Last week I was asked about the biggest misconceptions (educated) westerners have about Iran and life in Iran?... and I wrote back...

It was a day like any other foggy day in Denmark. As my nursing classmates and I were trying to work out a project related to diagnosis of an eighty-year-old woman in a nursing home, one of them suddenly asked "so Sheema say something in Arabic." I was going to respond reflexively that Iranians are Persians not Arabs. But instead I paused and wondered "in Arabic? What on earth has triggered a sudden urge in this beautiful blonde to hear me speak Arabic." Oh! let me see what movie was on TV the other night... Not without My Daughter, hmm. Sometimes I wish that nobody knew a thing about Iran, that nobody had heard anything about death Fatwas on writers, public hangings, mass executions, stoning, mutilation, terrorism. But wouldn't it be exactly what the tyrants want? I wish the westerners had sympathy with the victim. I wish they believed that I genuinely don't think Rushdie deserves to die.