The Crisis Besetting America Is Not Just

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

I Could Have Told Him To Learn From Gatsby. From The Lonely, Isolated Gatsby, Who Also Tried To Retrieve His Past And Give Flash And Blood To A Fancy, A Dream That Was Never Meant To Be More Than A Dream.

I Believe That It Is Only Through Empathy, That The Pain Experienced By An Algerian Woman, A North Korean Dissident, A Rwandan Child Or An Iraqi Prisoner, Becomes Real To Me And Not Just Passing News. And It Is At Times Like This When I Ask Myself, Am I Prepared - Like Huck Finn - To Give Up Sunday School Heaven For The Kind Of Hell That Huck Chose?

The Stories From Iran's Present And Past Are Reminders That Freedom, Democracy And Human Rights, Or Fundamentalism, Fascism And Terrorism Are Not Geographically And Culturally Determined, But Universal.

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.