The Walking

by Laleh Khadivi

Iran, 1979: the mullahs have come to power and they want everyone to know. Two young Kurdish brothers, Saladin and Ali, are forced to swear their loyalty to the new regime by taking part in a massacre. In the traumatic aftermath of the killing they flee. For Saladin, the younger, the decision to travel west is exciting; this is the direction of Hollywood, Los Angeles, America. But his euphoria is not enough for the reluctant Ali, who belongs, heart and soul, to the mountain town of his birth.

Genres: Fiction, Iran, Historical Fiction, Middle East, Novels, Contemporary

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran, in 1977. She received her MFA from Mills College and was a Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University. She has been awarded a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEA Literature Fellowship. She has also worked as a director, producer, and cinematographer of documentary films. Khadivi lives in Northern California.

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 5 out of 5]

We must go.

Must we?

Yes. For our dignity. For our future. For a chance. This new regime is not capable of dignity. I heard just the other day, Mehri Khanoum was walking down the streets and they approached her, told her to wipe the vanity off her lips, a razor blade hidden in the napkin...just like that.

I heard, the mass hangings...

I heard a stoning in the square...

Other voices said, Sit for a minute, have a chai, let us think this through.

Iran, 1979. The Shah has fled and the conversations teem with fret. Change is more than in the palace, it's on the road, up the stair, pounding at the door. Change is asking for your papers and your proofs; searching your home for some innocuous item that has suddenly become contraband; searching your eyes for resistance. Panic, like a vapor in the air, ebbs and flows; triaged by eruptions of wheedling ambivalence. Stay. Don't be crazy. Don't be stupid. Don't be wrong. This back-channel hum introduces the conflict and returns, over and over again, to present another shade of argument; another strain of truth. Khadivi conjures the thoughts of the communal Iranian mind in crisis, and from this consciousness emerges the young Saladin Khourdi.

A brutal test of loyalty goes tragically awry, forcing Saladin and his older brother, Ali, to flee their town and enter into the massive migratory movement out of Iran. Saladin thinks of this as his opportunity to travel west, to Hollywood, to the magical world he's visited each week through the auspices of the local cinema. Ali plans only a temporary exodus; a cooling-off period after which he will return to stand his ground. Each boy through his struggle, not only to survive but to honor the love he bears for his sibling while remaining true to his ideal, comes slowly but surely to represent a faction in the warring conscience of the exile.

This is an evocative piece of work. A restless dream of dislocation and sacrifice. As close to exposing the grief of immigration as anything I've read.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I found this short novel uneven, and I wasn’t crazy about the flipping back and forth between present and the period just before the protagonist's present. But I’m glad that I continued with it, because the novel starts working much more often than it falls short. It’s three things: the story of a young Iranian Kurd arriving in and finding his way in America, the story of he and his brother leaving Iran just after the 1979 Revolution and, the best part for me, short first-person-plural sections about Iranians in America, sections that fall between fiction and essay, very original and effective. This is also an increasingly moving novel.

[Maree · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very disjointed, in a way that didn't really work for me. It kept flashing back and forth between Saladin's first few days in America and his reactions to it and his journey with his brother to try to get there. I have to admit not being very patient when I read it; it seemed really slow and there wasn't really much of a plot. But seeing as it's more a book about a cultural experience, there's not always really supposed to be.

The main thing that I remember from this book is the damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of feeling to leaving their home country. A lot of the people who left did so for their own safety, leaving good jobs and their homes behind to go somewhere totally foreign where they empty hospital waste bins rather than being doctors. This isn't a new story. And this book didn't come across a new way to tell it to keep me interested. Saladin wanted to go to America because it was different, but found the only place he fit in was with his people already there.

The only difference was the parts about Americans being anti-Muslim and their lying about their race. I liked how the author pointed out that even though they left the country to escape the very things their leaders were doing, the immigrants were still judged by their leader's actions. If you judge people solely based on who is in power, I kind of shudder to think of what some people might have thought of us during certain times in our history. The joys of democracy is that not everyone will be for whoever is in power, but that we can voice that loud and clear.

[Veena Hari · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To be Iranian was to be a poet."

Haunting. Lyrical. Brutal. Those are the kind of words that fit this book. This book is poetry in prose and with a story that will punch you in the gut and you will know this country , Iran in a way you can never from the newspapers. You will know not only the politics but also the poetics of Iran.

Based on the 1980s Iranian exodus, the story follows two brothers and their longings between the lure of home and the lure of hope. It is the second book of a trilogy by the author about Iran and the Kurdish people.
The themes of identity, loss, belonging and racism run throughout the book quietly but strongly. There were moments I had to pause to just breathe and let the image of what the words evoked sink in and shudder.
Refugees, we hear the word so often that like any word repeated too often it has lost meaning. I feel differently about refugees now. The question most distinct and most difficult to answer was this:
Is it courage to stay or is it courage to leave and the author rather poetically has dedicated this book to both for neither can be easy.

