Manuchihr was waiting for a bus to take him from Qazvin, Iran, to his home in Tehran when a taxi with several men in it pulled up alongside him. He waved it away but was told to get in, they would make room for him. Since they were all heavily armed, he realized that he had no option but to obey. The driver pulled away sharply from the bus stop.

Manuchihr protested but was told, 'You have some questions to answer.' He was driven to a building which he remembered as having once belonged to friends of his. Now it was the court of the Revolutionary Guard. It was 1 May 1982.

Mehrangiz 'Mehri' Farzaneh-Moayyad relates the story of her husband, who was arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned and executed in Iran, and recounts her own imprisonment in a squalid prison a year after her husband's execution, and her dramatic escape across the Iranian desert on camel-back with her young daughter to refuge in Pakistan and, at last, to her new home in Scotland.

When Reason Sleeps is Mehri's story as told to Audrey Mellard, who has gathered the threads into a compelling narrative of the hope, spiritual strength, courage and faith of a family whose only crime was that they were Bahá'ís.