My sister Lilli and I were born two years apart in Switzerland where spent our entire childhoods. We were very close as children, as teenagers, and later as young adults in Iran. However, we were irrevocably separated by political circumstances in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, and we are now, forty years on, strangers who no longer enjoy the sisterly intimacy we once had. I won’t elaborate on her personal life except to say that unlike me who has been blessed beyond measure here in the UK, she has had to endure divorce, an earthquake, and prison sentences in Iran.
There is no longer any prospect of us being reunited as she can’t leave, and as an apostate with a life story in print I am definitely ‘persona non grata’. Modern technology enables us to keep touch, but it’s a tenuous link at best, beset with random internet outages in Iran, and the nebulous but ever-present fear of authorities listening-in.
When Lilli told me that my memoir In the Shadow of the Shahs was known to the Evin Prison authorities, I asked whether she regretted that I had published it. Her generous answer was “no”, but she added that since I was the bird that had managed to fly away to freedom, she hoped the book would serve to tell the world about the caged ones back home.
