PART I: Since your love became my calling - Autumn 1978 to Summer 1980 in Iran

I was born on 17 February 1971 in Tehran, the same year that Apollo 14 landed on the moon, Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature and Nikita Khrushchev and Jim Morrison died. When I was a year old, we moved to England so that dad could study for his PhD at the University of Birmingham. My most prominent memory of the four years we spent there, apart from the ordinary ones of an ordinary child living in the UK— of friends, school, games and constant complaints about the weather—has been carved upon my mind with the help of a photograph: dad, in his gown and mortarboard in front of the main building of the University on his graduation day. Thirty-four then, he’s holding his degree certificate, his eyes shining with joy and hope and his serious expression not quite concealing his smile of infinite happiness.

Having known him for many years now, I can imagine what he is thinking about in that photograph: his imminent return to Iran; teaching; executing his plans for reforming Iran’s higher education system; and, being an authentic genius unlike me, beginning his research in the field of material sciences.

Exactly 34 years later, in August 2009, when Mum and he had come to England to visit me after Neda’s death, we rented a car and went to the University of Birmingham again. I asked him to stand in front of the main building on the precise spot on which he had been photographed on his graduation day. But when I held the camera in front of my eyes, I had to wait for a few seconds before pressing the button, until the tears that blurred my vision had cleared. We had been on such a long journey since then. So many things had been turned upside down: his hair had gone completely white and he was no longer possessed of the vitality of a 34-year-old but the main change lay in his face. He was smiling this time, too, but the smile was trying in vain to conceal the deep sorrow that stemmed from the shattered hopes of a man still in love with a dream that no longer exists.

We returned to Iran in 1975 and my sister Golnar was born. Dad began teaching as a senior lecturer in metallurgical engineering. Mum decided to study and get her diploma and then take the National University entrance exam for a nursing course. And I went to nursery school. We rented a small flat in central Tehran and dad managed to buy a colour TV. This introduced me to the world of Charlie Chaplin and, of course, the superheroes: Superman, Batman, Aqua man, the Fantastic Four and Spiderman. It was through these characters that I realized that a name should mean something and I decided to ask dad why I had been named Arash.

‘Arash means “bright” in Avestan, one of the ancient Iranian languages,’ dad explained, ‘but that isn’t why I chose this name for you,’ and he went on to tell me the legend of Arash the Archer.

‘Four thousand years ago, when the wars began between Iran and the neighbouring country of Turan, Arash was an ordinary archer in the Iranian army. The Turanians defeated the Iranians and laid siege to the capital. Then, to humiliate the defeated Iranians, they forced the Iranian king to an agreement. An Iranian archer would shoot an arrow from Iran. Wherever the arrow landed would determine the new border between Iran and Turan.

‘No archer dared volunteer for this task. Even the best of them could not shoot an arrow farther than a league. This agreement meant losing most of the Iranian territories to the enemy and no one wanted to be responsible for that.

‘But Arash stepped forward and declared he was ready to shoot the arrow. As there were no other candidates, the king had to accept his offer. Arash climbed the Alborz Mountains and shot his only arrow. But before releasing the string, he put his life in that arrow.

‘The arrow flew for three days. The horsemen who followed it found it on the third day embedded in a walnut tree at the original border between Iran and Turan. Peace was restored and the war was over. The Turanians were forced to retreat to their own lands and happiness and prosperity returned to Iran.

‘But Arash had disappeared. He had put his life into his arrow and died instantly. However, the legend says he is still there, on Mount Damavand in the Sierra Alborz—more commonly known as the Alborz Mountains—helping those who have lost their way along the misty mountain paths if they call his name.’

Dad believed that Arash’s sacrifice was more important than any American superhero’s stunts. Arash shot an arrow that brought an end to the war without killing anyone. And he gave up his life for that.

This story, mingling with the superhero adventures, inflamed my love of tales and legends, and it was then that Madar stepped in and quenched my thirst. She knew hundreds of tales. Mum told me fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, while dad recounted the lives of historical figures and famous Iranian scientists such as Khayyam and al-Khwārizmī. But it was Madar, with her tales full of mysteries, magical gems and hidden treasures, as well as her accounts of the lives of Islamic saints and Imams, who created my passion for storytelling and the supernatural.

And that is why I had to ask her the question about Ayatollah Khomeini—the one I had already asked dad. For her answer was important. The only thing she had in common with Dad— apart from their familial bond—was a keen intelligence. Once I had both their answers to a question, I could shape my own perception of the truth, inevitably a mix of dad’s realism and Madar’s fantastic world.

Dad, a strong advocate of logic, would give me answers based on the facts and, in their absence, rational deduction. The more difficult my questions, the more excited he would become in his quest for the best possible answer. He would hold his chin with a grip that covered his mouth, leaving only his handlebar moustache visible while he talked me through the deductive process. Sometimes, when finding the right logical answer turned out to be harder than he had imagined, he would put his hand on his already balding pate and remain silent for a while. But explanations there always were, even for miracles such as Moses’ splitting of the sea or Prophet Muhammad’s splitting of the moon. Once, when I asked him how Jesus could have resurrected Lazarus, he simply answered, ‘Who knows, maybe he wasn’t dead in the first place.’

Madar, on the other hand, would react in a completely different way. She did her best to come up with answers but using her own particular form of rational deduction. Staring into the emptiness in front of her she, too, would answer my questions but with very complicated responses which were not always in harmony with the laws of nature.

She and dad, despite their different approaches, had something else in common: both believed that there was always an answer. Dad would justify the unanswered question with ‘Science will find out soon’ whereas Madar said. ‘God will reveal the answer in due course’.

Madar was a strange old woman and the love of my life. Born to a baker, she was forced to marry my grandfather when she was only 13 and he a widower with two daughters, one aged five and the other seven. Madar had to be their mother when she might more easily have been their sister. However, when my grandfather Agha-djoon chose to have two more wives and filled the house with 12 children in whom he took very little interest, Madar left him without ever looking back or even filing for divorce. Now she lived in the religious city of Qom, near the shrine of Holy Masoumah. She sustained herself by weaving fine high-quality lace for the dowry of brides-to-be and visited the holy shrine at least once a day.

Once I asked her why she had left Agha-djoon.

‘It was about time someone showed men that they didn’t own their wives. We’re human too.’ I liked to believe she was in her own way one of the first authentic feminists in Iran.

After analyzing both their answers to my Ayatollah Khomeini question, my personal interpretation turned out to be: ‘Khomeini is a very important person who is soon going to be even more important.’

There was one bit of prophecy missing from my conclusion which no one could have imagined at the time, neither my over-religious grandmother nor my secular father nor his leftist, rightist, moderate, reformist, nationalist, fundamentalist, Islamist, atheist friends who all hated the Shah. It took us a few years to discover what we had all overlooked: it was not so much that the Shah was corrupt but that absolute power corrupts absolutely, no matter who holds it.