I started this blog, led by the conviction that blogs help people structure and organise their own thoughts. At present I am a Ph.D. candidate in Persian Literary Studies at the University of Sofia. There is an enormous quantity of information, which I have to read and process in order to be able to complete my research successfully. I hope that this blog will help in a few different ways.
First of all, the blog is useful for internal/personal organisation and discipline. To write means to put in order. The blog is also a kind of external memory, to which man can always return. I have a similar experience with a journalistic project about Bulgaria and Romania – the blog “The Bridge of Friendship”. But if Bulgaria and Romania are worlds, Iran and the Persian language world (which is comprised also of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the emigrant communities of the Persian language people around the world) is an universe (a community of worlds). In order to know this universe I need dialogue. But to find interlocutors for dialogue on these issues is very difficult. So, I hope that the blog will be not only an archive for articles and information, but also an alter ego.
To know and to understand Iran is a big challenge. I think that one man alone can’t do such a heroic act. I don’t want to be a hero. I would be happy if a community of people, interested in knowing Iran, forms around the blog, just as my Romanian-Bulgarian blog encourages its readers to dialogue and creates larger or smaller concentric circles of people around it. In today’s world, a world of war, we need spaces where peace rules and where the different egoisms and “righteousnesses” can meet one another disarmed. I would be happy if this blog come closer with time to the ideal of a territory “of all and of no one”.
The connection between the Bulgarian-Romanian and the Iranian blog „The Bridge of Friendship“ is obvious and is not limited only to the name. These are two brotherly projects, which will be developed in more or less the same languages, will have common values and positioning, but in this present case the focus will be the world of Persian culture and of Persian language communities. Both blogs believe that societies need movement and change, a better understanding towards the other people, opening to the outside world and internationalisation, so that they could find in the different societies dynamics, which they wouldn’t have had alone.
This blog should be also an oasis for curious and sincere readers in their interest towards the world. Today it is difficult to take public positions without being categorised as a Soros-ist or Trump-ist, as an agent of Eastern or Western secret services. I would be happy if the blog could contribute to more tolerance and self-criticism, when we comment on Iran, Persian language people and communities, culture of the East and on our own countries. I would like to develop such qualities in me as well.
My name is Vladimir Mitev and I invite you as readers of this blog to follow its way between the Persian world, Bulgaria, Romania and the rest!
26.06.2020
Rousse, Bulgaria
The Persian Bridge of Friendship - Персийският мост на приятелството - Podul Persan al Prieteniei - پل دوستی فارسی 