ExcerptsSynopsis and excerpts from PERSIAN GIRLS (my memoir), published by Penguin, hardcover 2006, paperback 2008 SYNOPSIS: PERSIAN GIRLS extends from the time of the late Shah to the present in Iran and goes back forth between Iran and America. I develop my relationship with my aunt, Maryam, who adopted me from my mother when I was six months old, and with my birth mother, after my father forcefully took me back from my aunt when I was nine years old. A big part of PERSIAN GIRLS is also focused on the stories of my sister Pari’s and my own lives in Iran and then as we took different paths-- she remaining in Iran and I coming to America. When I started living with my birth family I became very close to my older sister, Pari. We both resisted the roles prescribed for us by our parents, our school, the wider society. She wanted to become an actress and I a writer, both considered undesirable for one reason or another. Then I managed to come to America while Pari got trapped in a bad arranged marriage and had to give up her aspiration to become an actress and all the independence she was striving for. EXCERPTS: From Chapter 1: (I’m still living with my aunt in an old fashioned section of Tehran): At a class recess, as I stood with Batul and a few other girls under a large maple tree in the courtyard, I noticed a man approaching us. He was thin and short with a pock-marked face and a brush mustache. He was wearing a suit and a tie. Even from a distance, he seemed powerful. “Don’t you recognize your father?” he asked as he came closer. In a flash I recognized him, the man I had met only once when he came to Maryam’s house with my birth mother on one of her visits. I was afraid of my father, a fear I had learned from Maryam. Having adopted me informally, Maryam didn’t have legal right to me; even if she did, my father would be able to claim me. In Iran fathers were given full control of their children, no matter the circumstance. There was no way to fight if he wanted me back. To make matters worse, my father was also a powerful judge. So often Maryam had said to me, “Be careful, don’t go away with a stranger.” Was Father the stranger she had been warning me against? Our worst fears were coming true. “Let’s go,” he said. “I'm taking you to Ahvaz.” He took my hand and led me forcefully towards the outside door. “Nahid, Nahid,” Batul and my other classmates were calling after me. I turned around and saw they were frozen in place, too stunned to do anything but call my name. “Does my mother know about this?” I asked once we were on the street. My heart beat violently. “You mean your aunt,” he said. “I just sent a message to her. By the time she knows we'll be on the airplane.” “I want my mother,” I pleaded. “We're going to your mother. I spoke to your principal, you aren’t going to this school any more. You’ll be going to a better one, a private school in Ahvaz.” I tried to free myself but he held my arm firmly and pulled me towards Khanat Abad Avenue. Still holding me with one hand, he hailed a taxi with the other. One stopped and my father lifted me into the back seat and got in next to me, pinning my legs down with his arm. “Let me go,” “Let me go!” I screamed. “Don't put up a fight,” my father said as the cab zigzagged through the hectic Tehran traffic. “It won't do you any good.” Before I knew it we were in the airport and then on the plane. I fell asleep on the plane; when I awoke we were in the Ahvaz airport. I was groggy and disoriented as we rode in a taxi. Flames erupted from a tall tower, burning excess gas from the Ahvaz petroleum fields. A faint smell of petroleum filled the air. We passed narrow streets lined by mud and straw houses and tall date and coconut palms. But Pahlavi Avenue was wide and full of glittering luxury shops and modern, two-storied houses and apartment buildings. The taxi came to a halt in front of a large modern, two-story house, with a wrap-around balcony and two entrances. "We’re home,” Father announced. I felt an urge to bolt, but Father, as if aware of that urge, took hold of my hand, and grasping it firmly, he led me into the house. A woman was sitting in a shady corner of the courtyard holding a glass of lemonade with ice jingling in it. She wore bright red lipstick and her hair in a permanent wave. She looked so different from Maryam who wore no make-up and let her naturally wavy hair grow long. “Here is Nahid, Mohtaram joon, we have our daughter back with us,” my father said to her. Mohtaram, my birth mother. She nodded vaguely and walked over to where we were standing. She took me in her arms, but her embrace was tentative, hesitant. I missed Maryam’s firm, loving arms around me. “Ali, show her to her room,” Mohtaram said to the live-in servant, who came out of a room in the corner. ... The next morning, Ali called me down to breakfast with my parents and siblings. My mother spoke of the day ahead: the ceaseless chores, something to be bought for this child, something else for another. I had just arrived, and yet it seemed that I was the one she was complaining about, as if I had somehow tipped the scales and now she had far too many children. I looked to my siblings for solace. But none let their eyes rest on me except for my sister Pari, who stared at me with curiosity, a look that would blossom into love. “Now all my children are here with us,” Father said, trying to pull me in, his stern face brightening. *** From Chapter 11 It was Friday, the Sabbath in Iran. The voice of the muezzin from a nearby mosque calling people to prayers, Allah of Akbar had finally subsided. A found Pari in her room, getting dressed, putting on a blue dress and gold jewelry. "A suitor is here himself, with his sister,” she said. “Mother and Father made me dress up. They’re going to call me in to meet them. I saw him going