One blue and Cloudy day in Tehran

Soul...Lo, it was hurled midst the sign-posts and ruined abodes of this desolate world. It weeps when it thinks of its home and the peace it possessed. --Avicenna

For many of the millions of victims of sexual assault, the experience becomes a tragedy, one that reshapes their lives and those of their loved ones. This is a story about a rape and sexual assault in Tehran. A tragedy born of a few brutal moments, breaking the timeline of a life into two--life before, life after--traumatizing an innocent soul, turning a happy life into an inferno of "perpetual dread," of humiliation and despair, upending the affected families.

This story is proof that such violent and predatory acts have no geographical boundaries. They are not idiosyncratic to a land, culture, creed, or social class; nor can any ideology tame it. They are endemic to all nations alike. They are neither of the east nor of the west. The expanse of the earth is their domain. They can strike anyone anywhere. They are a collective human scourge since time immemorial. The perpetrator can be an acquaintance or a complete stranger.

A CDC survey in the United States found that 1 out of 5 women surveyed had experienced a complete or attempted rape some time in their lives. Of those, half were in their teens.

I share this story with the hope that this most vile and intimate of crimes will one day be more fully recognized for the evil that it is, wherever it may happen, and the root causes of such a heinous and pathological act be addressed in an academic context and mitigated, in lieu of capital punishment that is devoid of any constructive results.

And I dedicate this book and any of its related proceeds to the victims of sexual violence, wherever their broken souls may reside.