Dean Sharafi

The Unwilling Revolutionary Dean Sharafi

History is written by the winners; those who want you believe whatever suits their narrative. This is a story of a revolution and a war from within; an attempt to tell the narrative of the oppressed, the ordinary people, those who marched in the streets, raised their fists in protest, became the target of bullets, were imprisoned and tortured; and those who were sent to wars to kill, or to be brutally killed. This memoir is my account of the history, shedding light on a revolution that changed the world forever, and caused one of the longest and bloodiest wars of the twentieth century. This book is also a self-administered therapy, an attempt to deal with the embedded memories of trauma and torture which still hold on in me with fierce determination. Here, I have told the history in parallel with my personal journey; of the pain and suffering I have endured under the Islamic Republic. The desire to write about the past and my rite of passage to become a new person is my hope to be able to exert control over those horrible memories in the future.