Things I cannot keep silent about

For the past few years I have turned to Iranian memoirs for comfort, meaning and inspiration. These are some of the most relevant pieces of writing for me. The times I have spent reading them have been the most illuminating times I have ever experienced reading. Here are a few that I absolutely recommend because they connected a chord in me and made me whole in a way that I wasn't before reading them.

Things I have been silent about- Azar Nafisi

Azhar Nafisi as a young girl with her mother

This one is the real and precious book that comes across once in a lifetime. Even though this book came after the much celebrated 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' I believe this is by far the best book Nafisi has written. Its also the best memoir I've ever read. Azar Nafisi takes one through the journey of growing older and discovering the deceptions of one's parents and also the helplessness of watching them loose to life and circumstances.

Its a big hearted work. I dont think any writer of weaker mettle could have done this. The book also captures small details and vignettes of life lost in Iran. The tea parties of her mother..the bedroom where her children slept even as the revolution raged on. Her first marriage and the hopelessly beautiful photos and the life of her parents together and apart.
I have memories of reading this book on train journeys and feeling I have surpassed time and entered into Nafisi's Iran. This book is not nostalgic or sentimental but it leaves you with a searing pain of all that life swallows up leaving us broken hearted and mettlesome.

Funny in Farsi- Firoozeh Dumas
Firoozeh Dumas writes with such warmth, humour and clarity about her childhood that she reminds me of Roald Dahl. Except Dahl wasn't a woman or an immigrant or an Iranian. This is a woman with her foot in America and her memory and roots deep in Iran and her iranian family. One of my most favorite part of the book is when her dad comes to stay at her house and installs unwanted fixtures in her bathroom despite her husband and her asking him not too. Or when an uncle who couldnt get married in Iran comes and stays with them indefinitely grows fat eating the American junk food.

Jasmine and Stars- reading more than Lolita in Tehran- Fatemeh Keshavarz
This book starts with a scene from childhood of Fatemeh Keshavarz and takes one into small alleys of Shiraz and with the mystics and fakirs and how living in Iran was as much about living with these magical everyday occurrences as much as disruptions of revolutions. Kesharvarz who is a Persian language and Rumi scholar brings into focus the often missed magic of persian feminism. She digs at Azar Nafisi for her portrayal of women and men in 'Reading Lolita in Tehran.
I will forever remember this book for introducing me to old women writers of Iran like Sharnaz Parsipour. Of revealing the grace and strength of these women who had a voice of their own even when Western Feminism or English language wasnt their saviour!

City of Lies- Ramita Navai
This is Iranian Christiane Amanpour reporting to American audience from Tehran Underground. Her stories are crisp though and the work has merits. She takes a few characters on the edge with the political powers of Iran and gives them the worst trajectories they could have had in their skirmishes with the law.
The characters themselves are very interesting. Iranian Porn Actresses, Drug Dealers, Rich bored housewives, Socialists and Revolutionaries and even a religious dumped wife who divorces her husband eventually.
Worth a read if you like Noir memoir

Dreaming of Iran

A still from Majid Majidis 'A color of Paradise'

Friends, lovers, strangers have often chuckled at my obsession with Iran. It pops out of me quite shamelessly even when I don't intent it to. Its the place I read about, its the country I love, its on all my bucket lists, if there was a way of gene pool transfer I would turn myself into an Iranian for sure.
I have been asked Why Iran by amused people a million times! I don't suppose there can ever be an explanation to obsessions. Except that they seem to point towards where there is maximum juice for anyone. Isnt it? Think about what you think about the whole day and you will know how it fills your life with meaning.

I discovered Iran in Old Studio in AJKMCRC during my Film appreciation lectures. The landscape the stories were divine but it was the emotions that those films played with that brought the affinity that has lasted me now some ten years.

I still remember that scene from Majid Majidis 'A color of paradise' where the ageing old father abandons his blind son to die in the river and then goes back like a mad man feeling pangs of guilt and fatherly love. In that film there was a grey that all these years no other cinema has been able to match and yet this comes from a country which ninety percent of the world sees in black and white. Besides this was just one film. I dont think I have yet seen an iranian film I havent loved.

The next big wave of love came after reading the extraordinary expat memoirs of women from Iran. Things I have been silent about by Azar Nafisi opened a vein that is still bleeding in me even as the list of all that I eat up in books grows fatter everyday. (Will put together a list for all of you who want to read this)

A screenshot from 'The Things I have been Silent about by Azar Nafisi

After reading a bit about the Political history of the country I grew deeper in love with this rogue country that put the USA in its place good and proper- in culture and in foreign policy. The wars, the revolutions and the one hundred mutinies.

I still dont know if that is all. This is of course what I know above the surface. Who knows what lies at the root of this obsession/love/longing/belonging.