I Finally Returned To Iran In 1979,

Memories Have Ways Of Becoming Independent Of The Reality They Evoke. They Can Soften Us Against Those We Were Deeply Hurt By Or They Can Make Us Resent Those We Once Accepted And Loved Unconditionally.

I Finally Returned To Iran In 1979, When I Got My Degree In English And American Literature, And Stayed For 18 Years In The Islamic Republic.

I Would Like To Say How Much I Resent People Who Say Of The Islamic Republic That This Is Our Culture - As If Women Like To Be Stoned To Death, Or As If They Like To Be Married At The Age Of Nine.

We Speak Of Facts, Yet Facts Exist Only Partially To Us If They Are Not Repeated And Re-created Through Emotions, Thoughts And Feelings. To Me It Seemed As If We Had Not Really Existed, Or Only Half Existed, Because We Could Not Imaginatively Realize Ourselves And Communicate To The World, Because We Had Used Works Of Imagination To Serve As Handmaidens To Some Political Ploy.

The Dearer A Book Was To My Heart, The More Battered And Bruised It Became.