I asked Mansour about how and why he had decided to stage this play. He said, “You know, I wrote this play, and as with all the things I write, as soon as it was done, I read it to my wife, Afsaneh.”

“Afsaneh,” he said, “is really a rather serious audience.  She seldom laughs at my jokes or shows overt emotion about my scripts.  She gives me excellent advice.”

“When I finished reading the as-yet-unfamiliar script to Afsaneh, all the while looking at the hand-written script, I looked up and I saw Afsaneh’s face in a stream of tears.  I knew I had something good then.”

“Later,” he said, “I read it to my teenage daughter, Niloufar.  When she said ‘Wow, Dad, that’s powerful,’ I knew my play could appeal to different age groups.  That’s how I found the courage to stage the play.”

“My objective was to present a window, an opportunity, for all of us to heal.”

“I wanted to heal as a displaced Bahai.  I wanted the community behind me, the Bahai community, to heal.  And I wanted all of us Iranians to heal, from the wounds, from the years of misunderstanding, ignorance, and watching things in helplessness.”

“I wanted to talk about the Iranian Bahai experience in a non-intrusive way.  I didn’t want to attack anyone, not even the IRI.  I just wanted to share my life.”