Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation. Growing with you my interview with Ariya Shahi, author of the fantastic new debut novel, an impossible thing to say.

It's coming out this week, September 26, 2023. So no matter when you

are listening to this interview, please drop everything and go buy it. You will love it. So as a

brief introduction, Ariashahi is an Iranian-American multidisciplinary artist. He is a co-founder

of Pig Pen Theater Company, the award-winning

theater company, and band. With Pigpen, Aria has written, directed, and performed in original

musicals, as well as books adapted for stage. Arya's debut novel, An Impossible Thing to Say,

has been published by Harper Collins, and Aria will direct the Pulitzer

Prize winning English play at the Old Globe in early 2004. We actually ended up recording this

interview on September 11th, which is interesting because September 11th was a big part of this

novel, an impossible thing to say. I'd been looking forward to talking

to Ariya for a long time and our conversation did not disappoint. We could have talked for

hours more. He's really an ideal guest for this podcast and we talked about so many of the

issues I hear from a lot of you about all the time. I hope you enjoy and thank you for listening. Well, Ariya Shahi,

thank you so much for talking with me today. Thank you. I'm so excited to talk to you. We came

across each other. I guess it was a post that I did about I love you. I don't want to get too much

away to. There's like spoiler alerts, right? Totally. Yeah. Let's get right to it. Let's get right to it. I know. Can you just read the last five pages? I did a post about I love you versus I like you. And then you were like, I have, I've written a book and we talk. And so it was very, it was a big run up to reading this book. That's so funny. Yeah, I mean, look, that, that's been with me my whole life, right? Like, I mean, like so much of what's in this book has been, has been with me my whole life. But like the I love you, I like you thing is wild to me. Yeah. Which do you you want to kind of do you want to tell people a little

bit? Yeah, yeah. So for for the non-Farsi speakers in the audience in in Farsi, I've always

struggled with saying I love you to people in my family because you just kind of don't do it in

Farsi. It's really wild to me because it's actually a pretty affectionate and, you know, passionate culture. Right. But here we are as Americans throwing around the term, I love you, love you, bud, love you, love you, bud, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you love you actually can't do that in Farsi. So in Farsi, we say, uh, Kili Dusset Doran, which is like. I really like you. that's about as much love as you're going to get from a parent. Yeah, literally. But since I was little too, we would do that. At the end of phone calls, we'd say, okay, I love you. Oh, yeah. You just like default to that. But, okay, going back, So we're here talking to Aria about his new book out,

Impossible Thing to Say, which again, spoiler alert, that is the impossible thing to say. That is the

impossible thing to say, yes. Yeah, but I had such a wonderful time reading this book. I could not put

...