Rating: 4.75/5

[Michel Avenali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review
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Not a simple book to classify or put under a neat list of likes and did not likes. There are some books that we read for fun, or sheer excitement, and some that once you finish the last page leave a sensation akin to a memory or an experience, and that is extremely difficult to define or assign arbitrary stars of rank to. So, the best I can do is say that if you (the reader) are interested in Iranian history or culture, if you enjoyed books like The Kite Runner you will most likely find something of worth in this book as well. The author writes some beautiful sentences and passages, and she gives the most accurate representation of what it feels like for an immigrant newly arrived to the United States that I have ever read. Its main theme is one of migration and what that means; what it can do to a person or to a whole people, to be ripped out of one place you belong to while trying to find a new place to belong.

[Angela Gyurko · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a logical follow on the the last book I read 2 A.M. in Little America, as this one focused entirely on the journey of both one man, and a group of families (narrated in the collective) from Iran to America in the early days of the Iranian Revolution.

Khadivi puts the reader deep in the mind of her protagonists, with the alternating chapter group narrative serving as a context and greek chorus to the upheaval Saladin faces as he navigates his journey.

Nearly painful to read at times, this is one of those not-well-publicized books that should be far more widely read, particularly by those spending a lot of time talking about immigration.

[Denise F · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of two fleeing Kurdish brothers at the time when Khominei was in power in Iran instilling fear and oppressing the people with radical muslim rule. This story is very moving and helps develop an understanding of the heartbreaking journeys taken by people attempting to escape fear, brutality and oppression; having to leave their families, possessions, friends, and culture. Truly humbling......

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautifully crafted book. I learned a lot about Iran in the late 70s and what its people went through. I'm excited to read the other books in the trilogy. One detail: I was disappointed to see that Reagan was given credit for freeing the hostages. It was Carter who met them and brought them home alive.

[Toni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very inconsistent and ultimately disappointing novel about a pair of Iranian brothers in and around the first years of the Islamic revolution. Lots of back and forth in time, some confusing changes in perspective, some memoir-ish essaying included. Maybe I am just reading too many depressing immigration novels lately.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale of two Kurdish brothers fleeing Iran in the wake of the revolution. Well written, but felt too disjointed for my liking, so much so that I wasn't sufficiently engaged to feel invested in the characters' fates.

[Katharine Tarbox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book but disappointing ending. Loved how it was written - very poetic and engaging in that sense. But it felt like only the first half of a story, don’t feel satisfied with the ending or that it concluded anything about the protagonists journey. Would love a part 2.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another depressing book about the Middle East. Well written - captures the sense of dislocation and unconnectedness of the refugee in an unfamiliar culture.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

