When I First Left Iran

What Dazzles Us In Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra Are Not The Alluring Mythologies About The Evasive Queen, But The Astonishing If Rare Historical Facts That Schiff Has Meticulously And Lovingly Excavated. Schiff Offers Not Just Cleopatra's Story But The Story Of An Amazing Era, One That Has Vanished But Still Affects Us, Questioning The Way We Look At Myth, History, And Ourselves.

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.

We All Had To Pay, But Not For The Crimes We Were Accused Of. There Were Other Scores To Settle.

Memories Have Ways Of Becoming Independent Of The Reality They Evoke. They Can Soften Us Against Those We Were Deeply Hurt By Or They Can Make Us Resent Those We Once Accepted And Loved Unconditionally.

When I Was Teaching At The University Of Tehran We Were Struggling Against The Implementation Of The Revolution Rules.