Green Parrots

When Iranian authorities arrested Morad Tahbaz in January 2018, they thought they were capturing a spy. They were wrong. Tahbaz was a conservationist—and they had handed him a new wilderness in which to survive. In this extraordinary memoir, Tahbaz reveals how nearly six years in Evin Prison, including solitary confinement and torture, taught him that the skills he'd developed tracking Persian leopards and Asiatic cheetahs could save his own life. He found forty-seven animals hidden in his cell's stone walls. He designed Persian carpets in his mind. And every dawn, he listened to the wild green parrots screaming in the prison's ancient poplars—proof that life persists even where designed to be denied. Green Parrots is not a victim's story. It's a survival manual for anyone facing darkness.