In 1981, less than three years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and in the heat of the Iran-Iraq War, I had become a night nurse in a hospital in Tehran, where every night I witnessed the arrival of the soldiers wounded on battlefronts. It was in the course of those nights that I also witnessed endless arguments and debates among patients with different ideologies and beliefs, including leftists, monarchists, nationalists, and staunch supporters of the new Islamic regime. Late at night, when the hospital ward was quiet, the patients would come and tell me stories about the battlefronts and their lives. The initial chapters of this novel, which was shaping in my mind at the time, were written in Iran and the concluding chapters were completed in the United States.
This is a novel about the author’s life, first in Iran and later as a refugee and immigrant in the United States. It is an important novel to be made available in English, especially in a country made up of immigrants, and in particular at this time. It tells us, in fact it actually shows us, why so many people around the world, whether from the Middle East, South America, or elsewhere, are inclined to leave their ancestral land, their hearth and home, and try, despite all the odds and obstacles, to take refuge to the land of the free.