The Sky Detective
A Memoir: How I Fled Iran and Became a NASA Scientist
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A few hours later, Najmieh walks into my room. I am sitting on my bed with a book in my lap. “Come in, Najmieh. Sit here,” I say, patting the bed next to me.
She plops onto my bed. “You have so many books, Azadeh khanoom,” she says, looking at my crowded bookshelves.
“Would you like to borrow this one to read? I have already read it a few times. It’s one of my favorites. It’s about two dogs, a rich one and a poor one that in the end become friends.”
“Is the pretty one the rich one?” she asks, pointing to Lady on the cover of Lady and the Tramp: The Story of Two Dogs.
“Yes. Her name is Lady.”
“Azadeh khanoom, I don’t know how to read, but I wish I could.”
“But you are eleven years old, Najmieh. You should know how to read.”
“Azadeh khanoom, no one in my village knows how to read.” She sighs.
“Well, then, I can teach you if you want. Would you like that?”
“Yes. Yes, very much,” she exclaims. “But what about your mother? I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“What about her? She doesn’t care about these things,” I assure her.
We start right then. I draw the Farsi alphabet on a piece of binder paper and ask her to copy each character twenty times. She’s an excellent pupil and learns the alphabet in a few days.
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About the Book
When Azadeh was an eight-year-old girl growing up in Iran in March 1973, her uncle gave her a chemistry kit. That got her hooked on science early and provided an opportunity for her to find herself. In The Sky Detective, Azadeh shares her life story—one that includes an insider’s look at life during the Islamic Revolution and Iraqi War and details how one little girl grew up to become a gifted scientist. Set inside Iran in the final years of the monarchy, the author narrates a true story of friendship between two girls growing up in the same household in Tehran: Azadeh, the daughter of an affluent engineer, and Najmieh, a child servant who arrives from a small village in northern Iran to live with Azadeh’s family. When the girls are teenagers, political turmoil interrupts their lives, sending them down different paths. This memoir recalls friendship and faith, the bonds between parents and daughters in a paternalistic society, and the clash of values among relatives from different generations in a family. The Sky Detective describes the rich culture of a beautiful but deeply troubled land undergoing radical transformation. In spite of the hardship that comes along with the establishment of a theocratic regime, Azadeh shows her will and determination as a young woman to persevere and realize her childhood dream of becoming a world-renowned scientist.
About the Author
Azadeh Tabazadeh earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from UCLA. She has worked at NASA, taught at Stanford University, and published more than sixty scientific articles. Among her many accolades are a Presidential White House Award and a feature article in Time that details her personal life and scientific discoveries. Excerpts from her memoir have won recognition at two writers’ conferences. Azadeh has three children and lives in Mountain View, California.