The following are messages we received from our readers and supporters for Peyk’s 30th anniversary. Some of these messages are in Persian and are presented in the Persian section.
Congratulations to Peyk for reaching such a significant milestone! Thirty years of uninterrupted publication for a community magazine is nothing less than remarkable. This “little magazine” is a beautiful testament to our community’s spirit of civic engagement and volunteerism. I began writing in these pages when I was eighteen years old. Then, I was searching for my professional path in life. Peyk gave me an outlet with which to understand and critique the world around me. Over the past seventeen years, I have changed quite a lot. But that core sentiment has never changed. I entered graduate school in 2012 and became a professor in 2019, during which time my generation has only become more cynical about political prospects for bold and progressive change necessary to address looming climate barbarism, racism, militarism, and ever-widening economic disparity. There have been many moments when I have asked myself, “What will you do in this world with a PhD in Near Eastern Studies?” Writing for Peyk has kept me moored to my most fundamental belief that we are on this warming planet to make meaning. I have used Peyk as a platform to teach readers about Persian poetry as a verbal and cultural art form, as opposed to a performative symbol of our national identity. I have pushed against some of the toxic and bigoted aspects of Iranian nationalism and tried to show its more inclusive and compassionate potentials. I applied the same critique to the myths of our adopted homeland by holding a mirror of its aspirational self to its current one. All of this to say: Peyk has been my home. It has nurtured and challenged me. Its writers and readers have championed and mentored me. So on this occasion, writing with a heart full of gratitude and joy, I join you in congratulating Peyk for its thirty-year anniversary and wish it another thirty years of success and growth.
Aria Fani, PhD
Assistant Professor of Persian and Iranian Studies
University of Washington, Seattle
For the past two decades, I have been an avid reader of Peyk, PCC’s bilingual magazine. I appreciate the depth and breadth of the articles, ranging from health/nutrition to socio-political analysis as well as the news on social events sponsored by various organizations. I have utmost admiration for the editorial board and the contributing writers, all of whom generously give their time and share their knowledge with our community. THANK YOU!
Haida Mojdehi
Peyk at 30—an amazing accomplishment and a great cause for celebration! I find the Persian Cultural Center of San Diego to be one of the most successful cultural organizations of the Iranian diaspora. The depth and breadth of PCC’s activities and events, and the quality of the communities it has developed, are truly admirable. The success is the result of selfless dedication of a handful of individuals who established the excellent principles of the organization in its infancy, resulting in the continual devotion and commitments of many community member volunteers. Peyk has been an indispensable and instrumental communication and documentation tool for PCC and the community at large. The production, quality, and the depth of the content over the past thirty years have shown that the endeavor could reach this point only through the labor of love. Articles range from artistic and literary pieces to critical social and political commentary with a commitment to principles of journalism and aesthetic excellence. Today our homeland of Iran is in a dire state, and communication among those who care for her is possibly the most important aspect in finding a path forward. This communication needs to happen without any bias, neither political nor religious. Cultural work goes beyond all biases. The publication of Peyk has become possible by the hard work of many dedicated volunteers who understand the value of culture, and I am deeply thankful to all of them.
Shahrokh Yadegari, PhD
Professor, Music Department
Associate Director, Qualcomm Institute
Director, Sonic Arts R&D and IDEAS, QI
University of California, San Diego
Peyk is a great magazine with a bunch of great information and news. It has influential articles about our health and how to take care of ourselves, including stuff about our rights and what Iranians have a right to. You can learn a lot from the factual information written in the different sections. It’s nice that there is both an English side and a Farsi side benefiting everyone. There are pictures with news from the Persian community of San Diego keeping the readers informed of the stuff going on around the community. The magazine can keep you occupied for a while with the variety of ads, health information, and community updates. The magazine is a great way of advertisement and at the same way being informative in many different aspects.
Mehrnaz Yazdani Biuki
I enjoy reading Peyk because of the consistent high quality and relevance of its content. Contributors such as Shay Hanson aren’t afraid to discuss controversial issues and pose difficult questions. I also appreciate the excellent articles on health, with their sound, practical advice. Keep up the good work!
