Copyright © 2005, 2011 by Nahid Mozaffari
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-61145-585-4
To Iranian writers everywhere
and to
Moez Nosrat Mozaffari
1946-2001
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Nahid Mozaffari
PROSE: PART ONE
MAHMUD DOWLATABADI
The Mirror
HUSHANG GOLSHIRI
The Victory Chronicle of the Magi
AHMAD MAHMUD
Excerpt from Scorched Earth
ESMAIL FASSIH
Excerpt from Sorraya in a Coma
SIMIN DANESHVAR
Ask the Migrating Birds
HADI KHORSANDI
The Eyes Wont Take It
NASSIM KHAKSAR
The Grocer of Kharzeville
IRAJ PEZESHKZAD
Delayed Consequences of the Revolution
TAGHI MODARRESSI
Excerpt from The Book of Absent People
PROSE: PART TWO
SHAHRNUSH PARSIPUR
Excerpt from Women Without Men
MONIRU RAVANIPUR
Satan’s Stones
REZA FARROKHFAL
REZA DANESHVAR
Mahbubeh and the Demon Ahl
GOLI TARAGHI
In Another Place
BEHNAM DAYANI
Hitchcock and Agha Baji
FARKHONDEH AGHAI
A Little Secret
ASGHAR ABDOLLAHI
A Room Full of Dust
GHAZALEH ALIZADEH
Excerpt from The Trial
SEYYED EBRAHIM NABAVI
First Love
SHAHRIYAR MANDANIPUR
Shatter the Stone Tooth
GHAZI RABIHAVI
White Rock
FARIDEH KHERADMAND
Peace of Night
POETRY
Introduction: Ahmad Karimi Hakkak
AHMAD SHAMLU
In This Blind Alley
Love Song
End of the Game
Morning
SIMIN BEHBAHANI
A Man with a Missing Leg
I Write, I Cross Out
If the Snake Is Domestic
And Behold
It’s Time to Mow the Flowers
MEHDI AKHAVAN SALESS
I Love You, Ancient Homeland
ESMAIL KHOI
Lyrical
Outlandia
An Allusion
Bad Boy
NADER NADERPUR
A Spring Tale
M. R. SHAFI’I KADKANI
Poetry — I
Poetry — II
Prayer of Sudden Dread
MANUCHEHR ATASHI
A Woman Out of Memory
Visitations
MOHAMMAD ALI SEPANLU
Miniature
The Terrace of Dead Fishermen
The Green Bull
YADOLLAH ROYAI
Martyr’s Tombstone
Tomb of Manichaeus
Labial Verse 67
Labial Verse 181
REZA BARAHENI
In the New Place, or Exile, a Simple Matter
MOHAMMAD MOKHTARI
From the Other Half
SHAMS LANGERUDI
Requiem
Brands
PARTOW NURIALA
I Am Human
MIRZA AGHA ASGARI
Amorous
MINA ASADI
Wednesday in March
Wakeful Reveries
ROYA HAKAKIAN
I Must Bury Him
ZIBA KARBASI
The Republic of Hate
MAJID NAFICY
The Little Messenger
ABBAS SAFFARI
Saturday Night Dinner
GRANAZ MUSSAVI
The Ax
Afghan Woman
The Sale
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI
Selections from Walking with the Wind
PERMISSIONS
SUGGESTED READING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PEN American Center in New York was the place of inspiration for this project. The occasion was a visit to New York by several Iranian writers in 1999, and a series of discussions with American writers about the difficulties of being translated (well) and commercially published in the United States. With professional dedication, human compassion, and much patience, many of the current and former staff and several PEN members helped nurture the far-fetched idea of publishing an overview of contemporary Iranian literature in the United States into a reality. Sincere thanks are due to Betty Fussell, Karen Kennerly, Michael Roberts, Larry Siems, Anna Kushner, Esther Allen, Linda Morgan, Christie Fountain, Siobhan Dowd, Jake Krielkamp, Diana Ayton-Shenker, and Elham Kalantar. Betty Fussell and Karen Kennerly spent many hours reading and editing the stories and poems with insight, wit, patience, and perseverance. The Iranian literary community cannot thank them enough. We are also very grateful to Ervand Abrahamian and Behruz Moazami for their guidance and support throughout the project.
We would like to thank Jeri Laber and the members of the Association of American Publishers’ International Freedom to Publish Committee for their support and for their ongoing efforts in encouraging the publication of literature from other languages as well as in defending freedom of expression and publication wherever it is threatened.
Many thanks are due to the New York State Council on the Arts for awarding us a translation grant in 2001.
