"Former prisoner in Iran believes freedom unappreciated in Canada"

Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian Canadian philosopher who first taught at the University of Toronto from 1997 to 2001, and then returned to his native Iran. In his new memoir, Time Will Say Nothing: A Philosopher Survives an Iranian Prison, he writes about being arrested in 2006 and placed in solitary confinement for four months. 

"Despite decades of exile, I still feel the pull of my homeland" - Ngugi wa Thiong'o

I never chose exile; it was forced on me. In 1982 I had packed my suitcase to return home from a London book launch when I learnt that the then Moi dictatorship in Kenya planned to eliminate me, euphemistically described as giving me a red-carpet welcome at the airport. At first I would only use the word shipwrecked, not exile, to refer to my situation; shipwrecks end with rescue, right? I did not unpack the suitcase. Seven years later the suitcase was still packed.