into the salon. He looks really tense. You want to see what he looks like?” We crept slowly to the salon and took turns peeking through the large key hole. Our parents were sitting on the maroon velvet sofa. The suitor and his sister occupied the two dark blue matching armchairs. "Look how his ears stick out,” Pari whispered. Everything he did, all his gestures, seemed comic as I saw him through Pari’s eyes. We crept back to Pari’s room as we couldn’t hold back laughter. Moments later Father came to her door. “Come with me,” he said. Pari followed him. The air in Pari’s room still had a faint scent of the flowers she received from Majid. And here she was, pressured to be viewed by a suitor, soon perhaps to be pressured to consider him. Someone she had absolutely no interest in. How ridiculous and unfair it all was. After the visitors left, I heard angry voices on the porch. "I don't want to marry him," Pari said. "Come to your senses,” Father boomed. “Taheri is one of the richest men in Ahvaz. He has a share in the Dorang Petrochemical Company. And he’ll inherit a fortune from his elderly father who has a thriving business in Tehran. And he’s educated, a graduate of the Finance Academy in Tehran.” "He values you so much he’s offering a large sum for your mehrieh,” Mohtaram said. “You can’t throw that away.” "You're trying to sell me." "Pari, don't be so foolish,” Father said. “You aren’t thinking of me at all!” Seconds later Pari was in her room. “What happened?” I asked her. “I’m not going to give in to them,” she said. “I’m in love with Majid.” But Taheri was persistent. Since his parents lived in Tehran, his oldest sister, Behjat, was the one who mainly dealt with our parents. She was a widow and lived with her brother. He planned to sell the shop in Ahvaz and live in Tehran to be near their elderly parents. One afternoon when Behjat was sitting with Mohtaram in the salon, Pari and I went to the big key hole again, looking in and listening. “My brother is an open-minded man,” she was telling Mohtaram. “He doesn’t want a chadori wife. He doesn’t even like me to wear this head scarf. He wants a wife who can dress well, like your daughter. When he first saw your daughter on the way to school, he knew immediately she is the one for him.” Mohtaram came to Pari after Behjat left and they had the same argument as before, with Pari refusing to give in to the marriage proposal. Behjat visited a few days later and Pari and I again took our spot by the hole. This time Father was there with Behjat and Mohtaram. “My brother is threatening suicide,” Behjat said urgently. “He said if your daughter doesn’t consent, he’d rather be dead. Taheri has a romantic soul.” “I admit my daughter is headstrong,” Father said. “Bear with her, she’ll come to her senses.” I felt anxiety in the bottom of my stomach from all the tension building up around Pari. “Pari,” Father called from behind the door. I sat there, wondering what was going to happen. Is Pari going to keep arguing until Father and Mohtaram give up? “Father keeps telling me Taheri is too good a catch,” Pari said, coming into the room. “Why can’t he listen to me? My emotions are all tangled up with Majid. You know what Miss Partovi says, that a good actress should be able to present characters so that all different aspects of them come together in a coherent way. I want that for myself but I feel so fragmented under all the pressure.” What Pari just said only added to my trepidation. It was as if she had turned into a delicate vase that might suddenly break into pieces. *** REVIEWS: NPR: THE WORLD Slected by Christopher Merrill, the Director of Iowa International Writing Program as one of the best four books of 2006. "If you want to know what it was like to grow up in Iran this is the book to read. Rachlin, the author of five previous works of fiction, including the much acclaimed Foreigner, begins her story at the age of nine, when she was taken away from the only mother she had ever known—her aunt, as it happens—and returned to a family in which the prospects of her becoming a writer were, at best, dim. But her portrait of the artist in an Islamic country on the verge of dramatic change is filled with light." Publishers Weekly: "This lyrical memoir by the author of four novels (Foreigner , etc.) tells the story of an Iranian girl growing up in a culture where, despite the Westernizing reforms of the Shah, women had little power or autonomy... Exuding the melancholy of an outsider, this memoir gives American readers rare insight into Iranians' ambivalence toward the United States, the desire for American freedom clashing with resentment of American hegemony." Boston Globe: "Persian Girls, reads like a novel -- suspenseful, vivid, heartbreaking. In "Persian Girls, Rachlin chronicles her choices and those made by her sisters, her mother and her aunts, throwing the door to her family's home wide open. Readers who follow her through will be wiser, and moved." Washington Post: "Nahid Rachlin grew up in Iran in the days of the shah, and the details of her difficult life in this sorrowful memoir reflect the recent history of that conflicted country. The author recalls an idyllic early childhood, growing up with a widowed, childless aunt who considered herself Nahid's real mother. (In a story that could have come out of the Old Testament, Nahid's birth mother, who had four..." The Charlotte Observer: "Iran again looms large on the world stage. Rhetoric conjures fear of radical Islam and flashbacks to the Ayatollah Khomeini-- images that obscure Iran's rich cultural history as Persia and ignore ordinary people torn between old and new, secular and sacred. In her bittersweet memoir, Persian Girls, Iranian American novelist Nahid Rachlin fills in the blanks." |
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