Leyla Ebtehaj was a close collaborator in reading, translating, editing, researching, and selecting stories. She provided invaluable help throughout the project. This book would not have been possible without her. Sara Khalili provided consistent and invaluable help, not only with her excellent translations, but also with biographies and the bibliography. Many thanks to Deborah Tall and Sholeh Wolpé for sharing their talents as poets and writers and providing excellent editorial assistance. Others who read and helped select stories, provided us with guidance in the selection process, or helped in various other ways were: Mohsen Ashtiyani, Reza Baraheni, Hamid Dabashi, Reza Daneshvar, Leyli Dariush, Sheida Dayani, Kuross Esmaili, Massumeh Farmanfar-maian, Reza Farokhfal, Fahimeh Gooran, Farangis Habibi, Hushang Keshavarz, Mehdi Khorrami, Mandana Kolbadi, Frank Lewis, Farzaneh Milani, Jilla Moazami, Mahnaz Moazami, Nasser Mohajer, Azar Naficy, Matt Noel, Nasser Pakdaman, Nasrin Rahimieh, Frederic Ramade, Saba Ruhani, Faraj Sarkuhi, Sussan Shahabi, Goli Taraghi, Sholeh Vatanabadi, Natalie Willens, and Hura Yavari.
In Iran, Farkhondeh Hajizadeh and Shahriyar Mandani
pur, themselves successful and busy writers and editors of journals, gave us invaluable help in the selection process.
Mahmud Dowlatabadi, Javad Mojabi, Mohammad Sepanlu, Simin Behbahani, Karim Emami, Farzaneh Taheri, Moniru Ravanipur, Payman Soltani, Pejman Soltani, and many others in the literary community provided valuable guidance, suggestions, and comments.
Many thanks are due to Abbas of Magnum Photos for saving the day. We cannot express enough gratitude and appreciation to our families, who were supportive and patient throughout the project.
Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Richard and Jeannette Seaver and the rest of the gracious staff at Arcade Publishing. We are very lucky to have the opportunity to work with people whose courage, principles, and dedication we so deeply respect.
INTRODUCTION
We are writers. By this we mean that we write our feelings, imagination, thoughts, and scholarship in various forms and publish them. It is our natural, social, and civil right to see that our writing — be it poetry or fiction, drama or filmscript, research or criticism, or the translation of works written by other writers of the world — reach the public in a free and unhampered manner. It is not within the capacity of any person or organization to create obstacles for the publication of these works, under whatever pretext these may be.
— The Declaration of 134 Iranian Writers, 1994
Literature is the question minus the answer.
— Roland Barthes
I don’t know why, but every time I’d read a book, I’d end up wanting to fall in love.
— Seyyed Ebrahim Nabavi in “First Love”
In the last twenty-five years traumatic events — a revolution, a long bloody war, political purges, economic hardship, religious repression, and censorship — have taken place in Iran. Nevertheless, a cultural revival is occurring in literature, art, music, and cinema. Western audiences have observed only part of this surge of creativity through their recent fascination with Iranian cinema. Appreciating the breadth, creativity, and new directions in poetry and fiction has been more difficult, because this literature has not been available to the general reader in translation. What does exist in translation is mainly for academic consumption. Many writers and poets in Iran feel strongly that their work is not benefiting from the level of international scrutiny, appraisal, and criticism that makes any national literature part of world literature.
The PEN Anthology is a step toward remedying this situation by presenting a sampling, or, as best conveyed by the Persian word golchine — a bouquet — of some of the best poems, short stories, and excerpts from novels written inside and outside of Iran since the revolution of 1979. These stories and poems, written by over fifty men and women from three generations, were chosen by Iranian writers and critics themselves solely on the basis of literary quality and translatability. Political, social, or gender considerations did not influence the decision-making process. For the Western reader, this collection provides a window into a largely undiscovered branch of world literature that will we hope bring literary enjoyment as well as a better understanding of a rich and complex culture. It is our hope that this volume will also serve to awaken further interest in the more extensive translation and publication of Iranian writers and poets.
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Classical Persian literature is a mosaic of the elaborate poetry and prose (treatise and discourse) of the court tradition, mystical devotional poetry; philosophical and love poetry; epics, legends, and travel literature. For centuries, poetry prevailed over prose. In fact, the towering figures of Persian literature who have been translated and known in the West have been the major classical poets of Iran such as Ferdowsi (940-1020), Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), Saadi, (1220-1290), Mowlana Jallaleddin Rumi (1207-1273), and Hafez (1320-1390).
