When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: Diaries from Tehran at War

When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is a diary-style work by Ali Asghar Seidabadi, written from Tehran during a period of bombardment, internet disruption, fear, political polarisation and uncertainty. The book begins with the author’s immediate experience of the outbreak of war: explosions, the cutting of international internet access, confused news, family anxiety, and an instinctive decision to write messages of peace and safety to friends abroad.The manuscript is not a conventional political analysis or a war report. Its great strength is that it records the texture of ordinary life under war: taped windows, trembling buildings, anxious children, ruined bookshops, empty streets, damaged cultural sites, disrupted sleep, food cooked during bombardment, barber-shop conversations, internet workarounds, and the strange persistence of cafés, birds, bookshops, rain, humour and hospitality. The author explicitly says that he is trying to write from a “middle path”, neither propaganda nor self-pity, giving an honest picture of everyday life while holding firmly to nonviolence.A central emotional thread is the relationship between the author and his international community of writers, illustrators and children’s literature colleagues. Their messages of concern become a lifeline. The diary grows out of those exchanges: after friends abroad ask whether he and his family are safe, he decides to write daily accounts for them, using Facebook because it allows him to reach a trusted circle of international writers and artists.The title image of the anxious sparrows is especially powerful. Sparrows become a recurring symbol of vulnerable life continuing under threat: the birds panic at explosions, disappear during intense bombardment, and return as signs of endurance. Later in the manuscript, the author reflects that the sparrow has been one of humanity’s oldest companions, part of the rhythm of ordinary life, and that during the war their sound has felt like “the sound of life itself.”The book also widens beyond diary into cultural reflection. It introduces readers to Iranian history, poetry, food, religious ritual, Nowruz, Tehran’s neighbourhoods, book culture, family structures, social customs, and the deep psychological consequences of war. It shows Iran not as an abstract geopolitical problem, but as a lived, literary, humane and complex society.About the authorAli Asghar Seidabadi is an Iranian researcher, author and well-known cultural figure. His newspaper columns and books for both adults and children are widely read, and he is regularly invited to speak at events and institutions. He also frequently gives interviews to non-governmental media outlets.In When the Sparrows Grow Anxious, Seidabadi brings that literary sensibility to bear on lived experience. The book is observant, humane and disciplined. It is marked by attention to small details, an instinct for connection and an unwavering commitment to nonviolence.This is a diary by someone who understands the importance of stories: not as escape, but as a way of preserving human dignity when the surrounding world becomes frighteningly unstable.Publisher’s note“At a time when the President of the USA can assert, ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…’, Ali Asghar Seidabadi has written a book of huge courage. These diary notes attend to the human texture of war: to windows, birds, phone calls, friendships, children’s books, and the stubborn persistence of ordinary life. That is precisely why the book matters and why we are honoured to bring his work to a wider, global public.”Dr. Nick Owen MBE, Director, Nick Owen Publishing Read more