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September 15, 2002
REVIEWS: Stories of Iranian diaspora
This book contains a series of interviews with Iranian exiles and emigres who left their country because of their unwillingness to live under the new order after the 1979 revolution. This underrepresented class, whose voices have seldom been heard in our part of the world, comprises a diverse group — from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, with ages ranging from 13 to 88 years. They belong to different classes from the lower middle and upper middle.
Their moving outpourings reflect deep conflicts. — They sometimes speak of a a troubled childhood stemming from strained parental relationships or from customary gender restrictions; or from differences in beliefs. And this is what makes these narratives so absorbing.
The author, Zohreh T. Sullivan, an Iranian herself, asks those she interviews to describe the role played by the family, religion and culture in their early formation. These meditations on the past make interesting reading. Here is just a small sample:
Pari, a teacher, writer and translator, recalls a troubled childhood, a broken family, being molested by relatives. She particularly mentions the stifling restrictions which she sees as: “The hidden agenda of our society for children is to make them obedient. That, I think, is a horrible system. That kind of obedience makes children into slaves — now slaves of parents, later slaves of husbands, finally slaves of society, any society.” She adds elsewhere, “Iranians need to learn that all classes have to control their lives ...”
Mohammad Tavakoli, born in 1955, had a difficult childhood. He recalls growing up male in “a phallocratic society, though different, is as painful and oppressive as growing up female”. He is forced to seek protection from the “aggression of men” who want sexual experiences with him, in the comfort of women’s company. His very conservative father considers radio and television as “Satan’s boxes” and on a number of occasions he smashes the radios bought home by his brothers. Music and movies were forbidden. He proceeds to recount how as he grew older, he became a gymnast which helped to liberate him.
Lily, born in 1930 Tehran, became a teacher, writer and translator. She is troubled by the cultural weaknesses she sees in her people: “We were a nation of followers instead of a nation of thinkers and decision makers ... Unfortunately, what we learned from Islam was blind submission and obedience. This suited both the government and the clergy. They needed to keep the people ignorant and in need...”
Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa begins her account by stating, “I belong to a generation of confused children.” This state of mind arose because she was expected to be professional and to pursue her studies outside Iran yet also somehow to abide by traditional female roles. “Women, I was told, had to be educated, but women also had to be subservient.” She saw her father who divorced her mother, a doctor, after 34 years of marriage as a prototype of men who “worshipped women who were intellectual, educated, and professional; yet at the same time they were afraid of them”.
The central problem as she sees it is that men can’t deal with women with ambition. “There is a great fear of women who might be economically independent and emotionally independent. There is a great fear that if a woman is not dependent, she might leave you.”
After these and several other highly interesting vignettes, Sullivan proceeds to narrate about the revolution, its appeal, the upheaval it caused, the initial euphoria, and later, the unexpected turn of events. Then she gives the narratives of ten women. Each remembers a different moment that “tolled the death knell” of her notion of “revolutionary possibility”.
One moving narrative is that of Faranak, born in 1958, and whose political sensitivity against injustice under the Shah translated into resistance against what she saw as excesses of the new Islamic regime. She and her sister later joined the underground political organizations. Then, the mass arrests began and among those arrested was her sister. She was “kept in prison for twenty days, after which they called my parents to say she had been executed together with fifty other women — all in one night ... There had been no court, no prosecution. This was the time when Khalkhali [the hanging judge] had ordered: “Kill them. If they are guilty we’ve done good, if innocent, they’ll go to heaven. We win either way.”
The change in how people perceived the revolution began as more and more people began to experience loss. Mehrnaz Saeed- Vafa draws her observations from the people in her neighbourhood. “The first change occurred when one of our most religious neighbours had a son killed in the Iran-Iraq war...Another neighbour had a husband laid off work and her son taken to prison ...”
However, the good thing she feels that came out of this revolution was “ridding ourselves of one aspect of the commercialism surrounding womanhood, the commercialism that exploited women. It was good to see the government respect serious women filmmakers, serious women teachers, to see women as committed workers ...” Towards the end of the book, Sullivan describes the feelings of those in exile in the US. Some felt, like Professor Ali, that they did not belong anywhere. “I felt I had lost everything — I wasn’t part of that life and I wasn’t part of this America.”
The yearning for an imagined Iran, notes Sullivan, crosses all ethnic boundaries. A Bahai couple insists, in spite of their persecution and flight, “We want nothing but Iran and being Iranian.” And Zia Ashraf Nasr, the oldest person in the book states, “I am a person without a country.”
Finally, in the last section of the book, Sullivan gives parts of narratives in which most interviewees speak of the present, “women and men whose dislocations have empowered them to start life again”.
The interview style in Exiled memories makes the book highly readable. The testimonies of people who have lived through the turbulent years are often very moving. Readers in Pakistan can particularly relate to much what is written because of the parallels in the culture.
Exiled memories: stories of Iranian diaspora
By Zohreh T. Sullivan
Temple University Press, Philadelphia- 19122, USA
Website:
www.temple.edu/tempress
ISBN 1-56639-842-8
289pp. Price not stated
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