Woland

To the entire world, my father never outgrew the music of his youth. Paying tribute to Bruce Springsteen and Queen seemed to animate him, take him back to a time when he was a young boy in Tehran, passing around foreign rock cassettes with his friends like they were samizdat. Whenever asked by any one of the revolving door of family friends he would welcome into our home, he would insist, with a bemused smirk on his face, that “Land of Confusion” by Genesis would forever remain his favorite song—this is the world we live in! Everybody saw him as a diehard fan of the oldies: a bit of a simple taste in music, sure, but a respectable one nonetheless.

And only I knew better.