In which our hero i.e. me experiences the benefits of living the high footballing life in Rio de Janeiro and Copacabanana Beach.
Prefer to read the book than listen to the podcasts? You can buy your very own signed copy of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player here.
Prefer to read the book than listen to the podcasts? You can buy your very own signed copy of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player here.
A satirical novel about fantasy, solitude, and replaying the beautiful game alone.
In Confessions of an Ageing Football Player, an ageing man plays out the 2014 World Cup match by match on his old Subbuteo table, narrating himself into glory long after the crowd, the pitch, and the body have disappeared.
This is not a sports memoir. It’s a comic, affectionate, and quietly unsettling exploration of football fandom, masculinity, and the rituals we invent to keep the game alive.
Over the next week, we will be profiling some of the photographers whose work appears in the book, and reflecting on how their images contribute to its power, texture and witness.
We would particularly like to thank the IRNA news agency, which generously donated almost two thirds of the photographs used in the publication. We are also deeply grateful to the many individual photographers whose work has helped make the book such an exceptional production:
Ahmad Moeini Jam, Akbar Tavakkoli, Ali Sharifi, Bahram Bayat, Eshaq Aghaei, Mahmoud Farjami, Maryam Al Momen Dehkordi, Marzieh Mousavi, Marzieh Pourarab, Marzieh Soleimani, Mohammad Mahdi Pourarab, Mohammadrasoul Moradi, Mohsen Rezaei, Sadegh Miri and Sadra Nouri.
We continue with the work of Ahmad Moeini Jam.
A Broken Bridge, a Bloodstained Sizdah Bedar
At midday on Sizdah Bedar, the thirteenth day of the Persian New Year holidays, the sky over Karaj was clear and blue. Around Bridge B1 on the city’s northern bypass, families had gathered to spend the day outdoors. Some were sitting on the nearby slopes, others had spread picnic blankets, and children were playing in the open spaces beneath and around the bridge. A few hours later, the scene had changed completely.
In the photograph, part of the bridge has collapsed. Massive concrete beams are broken, and large pieces of concrete and metal lie scattered across the ground. Steel cables and structural elements have been damaged, while signs of fire and explosion are visible throughout the site. Beneath the bridge, where families had spent the holiday only hours before, there are now only traces of destruction and confusion.
The attack caught many people by surprise. Those in the area rushed to leave the scene. Items brought for a day of recreation were left behind—blankets, containers, and personal belongings that had been part of an ordinary holiday gathering but now lay among the debris.
In the background, the city of Karaj and the surrounding dry hills can be seen. In the foreground stands a structure that once carried thousands of people each day but is now severely damaged and partially collapsed.
The power of this image lies in the contrast it captures: a public holiday associated with nature, family gatherings, and leisure, set against the aftermath of destruction. More than a photograph of a bridge, it is a photograph of people whose ordinary day was suddenly interrupted by an event that transformed the landscape around them.
When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is now available in all formats.
Over the next week, we will be profiling some of the photographers whose work appears in the book, and reflecting on how their images contribute to its power, texture and witness.
We would particularly like to thank the IRNA news agency, which generously donated almost two thirds of the photographs used in the publication. We are also deeply grateful to the many individual photographers whose work has helped make the book such an exceptional production:
Ahmad Moeini Jam, Akbar Tavakkoli, Ali Sharifi, Bahram Bayat, Eshaq Aghaei, Mahmoud Farjami, Maryam Al Momen Dehkordi, Marzieh Mousavi, Marzieh Pourarab, Marzieh Soleimani, Mohammad Mahdi Pourarab, Mohammadrasoul Moradi, Mohsen Rezaei, Sadegh Miri and Sadra Nouri.
We continue with the work of Marzieh Pourarab.
The Bird and the Ruins
In an alley covered with rubble, a gray-haired man wearing a black Manchester United jacket walks through the debris carrying a small metal birdcage. Inside the cage is a white bird. Broken glass and fragments of brick lie underfoot, while behind him stand damaged residential buildings with shattered windows and scarred walls.
The birdcage is the first thing that draws the eye. Amid the destruction and scattered remains of daily life, the man carries something he considered worth saving. He is not looking at the camera, nor does he appear to hesitate. He simply moves forward through a street that no longer resembles the place it once was.
The photograph was taken by Mohammad Mehdi Pourarab. Damaged trees line the alley, and signs of destruction are visible throughout the frame. Traces of ordinary life can still be seen here and there, though much of it is now buried beneath dust and rubble.
The strength of the image lies in its simplicity. It does not show the moment of an explosion or the work of emergency crews. Instead, it shows a man walking through the aftermath, holding a birdcage. That small detail offers a powerful glimpse into the human consequences of war: how, in the midst of devastation, people try to preserve what matters most to them.
More than a photograph of destruction, this image is about what people choose to carry with them when so much else has been lost.
When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is now available in all formats.
