Akbar’s life was caught in the wind which began blowing with the Revolution. His father, a general in Shah’s army, fled the country and Akbar was labeled an opposition and spent two years in prison. He was nineteen when he was released. He was drafted into military service to serve his duty in Iran-Iraq war. A couple of months later, he was suspended from serving his country due to his prison sentence. He returned from the frontline to Tehran. He mastered his broken French in university, which he had learned from a cellmate, and at the same time started working at a small lathe workshop as a turner. He fell in love in one of the classes and immediately got married, but didn’t produce any offspring. He was given a column in a newspaper and started translating the economic news of the world. After a while, a publisher suggested a book in the field of economics to him for translation. He quit translating for newspapers and set his foot in the book industry. When his first translation got published, he was diagnosed with MS. Everything was white in his eyes. His feet and hands became numb and motionless. He was hospitalized for one month. He used medical herbs and was recovered again.

I met Akbar at this point; in the lunchroom of the National Library. He sat in front of me and put his vegetarian food on the table. I don’t recall what book I was holding, but it caught his attention and we started chatting. After that day we ate lunch together every day and talked about everything. After one year, my second book was finished. It was a novel based on the love affair between Rabe’e and Baktash in Jami’s account. I had done my best to extract the story of these two characters from Jami’s poetry and to introduce it into the modern life. I gave the manuscript to Akbar and asked for his opinion. He read it. He said it was patchy and the characters were flat and … I couldn’t stand it. It was at that point that I realized I can’t bear to witness my one-year work be destroyed in front of my eyes. I grabbed the manuscript to leave. He got mad. I got mad too. After that incident, upon an unwritten rule, we adjusted our times in the Library so that we wouldn’t run into each other. And we didn’t run into each other, though now I agree with his comments on my book.