“I knew that my wife was always waiting there and watching over me. That’s why I would rush to arrive at my shift early…I would hear the screeching of the hinges and the window would open wide. Her voice rang out in the dark when she said, “Mansour, is that you?””

“For me the obvious lesson I’ve learned from being a poet and from being someone who has made efforts to learn languages is that the world might, finally, be untranslatable.”

“My paintings are an ongoing reflection on my personal journey of leaving my homeland. They represent fragments of memories of the Persian heritage I try to keep alive in the rhythm of my thoughts.”

“The reflection of the glowing colors in his hazel-green eyes lit Niloo with a desire she mistook for love…at the future they were to share together.”

“Revolutions are bigger—and smaller—than history books. My mother’s part of the drama was encapsulated in these letters: is this man right for me? How can I dye my hair? Will they kill me?”

“I looked up pneumonia in the Time-Life book and then asked my mother what “fatal” meant. When she told me, I became frantic, sobbing into a throw pillow…The Persian word meaning seriously ill—not from a cold, but from cholera or smallpox or cancer—is bimār. My mother taught me that it literally means “fear-inducer,” or “fear-bringer.””