From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, Iranian literature underwent a vast transformation, partly because of contact with the West and Western literature and partly because of changes within the country. The most important internal stimulus for change was the modernist and antidespotic movement to transform Iran from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. Although the Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) did not ultimately achieve its long-term political goals of establishing a functioning parliament, the rule of law, and a lasting democracy, it did succeed in changing society in other fundamental ways. Educational reforms, the establishment of a vibrant press, and the growth of critical public debates about politics, religion, and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries gave intellectuals in the nascent middle class new channels to communicate with the population at large. The use of new genres and the employment of simpler language, as well as increased literacy rates, expanded the audience for literature, and turned writers not only into observers and critics of society but mouthpieces for the people. Writers began to use literature to communicate with one another and with readers about social and political issues and about backwardness, identity, and nationalism. Literature, including fiction and poetry, came to be regarded as an instrument for educating and enlightening the population. Much of Iranian literature became a litérature engagée, and thus began a long struggle between the successive dictatorships, each with their own forms of censorship, and the intellectual, literary, and artistic communities. During certain periods, when the power of the dictatorship and the censor waned — for example, from the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941 up to the CIA and British-backed coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953 is one instance — the literary community thrived, and larger numbers of people wrote and read and participated in the prevailing social discourses.
From the early 1960s, with the growth of the nationalist and leftist dissent against the royal dictatorship, the sense of political commitment and social responsibility of the writer as intellectual increased. The solid connection between “westernization” and “modernity” began to come under question by some writers and intellectuals, who felt that under the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-1979), the identity of Iranian culture was being undermined by the emulation of the West in most aspects of life (except, of course, democracy). Thus, many “nativist” and “nostalgic” works began to be written in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these stories, essays, and poems reveal the gray area that exists between questioning the wholesale adoption of westernization on the one hand and questioning modernity in the form of idealizing and romanticizing ideology, tradition, or religion on the other. This literary and cultural movement also coincided with the growth of the leftist, nationalist, and religious opposition to the royal regime. Since poverty, injustice, and oppression of the many by the few became the main themes of poetry and prose, the period before the 1979 revolution has been called the high age of “committed” literature by literary historians. The state responded with stricter censorship, and by imprisoning, torturing, and executing political activists and writers. By the late 1970s literary events were indistinguishable from political gatherings, and poetry and story readings became opportunities for protesting censorship and repression.1
WRITERS, GENRES, AND THEMES
Undoubtedly influenced by translations of European novels such as Dumas’s The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and James Morier’s The Adventures of Haji Baba of Isfahan in the 1890s, the first genres in fiction to succeed in attracting readers were historical novels and satirical portraits.2 Many of the historical novels dealt with Iran’s pre-Islamic history, or other themes of lost glory, and expressed the emerging nationalist spirit of the times. Satirical portraits were popular as a way to indulge in social or political critiques with less fear of retribution from contemporary political or religious leaders.
In 1921, M. A. Jamalzadeh (1892-1997) wrote the first collection of short stories in Persian literature entitled Once Upon a Time. These “realistic” stories are told using colorful elements of local culture both in the choice of language and in the depiction of characters. From the 1920s onward,
novels, short stories, and poetry began to deal with more social themes, such as the problems of the village and the city, modernity, and women as victims of displacement.3 Romances and adventures continued to be published in serial form in magazines.
The towering figure of Persian prose fiction for much of the twentieth century has been Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951). He wrote short stories, novellas, and novels as well as nonfiction. His masterly satirical portraits of people from every social group, his depiction of the contradictions that exist in societies where tradition and modernity coexist, and his philosophical and psychological perspective, made him the best-known and most translated modern Iranian writer. Particularly notable is his experimental surrealist novel The Blind Owl. Most of Hedayat’s work has been translated in English and other languages. Hedayat influenced generations of writers that followed, including Bozorg Alavi, Sadegh Chubak, and Ebrahim Golestan.
After 1953 — the year of the CIA-sponsored royalist coup and the end of the short experiment with democratization in Iran — disappointed intellectuals and writers turned to new sources of inspiration for their work. American writers like William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck were read and applauded; Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus also appealed to those interested in philosophical and political approaches to literature. Franz Fanon and other third world writers who addressed the various aspects of colonial domination were read, and their ideas were adapted to the Iranian situation. Socialist realism became a favored genre to explore social and political subjects. The lives of peasants and the urban poor, social injustice, cultural and political alienation were common themes in the work of Chubak, Behazin, Afghani, Al-Ahmad, Simin Daneshvar (the first female novelist), Mahmud Dowlatabadi, Hushang Golshiri, Ahmad Mahmud and Jamal Mirsadeghi.
The modernist poetry of Nima Yushij (1895-1960), Forugh Far-rokhzad (1935-1967), Ahmad Shamlu (1926-2000) Mehdi Akhavan Saless (1928-1990), and Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) completely changed the form, structure, content, and language of Persian poetry from the early twentieth century. This topic will be addressed in Dr. Karimi Hakkak’s introduction to the poetry section.