Miembroabbasmehran

I was not lucky to be born to highly educated, cultured parents surrounded by books, arts, and music. I was born to illiterate parents in a small mud brick house in a remote, dry town in Iran. My parents were poor and humble but had a fantastic memory for Scheherazade stories, Persian proverbs, and folk poetry, some of which I still remember. I was not a reading nerd with books tucked under my arm or loaded in my backpack, but wandering around on farms and orchids, up hills and mountains with childish imaginations.

My reading journey began at age seventeen, diving into a four-volume Western Philosophy, then rushing to motivational books such as Dale Carnegie’s. I was ignorant, and I needed them. My first novel to read was Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck at nineteen. Reading, writing, and speaking in foreign languages – Spanish and English – has always been challenging, but I have loved and cherished the challenge and the difficulty.

I became aware of my talent for storytelling late in my life when I began to paint seriously at forty-seven. All my artworks are stories, carrying the yearning for writing in words. I began to write late, and late is better than never.