Forugh Farrokhzad was born in Tehran in 1935, to career military officer Colonel Mohammad Bagher Farrokhzad (originally from Tafresh city) and his wife Touran Vaziri-Tabar. The third of seven children (Amir, Massoud, Mehrdad, Fereydoun, Pooran, Gloria), she attended school until the ninth grade, then was taught painting and sewing at a girls' school for the manual arts. At the age of 16 she was married to satirist Parviz Shapour. She continued her education with painting and sewing classes, and moved with her husband to Ahvaz. Her only child, a son named Kamyar Shapour (subject of "The Return"), was born a year later.