I was determined; one day I’d marry a book.

Any way you look at it, it’s this town that taught me to be ruthless.

One wrong move and somebody was bound to shout, “Watch yourself! You’re in Iran now.

“Would I take a bullet for this man?”

You are in a liminal space, a no man’s land where you are visible and invisible.

The movie theater I found myself in was called Freedom; it stood on the corner of two main boulevards that, like the majority of streets in Tehran, are named after martyrs of the revolution: Martyr Beheshti,…