It was around 5:00 p.m., already one hour late, when I arrived at my rendezvous on Pasdaran Street in northern Tehran. The woman, who welcomed me with a big smile on her face and a world of kindness in her eyes, was Ghazal Tajbakhsh, the poet and the author of my favorite novel On Flying Wings; the book I read back in high school.

She was so genuinely friendly that I felt like I knew her for ages. When I asked her age, she hesitated laughingly and said that “Your birth-death dates don’t matter, what matters is ‘the little dash’ in between.”
Ghazal Tajbakhsh was born on August 31, 1942 in a well-respected family in the town of Borujerd, in the western province of Lorestan.
At her home, she unrolled the scroll of her family tree showing her roots traced back to Qajar dynasty. Her grandfather Mohammad Kazem Tajbakhsh was an esquire, who owned large farmland and had many servants and footmen. Being a devoted Muslim, the grandfather moved the entire family to Mamoon Village, now called Momenabad, as police forces in the town were making trouble for religious women observing proper hijab.
“I had a blissful and memorable childhood; we had lots of guest throughout the year. To this day, rail station raises the nostalgia of my childhood. The trains used to stop once in the morning disembarking many guests from Tehran and once in the evening bringing others from the south. I grew up playing with children all day long, running and screaming with them. To me, a family means to be with others,” she said.
Ghazal attended a four-class school built by her father in Mamoon Village for peasant children. When she was in fourth grader, her family moved to the city of Qom, in the southwest of Tehran. It was there that her talent for writing came to her teachers’ notice. She had a consuming passion for writing poetry and compositions which happened to be at a higher level compared to her classmates.
“I was a voracious reader. I loved to be a physician to help the poor Mamoon children suffering from chicken pox and measles. Becoming a physician was my biggest dream, and I am sure I could have been a very good one. But my plans did not work out as life had planned otherwise,” she said with a sad voice.
Ghazal’s happy childhood ended soon when she was married off to a taciturn and morose man twice her age. There was no place for Ghazal’s childhood dreams in the patriarchal society of those days since her father had the final word for her future. He did not take a blind bit of notice of her tears and supplications and held a lavish one-week ceremony in the whole village where she was finally compelled to say the famous “I do”.
One year after the nuptials, she moved to Karaj in western Tehran where her husband was working as an engineer in a sugar factory. Fortunately, the husband, compromising and good hearted, allowed Ghazal to go for her studies, but it was then an uphill battle. It was forbidden for married women to attend schools in fear of sidetracking other young girls from their studies. Meanwhile, her first child arrived soon after the marriage when she was only about 16. But, despite stumbling blocks ahead, Ghazal buckled down and eventually earned her diploma through self-study. In the meantime, she volunteered to teach in schools to keep her foot in the door. During this period, her family, which was getting bigger with the births of three other children, was constantly moving across Iran because of her husband’s job.
They eventually settled in Tehran, and Ghazal got an opportunity to enroll in Business of Administration Program in 1967 at the University of Tehran. The idea of BA came from a family friend who insisted that Ghazal had to gain knowledge in finance to save the family’s economy her husband was not very successful at. However, today, she regrets spending four of the dearest years of her life doing something she hated so much. After graduation, Ghazal took some courses in journalism and was hired as Persian literature teacher at the ministry of education. Her first work which was published in 1979 was actually a travelogue written during her first trip to Mecca. Since then, Ghazal has written and published many poems and novels.
On October 18, 1981, Ghazal and her husband kick-started a gathering at their home. They decided to hold a function on the last Sunday of each month to share their poems and writings with a number of family and friends. The monthly gatherings, now well known as Ghazal Literary Society, expanded little by little and continued to survive to this day after 34 years. Many famous poets like the late Simin Behbahani and Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou were the regular guests at the meetings. It is about 10 years that Ghazal’s husband has passed away, but their apartment on Pasdaran Street is still a popular rendezvous, open to all poets regardless of age, gender and social class and view. It is a safe place for everyone to share his or her literary pieces.
Holding such gatherings might be rooted in the parties she enjoyed in her childhood. “I really enjoy seeing people at my home, they are all my children,” Ghazal says very friendly.
Ghazal’s last message to her readers is: “Everyone in this country is indebted to this dear land, to the soil; there are problems for sure, we don’t want to cheat us, but we must work very hard to solve them not to run away from them.”
As I was leaving Ghazal’s home, she embraced me warmly. It seemed as if I knew the lady for many years when I had read the On Flying Wings in which some of her own characteristics seemed reflecting on Tal’at, the lovely heroine.

Edited by Marjan Golpira