About the Author Mohammad Haider Anwar was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1914 to a family of mixed Tajik and Arab ancestry. He graduated in 1933 from Habibia High School with a scholarship to go to college in the United States. Anwar attended Columbia University in New York, where he earned a master's degree in education, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he obtained a doctorate of science. In 1939 he married Phyllis Davidson, a New York City college student. Two years later the couple moved to Afghanistan, where Dr. Anwar worked in the ministry of education. Facing imprisonment for espousing democratic reform and for refusing to veil his wife, he went into exile at the end of 1943. After their flight from Afghanistan, Hammad and Phyllis Anwar resettled in New York, where he worked as a biochemist in the soft drink industry, eventually becoming Pepsico's associate director of research. Dr. Anwar retired in the mid-1970s to write his memoir, which was published in hardcover in 1981. Dr. Anwar died in 1993 after battling Alzheimer's disease for several years.