In which our hero i.e. me learns to become a permanent surprise to the opposition and the guerilla in their midst.
Prefer to read the book than listen to the podcasts? You can buy your very own signed copy of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player here.
Prefer to read the book than listen to the podcasts? You can buy your very own signed copy of Confessions of an Ageing Football Player here.
A satirical novel about fantasy, solitude, and replaying the beautiful game alone.
In Confessions of an Ageing Football Player, an ageing man plays out the 2014 World Cup match by match on his old Subbuteo table, narrating himself into glory long after the crowd, the pitch, and the body have disappeared.
This is not a sports memoir. It’s a comic, affectionate, and quietly unsettling exploration of football fandom, masculinity, and the rituals we invent to keep the game alive.
“Words written while the bombs were still falling.”
When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: Diaries from Tehran at War offers an intimate, humane and urgent record of ordinary life under bombardment and is now available to readers across the world in all formats.
Written by Ali Asghar Seidabadi, an acclaimed Iranian researcher, author, and a well-known cultural figure, this extraordinary diary-style work offers readers a rare, immediate and deeply human account of life in Tehran during war, bombardment and internet disruption.
Written originally as daily notes for international friends and literary colleagues, the book records not only fear, uncertainty and danger, but also the fragile continuities of everyday life: taped windows, family calls, cafés, bookshops, food, birds, interrupted communications and the small rituals by which people continue to live while history presses against the glass.
Seidabadi‘s work is a work of witness: intimate, precise, restrained and morally alert. At its heart is a voice committed to a “middle path”: nonviolent, humane, neither propagandist nor self-pitying. In a world often divided by slogans, suspicion and noise, When The Sparrows Become Anxious insists on the importance of listening to an individual human being trying to describe what it feels like to endure.
If you prefer to buy their copy through Amazon, you can buy hard cover, paperback or e-book by clicking here:
If you would rather order a physical book through your preferred bookshops, you can quote both the name of the book or the relevant ISBN numbers:
Hardcover: ISBN 9798197042132
Paperback: ISBN 9798180483287
A diary of war, culture and human endurance
The title’s image of anxious sparrows captures the emotional force of the book: small lives continuing amid forces far larger than themselves. Through that recurring motif, Seidabadi turns the daily experience of conflict into something both specific and universal.
The diary is rooted in Tehran, but its reach is international. As a writer and editor with deep connections across global children’s and young adult literature, Seidabadi writes from within a network of friendships, correspondence and cultural solidarity. His messages to writers, illustrators and book people beyond Iran become part of the book’s emotional architecture.What emerges is a record of war seen not through military strategy or state rhetoric, but through culture, family, memory and daily survival.
Readers encounter a city under pressure, but also a mind refusing to surrender its clarity. The result is a book that speaks powerfully to anyone interested in contemporary history, human rights, international literature, peace, cultural memory and the moral role of writing in times of crisis.
About the author
Ali Asghar Seidabadi is an Iranian researcher, author, and a well-known cultural figure. His newspaper columns and books for both adults and children are widely read and he is regularly invited to speak at various events and institutions and he frequently give interviews to non-governmental media outlets. During the 1990s, widely regarded as the golden age of Iranian journalism, Seidabadi became a well-known figure in Iran’s cultural and journalistic spheres. He was responsible for the culture, arts, and thought sections of several widely read reformist newspapers and later became a member of their editorial boards. Alongside his journalistic work, he wrote books for children and young adults and conducted research in children’s literature, reading promotion, and cultural studies.
In When The Sparrows Grow Anxious, Seidabadi brings that literary sensibility to bear on lived experience. The book is observant, humane and disciplined. It is marked by attention to small details, an instinct for connection and an unwavering commitment to nonviolence.
This is a diary by someone who understands the importance of stories — not as escape, but as a way of preserving human dignity when the surrounding world becomes frighteningly unstable.
Publisher Nick Owen MBE, founder of Nick Owen Publishing, said:
“At a time when the President of the USA can assert “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…” Ali Asghar Seidabadi has written a book of huge courage. These diary notes attend to the human texture of war: to windows, birds, phone calls, friendships, children’s books, and the stubborn persistence of ordinary life. That is precisely why the book matters and why we are honoured to bring his work to a wider, global public.”
When the Sparrows Grow Anxious is an important and timely publication because it offers something urgently needed: a human-scale account of war from inside the experience itself. It explores the cultural infrastructure of Iran through these diary notes, sometimes prompted by remarks made by President Trump. It shows that some forms of Iranian behaviour and social response, which may appear strange or incomprehensible to President Trump and to many people around the world, have deep mythological roots.
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When the Sparrows Grow Anxious: Diaries from Tehran at War Author: Ali Asghar Seidabadi Publisher: Nick Owen Publishing Ltd Publication: 15 June 2026 ISBN: 9798197042132 Format: [Hardback / Paperback / Kindle / eBook) Available from: Nick Owen Publishing / Amazon
