I have a feeling that it is a mistake to go to the party at Mr. M.’s, especially under the circumstances. Things have tightened up once more. Again scarves have to be pulled down all the way to the eyebrows and legs covered in thick, black stockings. Again the loose-fitting, ankle-length smocks have to be worn. They are once again slashing women’s bare legs with razors and shaving the heads of young boys or publicly flogging them in city squares. And yet no one is really scared or chastised into full conformity. To hang out, harangue, eat, and drink are requisite conditions of survival, something the desperate have to do, since for them the world is on its last leg, about to collapse in a day or two. So, let’s live to the fullest, they say. The less fatalistic ones, on the other hand, take cover underground, listen to foreign radio broadcasts, and await the triumphant return of the young king from abroad.

Goli Traghi was born in Tehran on October 23. His father, Lotfollah Targhi, was the director of the Progress Magazine. Happiness was born on the street. A flowering progress in Shemiran went to school and then to Anushirvan Dadgar High School. He left for America at the end of the first cycle of high school. He lived in the United States for eight years and graduated in philosophy and returned to Iran because he did not like living in the United States. Upon his return, he turned to storytelling. He taught for nine years at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran, and then went to France .