A Sufi Reflection on Love, Surrender, and the Vanishing of the Self By Anosha Zereh When I first thought about intimacy, I imagined it as something reserved for romantic moments or private conversations. Over time, I came to see that intimacy is far more vast. It is not confined to relationship—it is a way of حضور, of being present enough to let another soul touch your truth.

A people’s letter from Iran, Afghanistan, and the borderlands, this piece sits with Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s warning about Gharbzadegi and asks what liberation means when it is imposed from above versus awakened from within. It is a meditation on tyrants and martyrs, Western “saviors,” and the quiet, vast freedom that still breathes beneath our borders and our hardest days.

I understand the trauma and rage that erupt as celebration, but I cannot call the machinery of assassination and airstrikes a path to liberation. I was not born for empires or emirs. I do not belong to the turbans that ban my sisters from the sky, nor to the uniforms that baptize bombs as freedom. The regimes that rule my motherland Afghanistan and my adopted home Iran have broken my heart a thousand times, but I will not offer that broken heart to Washington or Tel Aviv as p

A lyrical reflection on the Afghanistan the world never sees—childhood gardens, family, memory, and the quiet grief of diaspora. An invitation to witness a different Kabul.

Rooted in the quiet morning of Northern California, my writing weaves together the natural world, mysticism, meditationand everyday wonder.

For those who pray in many tongues—or in holy silence—this meditation gathers the temple bell, the call to prayer, the rosary’s hush, and the breath that forms Om into one warm cup of morning presence. Arrive as you are; read slowly, and pause where your breath naturally pauses.

The world may see the kiss, but we know it is the honest conversation that calls us back when we drift. The world may notice the embrace…

"Welcome to my world: a home for storytelling, poetry, and light meditative Sufi prose—a sanctum, a hush and a heartbeat passed palm to palm across the centuries. Night leans close; the fire answers the stars; elders loosen skeins of courage and tenderness, wisdom spun from labor and loss.”

Step into the sacred seam where dreams and reality intertwine. This blog explores the mystical practice of barzakh—inviting you to pause, imagine, and discover the Divine presence shimmering in every ordinary breath. Where spirit and matter meet, you’ll find your heart’s quiet doorway to wonder.

For countless years, my restless lower self wandered the timeless corridors of longing—carrying the perennial ache: Why was this body called into being? What unseen dream, what secret, rests quietly within my skin? I loved God as a mighty Creator—distant, veiled, always beyond the highest peaks of my prayers. My longing stretched to fill an endless sky; each plea and poem became an arrow sent out toward a beloved, unreachable sun. There were nights when my soul, exhausted and