The effects of the war would stay with us for a long time, perhaps forever.

Humbert’s prose, veering at times towards the shamelessly overwrought, aims at seducing the reader, especially the high-minded reader, who will be taken in by such erudite gymnastics.

When in the States we had shouted Death to this or that, those deaths seemed to be more symbolic, more abstract, as if we were encouraged by the impossibility of our slogans to insist upon them even more. But in Tehran in 1979, these slogans were turning into reality with macabre precision. I felt helpless: all the dreams and slogans were coming

Both sides were absolute in their position: some thought I would be a traitor if I neglected the young and left them to the teachings of the corrupt ideologies; others insisted I would be betraying everything I stood for if I worked for a regime responsible for ruining the lives of so many of our colleagues and students. Both were right.

This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.

hope you believe me now when I tell about the need to put something into these kids’ heads. The revolution has emptied their heads of any form or thought,

After all, an event like this happens only once in a lifetime, doesn’t it?

The result of such moderation was that Sanaz and Mitra were not afraid to wear their scarves more daringly, show a bit of hair, but the morality police also had the right to arrest them. When they reminded the police of the president’s words, the Revolutionary Guards would immediately arrest and jail them,

My growing irrelevance, this void I felt within me, made me resent my husband’s peace and happiness, his apparent disregard for what I, as a woman and an academic, was going through. At the same time, I depended on him for the sense of security he created for all of us.