Here is Parsa. He is ten months old. He is my nephew and I love him with all my heart and soul. Parsa was born just eight days after the second sanction resolution against Iran.
Parsa has learned a few things since he was born ten months ago. He points to everything that seems interesting to him. One of the ways he is learning about the world is by biting on everything in his reach. “How would this taste?” he wonders.
A few nights ago, Parsa’s sister had a birthday party, and we discovered Parsa can clap, too. In fact he claps in tune with the music.
The birthday was on the same night when America announced its new series of sanctions.
We are all worried. What is going to happen? Will there be a war?
When I look at Parsa, I worry for his future, and I ask myself if he will grow up in a peaceful and stable Iran or an Iran of ruin and war. Who knows? Parsa surely has no idea because he has yet to know the taste of many things in life. For example, if you ask him about terrorism, he has no answer because it isn’t something he can put in his mouth and taste. And one day, if a bomb starts to fall from the sky, he will only be able to do one thing, and that is to look curiously at the bomb and point to it with his finger.
Hossein Rasti, born in Tehran, has worked on more than fifteen feature-length documentary films. He is co-director of “Treasure,” an award-winning documentary about Iran’s dying fabric-knitting trade. This film, made in October 2007, was brought online by Iran Inside Out.