Written by Dr. Sadegh Zibakalam and just published a few months ago I was given its 3rd printing as a gift by a friend.
Though personally I don’t like the author because of some of his viewpoints and considering him as a passive opposition I have to admit I like his writings. He has a good sense of writing skills and a reader like me never gets bored by his books. The same goes with his narrative of an old publishing of his, entitled “How We Became What We Are Now!” a view point on how I-ran never could rise to the expected standards. With almost 30 years apart, one could notice the differences and acquired skills in writing by the author just by reading these two books. Both well written but different in energy of delivering their contents.
Though I have to admit the entire book could be simplified in 1/3rd of the entire volume, yet the author with wittiness tried to expand the book to more pages. This was done by repetition of some contents and a lot of paraphrasing. Also, I was able to find 4 typos.
As I mentioned, despite not meeting the author personally and despite me admiring his writing skills, I don’t like his political activities and some points of view.
The book could be used as my witness that how despite the title itself, the author tried to praise himself between the lines of the text and instead of focusing on the title he created a memoir out of it, and answering the main questions (brought in the title) just in one chapter, 2nd to ending chapter of the book.
And also, he couldn’t satisfy my thirst of knowing the answers to both questions. Instead, he was able to shrug off responsibility of answering them with some answers which may be acceptable by some and even for me at some extent, but still couldn’t say I accepted it completely.
However I have to admit at some part of the book, I praised his courage of telling some truths about his opinions and actions done in the past.
The book saddened me because I realized how corruption could derail a revolution of good intention offroad and after years become the main force and culture of its system, spreading like cancerous cells to different parts of society.
Despite our differences of political opinions, I can sympathies with the author as I, myself, am graduated of abroad with flying colors and honor and despite my intention of introducing globally competitive high-quality treatments and technologies in my field of healthcare, I was always disappointed with all the challenges brought to me by the related government institutions.
Unlike abroad where I was given ampule of opportunities to grow and develop, here and at the time of writing this blog, I am so devastated and hopeless that I wish either could bring the time back and instead of listening to my dad for coming back to serve this country and its people, I would’ve migrated to another – developed – country, where I know I could give back much to community as I grow. The sad part was I had much opportunity back then, and now 15 years has passed in stress and headaches.
The book was written conservatively to avoid any provocative actions against the author, yet I heard he was arrested on the day where he was going for book signing event for this book itself. Paradox of life and the title of the book.
The book is a recommended for reading (though this number of pages wasn’t necessary to deliver the message) and I have to admit I had a change of heart in some of my political opinions and I have to agree on this part that Democracy can be a solution for many our current challenging situation, however again the author fails to mention the details of such governance. As we all know, not all types of democratic countries are ruled with exact same rules. Also, he doesn’t accept that for such thing to happen a lot of changes have to happen from infrastructure of the country’s political, economical and mostly social aspects.
At the end I like to quote three points from the book that I found interestingly acceptable, specially in current situation of countries like I-ran.
- Limitation of power with implementation of (good) laws (for everyone). P308
- Adherence to democracy through attitude and honesty. P311.
- Accepting that realization of democracy in any society, is a very long, difficult and slow process. P311