my mother—a woman with strong legs and a sweet disposition—would remind my father, Abbas Abbas Hosseini, that he had been accused by the Iranian intelligentsia of being “a passive traitor whose nose was hooked into books while others’ were being rubbed in the blood of their brethren.” Bibi Khanoum, my father informed me, would say: “Don’t test your luck, Abbas! People don’t like to be snubbed while they’re being martyred for their beliefs.”
