Thursday, April 4, 2013

Iconoclast

By Gina Nahai

This may be just another useless explanation, the kind of futile attempt at finding meaning and logic that we all resort to in response to grief, but. . .

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Radiate this

By Gina Nahai

In the category of: Too little knowledge can be a dangerous thing

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

In praise of pastrami

By Gina Nahai

You know you’re getting old when every meal starts and ends with an admonition about how food will kill you.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Indigo: Remembering Iran

By Gina Nahai

It gets dark early in winter, so by the time you start to walk home, you’re already dipping into twilight. Your breath is a ribbon of fog against. . .

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Leonard’s story

By Gina Nahai

Years ago, I created a class, “Writer’s Marketplace,” dedicated to the business side of writing. It was inspired by all the. . .

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

You can go home again

By Gina Nahai

On Fridays, the children would line up, all glittery pink shoes and Ninja Turtle T-shirts, and hike up a steep driveway from the preschool yard to. . .

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Thank you, David Rimoin

By Gina Nahai

There’s a country, I know, out in the sapphire glass heart of the universe, where every sick and ailing child has a likeness: One is of the flesh;. . .

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Three Jews walk into a Starbucks

By Gina Nahai

I was sitting in the Starbucks in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C., listening to two men talk about a three-day hike through. . .

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The myth of the Iranian-American Jew

This one’s for our children — the teens and 20-somethings who were born in this country or who’ve lived here most of their life, who have no. . .

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The bad, the worse and the ugly

By Gina Nahai

A painfully unappealing, unemployed woman in her late 30s with sumo wrestler thighs who wears 10-inch heels and a micro skirt to push around a pink. . .

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Elizabeth Taylor was my aunt

Opinion: Elizabeth Taylor was my aunt

It’s true. Really. The Elizabeth Taylor. She of the many husbands and the showpiece jewels, the on-screen splendor and off-screen grit was, indeed,. . .

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Opinion: Tunisian pizza

By Gina Nahai

There’s a concept in the Persian language – ghessmat – for which no exact equivalent exists in English. It refers to a person’s unrelenting,. . .

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Opinion: Persian Tay-Sachs

In the story, a young prince in an old and distant kingdom is mesmerized with salt.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Opinion: Oh, to be young and stupid again

By Gina Nahai

I was 21 years old, a first-year law student at USC, when I walked by a trailer parked on an empty lot off McCarthy Way on the downtown campus. It. . .

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Opinion: In praise of falsehood

By Gina Nahai

What is it with people telling the truth all the time? I don’t mean under oath, or even in response to a question that has been posed to them...

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Opinion: Culture clash

By Gina Nahai

In case you were too busy watching Congress make a fool of itself last month to have noticed, a parallel, no-less-wrenching debate was raging in the. . .

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Gina Nahai: What Remains

By Gina Nahai

We were exchanging “memorable aunt” stories, and my friend, who’s a trial attorney, had a clear lead over all the rest of us.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Staying true to our own heritage

By Gina Nahai

I once wrote a novel about an Iranian Jewish woman who grows wings and flies away from her husband’s home.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Purple Eyes

By Gina Nahai

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m walking down a busy sidewalk in an upscale neighborhood in Tehran. My mother and her friend have. . .

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The solitude of the Arab soul

By Gina Nahai

“This,” I thought, “is what the surface of Mars must look like.”

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Tehran to Cairo

By Gina Nahai

It all looks dauntingly familiar — the spectacle on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. People in the streets, buildings on fire, a. . .

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Conspicuous consumption — What don’t we get?

By Gina Nahai

Not long ago, I happened to be standing next to a guy at the Apple store in Century City. I was waiting by the register to pay for a new charger for. . .

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Glitterati no match for ‘This Lovely Life’

By Gina Nahai

May I make a suggestion for a great Chanukah or Christmas gift? Or recommend a selection for your book club? Or offer a proposal for making time. . .

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Tales of Iranian nights, and days

By Gina Nahai

Friday night at dinner, we were talking about a guy, a Muslim friend of my grandfather’s, who had — very literally — come back from the dead.. . .