Years ago, during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi warplanes dropped mustard gas and nerve agents on my battalion. I was completely burned, with blisters all over my body. I couldn’t see anything for months (and since then I’ve had over 50 operations on my eyes). My lungs were severely damaged; they functioned at only 45 percent. I also had a lot of emotional problems. I was angry all the time. I just wanted to be alone. It was hard because, even after I was married, I didn’t know how to control this deep helplessness, fear and anger. I was taking a lot of medicine too — for all my injuries and for my anger.

I began to see a psychiatrist, but it wasn’t helping much. So a doctor friend of mine in Tehran told me to try music as therapy. The idea made me nervous, because music wasn’t fully O.K. at the time in Iran, especially for those of us who had fought in the war. We were supposed to be soldiers and defenders of the revolution, and music was seen as not being proper or serious enough. But I always loved music. We even hired a band for our wedding illegally. I was open to the doctor’s suggestion, but I wasn’t sure how others would feel about it.

There was a great teacher, Maestro Malek, who not only taught music classes but also had his own workshop where he made the santur, a traditional hammered dulcimer, and it was located near my father’s grocery store. The maestro also had a dairy farm next to his music store, which was where we bought the milk to sell at the grocery. One day when I was at his dairy to pick up the milk, the maestro asked me: “Do you know why I have the best milk in town? Because the cows hear music every day. It makes the cows eat more and then produce more milk. It also makes them live longer!” Maybe the doctor was right about the power of music, I thought, so I signed up to take classes.

The maestro’s students were mostly young people — I was the oldest in the class. And since my lungs were badly damaged, I coughed a lot. I worried that my constant coughing was bothering the other students. So I only went to one class. But that was enough to make me fall in love. I wanted to learn this instrument.