Mary Hanson
A community relies on how its members self-reflect on their past and present conditions and, more importantly, how such self-reflections are articulated to shape the community for a better future. For thirty years, Peyk has served as a forum of discussion and debate with a variety of content that has carved out an inclusive space of self-reflection for the Iranian American community in San Diego. The role of the bilingual magazine has ranged from addressing major social and political issues pertinent to Iranians in the United States to topics related to Persian culture, literature, and history. Each issue provides not just informed articles and local news, but also a venue for diverse points of view across age, class, ethnicity, and religion. Peyk is a microcosm of an ideal Iran: open, diverse, and always in the process of becoming better. I wish the journal another thirty years of success.
Babak Rahimi, PhD
Director of the Program for the Study of Religion and Global South Studies,
Book Review Editor, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies,
Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religious Studies
Program for the Study of Religion,
Department of Literature, UC San Diego
I have been a Peyk reader for a long time, perhaps from the beginning. I find it educational, entertaining, and a medium to learn about our community. We all get our news from many sources, but Peyk gives us the analysis and nuances that we do not get from the news. You can find literary, medical, and political articles in every issue by Peyk’s very capable writers, most of whom I know and respect. I would like to congratulate all who work to make it happen on this great milestone.
Sina Emami
In the era of prevailing misinformation and biased articles and media, I look forward to receiving and reading Peyk magazine. The articles vary from entertaining to informative and many in between. Despite the limited time I have, I truly enjoy reading articles written by Reza Khabazian. Other interesting articles are book and film reviews, poems, current events (Habil and Ghabil), the An Immigrant Story series (which truly resonates with our experience and similar stories), as well as the articles on nutrition, medicine, and history, etc. It is refreshing to see well-balanced and objective articles and, more importantly, many informative articles include references.
Considering the limited resources that PCC has, I congratulate all the contributors, those who work behind the scenes, and the PCC management for producing such a high quality bilingual magazine for such a long time. Kudos to you all; job well done. May you all celebrate the 60th anniversary.
B. John Safaie, PhD, Broker, Senior Mortgage Banker
As a long-time member of PCC, Peyk has always had a special place in my heart. I vividly recall the early days before it was called Peyk, when it was a simple newsletter folded and stapled together (I remember stapling some of them myself). Of course, Peyk has grown to become a highly professional journal with a great deal of rich content in both English and Persian. There are always a few issues of Peyk on our coffee table and we always look forward to receiving the new issue. I personally enjoy the news of our community as well as various literary and historical articles. In the most recent issue, I particularly enjoyed Aria Fani’s article regarding his trip to Israel and Palestine and I loved Reza Khabazian’s article “Jesus and the Super Bowl.”
Many congratulations on the 30th anniversary of Peyk. Well done and keep up the incredible work.
Kourosh Mehrayin
Once we become immigrants in another nation, then the realization of finding other immigrants from our homeland and cultural similarities becomes a necessity. For us in San Diego, we have been fortunate to find such a wonderful community, as well as familiar cultural possibilities to share. Peyk has been instrumental in bringing us together to be a full community, with the opportunity to share our cultural heritage in many ways. It has been my privilege to be part of the editorial board of Peyk for the past 30 years and I have learned and enjoyed greatly during all of these past years through Peyk. Congratulations to all.
Shahri Estakhry
During my 40+ years in San Diego, Peyk has been the single most consistent uniting force in our growing community. I have been involved with and seen many Iranian American groups come and go, but none was able to produce or publish a regular account of who we are, what we care about, and what we hope to achieve in our community other than Peyk.
Peyk can tell our story better than anything we have in English and Persian with editorial integrity, nonpartisan perspective, and insightful articles. Peyk is an irreplaceable regional asset that ensures we can preserve our community’s identity, language, and culture for future generations. If we do nothing else for our community, we should support Peyk so it can keep telling our unique Iranian American story, as only it can.
