I was born in 1974, in Tehran, Iran, though my roots trace back to Azerbaijan. Growing up, I attended school in the eastern part of Tehran, yet my heritage held a mix of influences: my mother, from Tehran, had Turkish and Kurdish lineage, while my father came from Tabriz, Azerbaijan. His father had grown up in Baku, studied medicine in Moscow, and eventually moved to Iran during the Bolshevik Revolution. This blend of backgrounds shaped me into a bilingual child, speaking both Turkish and Farsi as naturally as breathing, and I was raised within Persian, Turkish, and even Russian customs and languages. Oddly enough, I didn’t speak a single word until I was three. My first words came unexpectedly on my third birthday, during a visit to a toy shop with my uncle. I remember standing in awe, looking from the toy cars inside the shop to the real ones outside, and finally breaking my silence: “Small cars,” I said, pointing at the toys, “big cars,” gesturing toward the street. My uncle, overjoyed, took me home right away, and my family celebrated my first words as if it were a miracle. My earliest years were spent in a beautiful, sprawling house in the northwestern city of Khoy. The large courtyard was a world of its own, filled with trees, flowering bushes, and fountains. That house, with its vibrant beauty, lives on in my memory and has found its way into my writing—its echoes appear in some of my plays, poems, and even in an unpublished novel of mine called In the Doghouse.
My mother was a warm-hearted housewife with a deep love for art, even though she had little formal education. My father, on the other hand, was a general in the army and a doctor, disciplined to the core and uninterested in art despite his impressive education—and despite the fact that he had untapped creative talents. Together, they taught me both love and discipline, each in their own way. I’m left-handed, which was one of the first things to make me stand out as a child, and not always in a way that made life easier. My father’s indifference to art also made things difficult; his strict, no-nonsense approach left little room for my true passion—literature and art. It wasn’t until I gained my independence that I could finally pursue what I loved. When I was five, our family moved to Tehran, settling in its eastern part just after the Islamic Revolution. My older brother and I started primary school at a prestigious institution, the National School, which had been established by the Shah. But not long after, the new Islamic regime shut it down, and we transferred to a public school, marking the start of a very different educational experience. Secondary school was tough, to say the least. The Islamic education system felt restrictive and stifling, darkening those days for me. Despite my teachers’ encouragement, who often saw my artistic potential, the system itself seemed determined to quash any spark of creativity. By high school, I took up socioeconomics, and for my undergraduate studies, I enrolled at the ECO College of Insurance Management—not out of love for the subject, but because the college’s official language was English. I thought of it as my chance to sharpen my English skills, so I persevered, even though my heart was elsewhere.
I grew up in a household where intellectual curiosity was woven into everyday life. My siblings were well-educated, and from an early age, I found myself deeply influenced by them. My brother, a budding cinephile, would later become a successful screenwriter and director while my sister had a passion for social sciences, especially sociology. Books were the lifeblood of our family, and I was drawn to literature, poetry, and stories from a young age. My father often read to me, bringing to life tales like Kelileh and Demneh, a classic Persian collection of animal fables rooted in Indian traditions. These stories covered everything from family loyalty to ethics and statesmanship—their closest Western counterpart might be Aesop’s Fables. My father’s love of reading was a gift, and I reveled in it, even though it often distracted me from schoolwork and sometimes got me into trouble. While other kids dreamed—or were pushed to dream—of careers in medicine or law, I knew I wanted something different. I was captivated by writing and the arts, particularly music, theater, and storytelling. I didn’t just hope to be a writer; I knew I would become one. My love for books was the bedrock of my writing journey. By my teens, I’d started exploring Persian classic literature, especially the works of Rumi, and became fascinated by modern short stories, particularly those of the acclaimed Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat. His novel Dash Akol, which I read at thirteen, left a lasting impact on me. Soon, I expanded my reading to include Western literature as well, discovering authors like Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and George Orwell. It felt as though I were meeting new mentors in each writer, each one broadening my perspective. In time, I found myself drawn to ancient drama—Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Seneca, and Plautus—and later, modern playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, and Harold Pinter. These works, especially in drama, fueled my creative imagination, building layers of inspiration that would shape my own writing voice.
Alongside the masterpieces of Iranian classical and modern poets like Hafez, Rumi, Ferdowsi, Saadi, Nezami, Khayyam, Attar, E’tesami, Forough Farrokhzad, Shamlou, Simin Behbahani, Hushang Ebtehaj, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Iraj Mirza, I immersed myself in the poetry of the East and West. I poured over the works of Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, Oscar Wilde, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Dante, Eliot, and Pound. Each voice offered a new world, a new approach to the art of poetry. Years later, my passion culminated in a book I wrote on modern English poets with the primary focus on T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W.B. Yeats. Around the time I finished my military service, I began my professional journey, translating plays, books, and poems into Farsi. I often worked for more than 17 hours a day, driven by the goal of introducing Iranian readers to a variety of Western writers, thinkers, and artists. Collaborating with Iran’s major publishing houses, I was fortunate to see some of my translated works reprinted up to 27 times. Since 2010, I have lived in Athens, Greece. In my time here, I’ve continued to write and translate. I have brought several notable works into Farsi. This includes plays by Iakovos Kambanellis and books like I Think with My Eyes: A Research on the Visual Theater of Robert Wilson and The Philosophy of Theater. In this blend of creation and translation, I continue to explore and expand my literary horizons as well as share voices and ideas across cultures.
Music has always been one of my deepest passions, especially singing. Both my mother and father had beautiful voices, and I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by their songs. As a child, I would listen to them sing, absorbing every note and melody. Those early years spent listening to their voices taught me how to sing, almost without realizing it, shaping my own voice from theirs. For years, I studied under two legendary Iranian vocalists, Noureddin Razavi Sarvestani and Mohammad Nuri. I’m a baritone, and I love performing songs in Persian, Turkish, Greek, and English—each language adding its own texture to the music I sing.
My voice work extended beyond singing; I spent over seven years working across five radio channels as a writer, translator, and presenter. Many of my creations were broadcast, giving me the chance to collaborate with some of the most renowned voiceover artists, radio directors, sound designers, musicians, and critics. Among my favorite projects was a weekly radio theater program I helped develop and broadcast. It was a collaborative effort, blending our artistic voices to create something unique and popular with listeners. In 2009, however, the Islamic regime took notice of our program’s growing popularity. They began sending us letters, accusing us of spreading anti-Islamic religious and political views. Despite our dedication and the love we had poured into the show, they eventually shut us down, handing the program to supporters of the regime. Without our original team, the show quickly lost its audience; the quality couldn’t compare, and listeners drifted away.
My voice work extended beyond singing; I spent over seven years working across five radio channels as a writer, translator, and presenter. Many of my creations were broadcast, giving me the chance to collaborate with some of the most renowned voiceover artists, radio directors, sound designers, musicians, and critics. Among my favorite projects was a weekly radio theater program I helped develop and broadcast. It was a collaborative effort, blending our artistic voices to create something unique and popular with listeners. In 2009, however, the Islamic regime took notice of our program’s growing popularity. They began sending us letters, accusing us of spreading anti-Islamic religious and political views. Despite our dedication and the love we had poured into the show, they eventually shut us down, handing the program to supporters of the regime. Without our original team, the show quickly lost its audience; the quality couldn’t compare, and listeners drifted away.
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