A father’s gift : This leather-bound pocket divan of the poetry of Hafiz of Shiraz (who died in 1390) was given to me by my father in the summer of 1958, a year before he sent me to Britain for my higher studies. It was printed in the autumn of 1940, a few months after my birth, with my fate quite uncertain as my parents had lost their previous two infants. It bears a hand-written date inside the front cover: August 15, 1947, by which time I seemed to have survived. Is it by him? I cannot tell. Was it the day he bought it, or when he was given it as a present? I cannot find out now.