Azadi

Sheldon,

Love your subject matter and the story. You`ve got a good solid style and way with words...keep it up.

wow - what an incredible story. Such irony and harsh truth mixed together. I love it. I hope you write for Chowk some more.

Unsettling, very well written. Reminds me of `Brazil` for some reason. By the way, I find the US just as orwellian in a different way.

So, the evil, alcohol drinking, westernized fella gets his at the end. I liked the story until the tone became didactic, as you glorify the fascist komiteh with Khadija, the veritable knight in shining armor as she saves Fatemeh from a fate worse than death (her husband drinks...gasp!).

On a more general note, is it just me, or does Chowk seem to be undertaking a fundamentalist flavor? This parable about the evils of non-fundamentalism, and the virtue of giving up the people you love to fascist regimes seems to continue the march towards an inevitable Islamic Republic of Chowk. Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted.

Promising work in the tradition of Mahfouz and Yashar Kamal; The setting of your wok, I believe, is modern day Iran, or a republic standing on similar religio-political grounds. I have not seen any recent work where progression/retrogression, both literal and otherwise, is authenticated in such surrounding. Then it is perhaps due to my lack of literacy regarding modern Farsi literature. However, the story resounds the tradition I mentioned earlier. The point is, the creation of novel as an Arab form by the likes of Mahfouz and Munif, created a nuance into which Kamal had to fall; much like an earlier Hidayat absorbed the tone of Beckett. Then, for you as a writer, does ``Midaq Alley`` and ``Mehmed: my hawk`` create the same entrapment?