I explained the marketing process, the publishing seasons, the importance of releasing books during the summer season. After every explanation, my dad wanted to know why they weren’t releasing it now. Whenever the Middle East was in the news, which was often, my dad would call. “Call Random House and tell them they are making a BIG mistake. Your book should be out now.” “Who makes these decisions at Random House?” “Why can’t they at least publish it for Christmas? It makes more sense.”

Six months before the publication, he called me in the middle of day, screaming into the phone—“You’ve sold one and a half million copies!!”

I very calmly asked him why he was saying this. “I went on Amahzone and it said ‘Sales Rank: 1,497,000’!!” He was still yelling into the receiver.

“Listen, Baba,” I said, “the sales rank is where my book is compared to the number one bestseller. One point five million is the bottom of the barrel. Plus, given that my book is not even published, why would you think that I would sell any, let alone 1.5 million copies?”

I only heard a tiny, defeated voice on the other end of the line. “Oh.”

A few months prior to publication, my book started being reviewed and mentioned on radio and on the Internet. This led to a change in ranking. With my book reaching the low 40,000s, my father was ecstatic. He started keeping a journal with the date, the time, and my ranking.

“Yesterday at ten in the morning, it was 46,789. Today at ten, it’s 42,857. It’s going crazy!”

Of course, when my ranking went in the wrong direction, he got very upset. “What’s it doing at 67,432?” he asked me at 7:30 in the morning as I was trying to get my kids ready for school.

He now has a small notebook filled with what is possibly the world’s most useless information. I have tried to discourage him from this newfound hobby, but my dad is undeterred, insisting that he wants to remember this period in his life forever.

In his attempts to broaden my father’s use of the computer beyond Amazon.com, my brother Farshid taught my father how to look me up on Internet search engines. My father has since devoted his retirement years to reading articles about me and tracking all information about my book.

“There’s a library in Maine that carries your book!” he told me one day. “You should call them and thank them.”

He loves reading reviews, since most have been very kind. Hell, however, hath no fury like my father’s for the reviewer who didn’t love my book. “Who is Publishers Weekly?” my irate father asked one day. “You need to call them and tell them they don’t know anything.”