Shahriar Afshar
Afshar Group, Principal
Podcast Host & Founder
I have lived in San Diego for 33 years and I congratulate Mr. Ali Sadr, Ms. Shahri Estakhry, and Peyk’s high caliber team for the tremendous improvements that Peyk has made in its lifetime of 30 years. By that, I mean improvement in quality of content, presentation, variety of subjects, and timeliness even with financial constraints. I am grateful that, despite some earlier objections by a few PCC leaders, Peyk is now covering critical issues of our times such as politics, the environmental crisis, and racial, economic, legal, and social disparities.
As Iranian Americans, we have a vital civic responsibility to be informed citizens and vote. Politics affect all aspects of our lives every day. We need to be informed on political issues at local, state, and federal levels.
Morteza Rahimi
I look forward to receiving Peyk because it gives me a perspective that I don’t find anywhere else. For years, my favorite column has been written by Shahri Estakhry because her outlook is always positive and thoughtful with an emphasis on making our world a kinder, more equitable place. From medical advice to education topics to articles about Persian arts and culture to mouth-watering recipes, Peyk has something for everyone. No wonder it’s been going strong for thirty years!
Mary [last name withheld by author]
Peyk Magazine has been a much valued part of the cultural life of the Iranian American community in San Diego. Its inclusion of a wide range of engaging and informative material, its elegantly designed bilingual format in English and Persian, as well as its consistently regular publication, dedicated editorial hard work, and continued community support have made it an integral part of the community’s cultural life over the years.
Ali Gheissari, PhD
University of San Diego
Persian Heritage Foundation
I want to congratulate you and the other dedicated leaders on the thirtieth anniversary of Persian Cultural Center’s Peyk magazine. When I was visiting Florida a couple of years ago, I showed the magazine to a group of my old Iranian friends and they were astonished to see the magazine and information about the organization. By the way, my favorite sections
are editorial,
Wishing you the best and more success.
Iraj Varzi, MD
I started teaching at the Iranian School of San Diego when it first started in 1988. I received the first issue of Peyk thirty years ago and have received and kept every issue since then. It is beautiful how Peyk and the Iranian American community of San Diego have evolved and changed over the past three decades. It has always been informative and a source of pride for our community. Students, parents, grandparents, and all members of our community learn about various topics in each issue. As a teacher, I am thankful to Peyk for always covering news about the Iranian school and educational matters. I wish Peyk an even greater success in the next 30 years.
Elahah Shoushtari
While I didn’t grow up in San Diego, the Persian Cultural Center (PCC) and Peyk have been part of my life since my parents moved here in 1990. My parents’ involvement in the community was a big part of my introduction to Peyk, as I was off to college on the east coast the year they moved. Yet thanks to them, my siblings and I received issues of the magazine over the years no matter where we were based. We appreciated the wide range of topics covered in the periodical, but were even more moved by the way Peyk managed to collect stories and information by and about brilliant, inspiring, ordinary and yet extraordinary fellow Iranians and deliver these to an impressively wide audience.
Over the years, I became more engaged with Peyk as I pursued a career in the arts with a specialization in Iran. In 2008, encouraged by Mrs. Shahri Estakhry, I contributed a piece on the debated term “Islamic art” in response to an article I’d read in the previous issue, feeling compelled to share my views based on experience in the field as a museum curator and academic. This marked a transition from a more passive or peripheral relationship with the magazine to a more active one with both Peyk and PCC, and a growing sense of responsibility to take part in my community as an Iranian American adult. The relationship has grown to include ISSD since moving to San Diego in 2019 with my two children, both of whom are now benefiting from their Persian language classes, and I get to share news about curating the arts of Iran, South Asia, and the Islamic world at The San Diego Museum of Art. I am proud to do this for a magazine that continues to bring a wealth of information and entertainment to the Iranian community and beyond, and I respect its editors for their efforts to provide us with different views on important issues. What an honor to be able to celebrate 30 years of Peyk and the tireless efforts of the Peyk family!
Ladan Akbarnia, PhD
Curator, South Asian and Islamic Art
The San Diego Museum of Art
