Book excerpt: One day my everyday life became too humdrum, so I prepared my old bicycle and started a trip into the vast unknown. My intention was to learn to live in the present. Initially I focussed on South Africa but unforeseen circumstances took me into Ayatollah Khomeiny's wartorn Iran. What happened here changed my life. My entire world, my viewpoints and values were turned upside down and the emo-tional turbulence I experienced tore down my inner walls leaving me naked and vulnerable like an open wound. After a tragic murder, the situation became unbearable for one of my Iranian friends, so I ventured everything to help him get away and together we made a dramatic escape from Iran via former Soviet and East Germany in a desperate attempt to reach Sweden. This book is a true and emotional description of real people in an improbable world full of conflicts. It opens doors and spreads light on another Iran, its people and also, not least, the political and social conditions in the country. It is permeated by passion and tension as well as human ideals such as non-violence, tolerance and love.