Mohsen Sazegara recounts his life from his December 1954 birth in Tehran's Darvazeh Dolab district, the sixth of seven children of a haberdasher and a politically minded mother, through the mid-1970s, including family hardship and his schooling at Dehkhoda, Firuz Bahram, Alborz and Azar. His political awakening came during a 1969–70 bus fare protest, and he later hand-copied and circulated Al-e Ahmad's banned Gharbzadegi. He ends with childhood friend Morteza Ebrahimi's 1976 killing by SAVAK.