Personal notes

Upon receiving my Master’s degree in Architecture with the highest honours from the University of Tehran in 1962, I escaped to Paris. There, I continued my studies for two years at the École des Beaux-Arts with a French Government scholarship granted to me by the French Embassy in Tehran prior to my departure. This yearly award is offered only to the best graduate student. Leaving behind the morbid culture of my so called “homeland” and returning to Europe whose culture was so much more comprehensible to me since childhood, was quite a renaissance. I only considered returning home in 1966, when I was officially exempted from the military service that I so explicitly despised.

Despite all my achievements during thirteen years of hard work, as evident on this site, I was constantly harassed in every way possible, but this did not discourage me and I was still not deterred from further pursuing my professional activities and artistic endeavours. Leaving Iran for Paris in 1978 on a self imposed exile, I felt a surge of deliverance and joy. I was returning to the beautiful City of Lights where I felt more at home and whence I recalled visions of happier days that I had spent there in 1951 when I was only twelve years old. I was delighted when I was granted political asylum in 1980 and later in 2001 I became a citizen of France. Hence, I can now cherish the rest of what is left of my life in my adopted country, thanks to the only citizenship I possess.

Hopefully, this unwanted trip called “life” will end sooner than later, far away from the land where I was hardly appreciated and constantly harassed brutally by the fabricated shameful rumours whose repercussions I can still feel today. The more I study world history, the more man’s inhumanity to man disgusts me.

This site is a generous gift from my friends, and it remains as my artistic testament, with my deepest gratitude to my beloved ones:

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