghanistan— I write to you tonight not as a distant observer, but as one whose heart beats with yours. If I could, I would sit beside each of you tonight—on rooftops in Tehran, in courtyards in Herat, in dimly lit rooms in Kabul where the curtains stay half‑closed—and place your tired hands between my own. I would say, before anything else: you are not alone, and you have never been forgotten. I know that some days the weight is unbearable: the clo

In Iranian memory, the lion has long stood for courage and sovereignty; here it walks through a war‑torn orchard under the shadow of an eagle and a shrine‑beast. This is my way of speaking about Iran, Palestine, and Afghanistan in the current wars without maps or headlines—only animals, orchards, and the dangerous act of remembering the taste of our innate wisdom.

I want to tell you the truth: we Europeans and Americans are not innocent in this story. Our comfort is not neutral. When we fill our tanks, when we tap our cards, when we upgrade our phones, we are plugged into an order that feeds on someone else’s night. The quiet of our suburbs is insured by the sirens of Gaza, the hunger of Kabul, the sanctions suffocating Tehran, the rubble of Sana... We may not dismantle empire in a single gesture. But we can refuse, again and again, t

On being a Muslim woman between Kabul, Tehran, and San Francisco Bay Area By Anosha Zereh When I say I am Muslim, I am not offering you a party, a passport, or a political program. I am naming the wound and the wonder at the center of my being — the place where God looks at God through these borrowed eyes.