From the Publisher: “Imagine that you are a child who was born in a large family, and during your childhood, a revolution took place in your country and everything undergoes change and transformation, and at the same time, the country is involved in the longest war of the century, and the worry and stress caused by the war has influenced everything so much that the next generation will call the children who spent their childhood in this era as the ‘burnt generation’. Imagine that your mother is illiterate and your father is addicted to heroin and has been imprisoned, and you have had to work for years of your childhood because of family problems. In addition to these, it gets to the point where you realize that you are suffering from vitiligo, an incurable skin disease, which gradually swallows your beauty and constantly bothers your soul. What future did you imagine for yourself? What happened to you after forty years?”
More info About the Author: “Seyed was born in 1974 in a large family in the north of Iran. He is a child of war era and spent his childhood with memories after the Islamic revolution and bloody days and nights of the Iran-Iraq war. His family occupation was agriculture. Both his parents were illiterate. Unfortunately, his father was addicted to heroin and was imprisoned in two occasions. His mother was a housewife and tried hard to manage life. He started working to help the family economy since he was a child. He completed his primary and secondary school at his home city, Motel Qu, and worked most of his childhood. He was not a good student in school and had no interest in studying. So, he failed most classes and was rejected in the first grade of middle school. One day, as a poor student, he was given some money as a New Year’s gift by the school and this was a trigger for him to study and follow the advice of his grandfather who used to say that he should become a Mullah! Despite all hardships, he finished his schools and completed his academic studies in well-known universities of Iran, and finally in 2012 he immigrated to USA as an academic health sciences scholar. After one year, he returned to Iran and defended his doctoral thesis with an excellent degree and obtained his PhD in the field of molecular medicine.”
During that time, the country had become the arena of social protests. With the intensification of the economic crisis and the spread of poverty among various sections of the society, workers, teachers and retirees formed many union protests, most of which were directed at livelihood problems, but all these protests were suppressed by the security forces. People had been trapped in a cell called “oppression”. Then they poured into the streets with empty hands and chanted “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice myself for Iran”. The employees had no money and the shopkeepers were in a lot of debt. But the parliament was involved in hijab and the Internet and determining the names of children! Day by day, new laws were enacted to the detriment of the people, but the laws that benefited the people gradually became obsolete. In Iran, categories such as human right, dignity, freedom and justice had no value at all. In Iran, people were losing their lives like fallen leaves due to the carelessness and incompetence of the authorities, from fires and plane crashes to deaths due to car accidents. In Iran, freedom was a clichéd category, justice was a word that could be only found in books and had become a wish for people. In each election period, a more hypocritical government than the previous one came to power and painted a dark color on the door and walls of this big prison and trumpeted the concepts of freedom, human rights and their religious democracy to show it to the western countries.
Besides studying, I was interested in politics, but I was never a political person. Once upon time, I wanted to get into the parliament as a representative of the people of my city and serve my beloved people. But later I realized that representing the parliament is not compatible with my spirit and achieving dreams is not always achieved with effort. Sometimes you need to be like a group that you have no harmony with! I was disappointed with the conditions of my country and the fate of its people. Everything in the world of politics was mixed with hypocrisy and stank, and in this black night, I was looking for a thread and a needle to patch my torn socks. We couldn’t do anything except regretting and fruitless protests. It was as if we were standing in front of the mirror and cursing ourselves. The world of politics was too dirty for us to do anything about. Iran was in the hands of the Mullahs. All of them were deceiving people and betraying them. Some of them said that you deserve whatever trouble happens to you! You shouldn’t have made a revolution! It was the era of the Mullahs. The Supreme Mullah considered himself the vicegerent of God on earth and was not answerable to anyone. He considered himself the owner of the lives and property of the people. He tried to choose the officials of the country’s executive powers and government organizations from among the Mullahs so that they would not impeach him.
In those years, the officials were constantly changing especially after the election of a new president. With the change of each presidency, a wave of managerial changes was formed in all departments and organizations. All officials appointed their family members, friends and individuals with similar ideologies to the managerial positions. It was often seen that people who came to power took personal and political revenge on previous ones. New bosses and officials destroyed the previous ones or put them in prison so that they could promote themselves. Iran was suffering from a syndrome called “extremists’ syndrome,” and a lot of energy, time and money was spent on political disputes. The main question was whether changing officials was enough to improve the situation in the country or whether the structure and rules should be changed…
This excerpt is published here courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted without permission.
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