“I have always detested war, even before I experienced it myself. The eight years of war between Iran and Iraq coincided with the early part of my life, the death of my 19-year-old cousin, my mother’s grieving process and my own as a child, longing to write to my father at the front. The blaring of the alarm on the radio; my little brother’s toy tank; my mother covering my face with her black veil to stop me from seeing corpses in a passing ambulance. Everything is still dark. Like feathers in the wind, my childhood dreams remain unattainable, and I watch them dance in the bleak grey skies of my heart.”