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Shafiq Shamel is a scholar and teacher of German andComparative Literature withspecial interests in poetry and poetics, intellectual history, classical and modern Persian literature, and the intercultural exchange of ideas between the Middle East and the West. He is currently teaching in the departments of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Stanford University.
In his book From My Memories, Khaled Sediq recounts the following incident from the mid-1960s regarding a visit by him and some other members of his family to Mohammad Zahir, King of Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973:
Finally, after uttering some conventional statements, such as, Afghanistan belongs to you and you belong to Afghanistan, he also added: ‘Even though unpleasant events have happened, yet, I have forgotten about them, you, too, try to forget.’[1]