thoughts coming shortly

[Spanicek · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, that is a huge thing ... when a book sucks me in and keeps me engaged, that is a good sign.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"His eyes were snake set, and the artist could not pull any nobility from the shape of his head" (8).
"the moon was no more than an eyelash in the sky..." (31).
"When he wakes, the surface is farther away, pulled down from his feet like sheets left behind by arisen bedmate" (42).
"This is what does not follow us when we go.
"Our grandmother's tea set, the eight gilded glasses and their saucers, antiques by now. Sentimental, we know, but no other glasses will sound the same when clinked together, no other saucers held the tea my grandfather would pour into a pool and blow on until just cool enough.
"The favorite towel does not come after us. Where did it come from anyway? We can't remember, but it was always there, waiting for us to come out of the bath" (88).
"The walk to the bakery does not follow us. How can it? With that lovely first corner in the shade, its second corner in the early sun, then the long stretch under the patched shadow of the Italian pines that hold the smell of warm yeast in their high, narrow boughs; the smell of hunger and its near-immediate end" (89).
"Things changed quickly, and one minute we understood what had happened--a revolution to depose an unworthy shah, the possibility of a better future--and the next minute an Islamic state and mass arrests" (92). *This makes me want a history lesson.
"Before long the coast was spotted with patches of eucalyptus groves. After the hostage crisis some of us walked through those high cathedrals of soft, peeling bark and took our time to breathe in the spicy smell of their fresh perfume, stretch our shoulders and necks and heads to let the sparkling shadows of their slender leaves dance over our upturned faces" (170-171).
"...he thinks about the years of their making. The years the ewe had to live before its first wool could be shorn or the length of the worm's life before it would unpin its silk. There are the years it took the plant to grow the flower that makes the dye, and the years of the girls and boys who knotted and knotted and knotted as the years passed, and even the years of the patternmaker, who might have spent a lifetime receiving designs from the divine so that here in America the rugs can be sold as if they were pressed out from a machine just yesterday" (177).
"The balcony will have to suffice. Turn it into a paradise of jasmine and honeysuckle and impatiens, a lifted Eden of seeds you planted and watered; a collection of life that exists because of you and you alone" (185).
"Saladin dropped his head and let in the heavy, marvelous thoughts of what it meant to have a brother: one who could walk ahead or behind and also right beside; another kind of self; another who is still you, with you, regardless of his life, obsessions, fates" (203).
"...to the bunk in Calderon's house, where he can sleep easy and orient his soul in the direction of another day, exactly the same, without memory or fear" (205).
"Worse are the shadows that plaster themselves to Saladin at every moment of every day, everywhere he goes. He wishes for a cloudy day to relieve him of this constant dark stamp or some great shade that will erase the print of himself that follows and leads, follows and leads, and does not, except in the cinema, leave him alone" (206).
"Imagine our shock when, after some years, we noticed that we had not at all become Americans in that vein, that there was no chance of such shape-shifting, but instead America, California, Los Angeles, became a bit more like us" (228).
"...mistake the moment for another just like it in Tehran/Bombay/Seoul/Jaurez/Hanoi" (229).
"How can I know you in this new life and how can you know me? We are no longer the man and the woman in the wedding photo. That world no longer exists. We are not the couple in the cinema or at the hospital after the birth of our first child. How far have we traveled that you, my heart, are so unfamiliar to me?" (231).
"To the rhythm of the unoiled swings he recites:
'You think your monarch's palace of more worth
Than him who fashioned it and all the earth.
The home we seek is in eternity;
The truth we seek is like a shoreless sea,
Of which your paradise is but a drop.
The ocean can be yours; why should you stop
Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew?
The secrets of the sun are yours, but you
Content yourself with motes trapped in its beams
Turn to what truly lives, reject what seems--
Which matters more, the body or the soul?
Be whole: desire and journey to the whole'" (234-235).
"We overhear this from some moth or other, and just like that it is impossible to forget; no matter how hard we try to shake it out of our ears, like trapped water it just won't go" (238).
"In the world of the screen they did not see themselves at all and wondered, If I do not exist in this world of shadow and light on the screen, then is that world real? And if it is real, then how can I enter it? And if I enter it, who will I be?" (253).

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Walking, the second book in Khadivi's trilogy, is marked by the same brilliant prose as the first. (See my review of The Age of Orphans.) Where the first followed nearly the entire life of a Kurd who leaves then returns to his homeland as one of the Shah's occupying soldiers, this one takes place only over the course of about one year after the Iranian revolution. A young man (the son of the main character in The Age of Orphans) who has grown up watching American movies and longing to go to the place where they're made is forced to flee suddenly with his brother when the mullahs arrive in his village. He sees it as an opportunity to go to America, to California, while his brother simply longs to return home despite the danger. Chapters alternate between an account of their experiences as they escape (these chapters reminded me of Caroline Brothers's touching Hinterland) and an account of the younger brother's attempt to make his way in Los Angeles. Additional short chapters interspersed throughout provide a kind of collective account of the exile/emigrant experience of Iranian emigrants to the U.S., sometimes told in first person plural, sometimes in third person. Presumably because this story hits closer to home for the author than the first one, some bitterness occasionally creeps in, which is not the best tone for a novel, but that's rare. In general, this is another triumph for Khadivi that should make its readers feel more empathy for refugees from the turmoil of their homelands. Perhaps a sample of the prose is relevant. Here the main character, Saladin, goes to the cinema for the first time: "There was a story in that first film. Men and women needed to escape but were stuck in a town on the edge of the desert and the sea. There was a battle somewhere, yet there were comforting suggestions between the eyes of one of the men and one of the women throughout. The suggestions went from curiosity, to disgust, to some sort of pull Saladin had never seen, to relief and then to a sadness he had watched cloud his maman's eyes. There was a black-skinned man who sat at a black box and made music with his fingers. People sat around the black man and his black music box and drank and talked and cried and listened and waited to fly off in enormous metallic machines. All around and through Saladin marvel pulsed as everyone in the mountain town's first cinema asked themselves, Where? Where? Where? For the first time in their lives the sight of their eyes did not stop at their peripheral vision but extended beyond 180 degrees to wrap all the way back around to the insides of their heads, and then down into their hearts, where they could see, in their imaginations, another world different from their world and the world of their mothers and fathers and all that came before. In the world on the screen they did not see themselves at all and wondered, If I do not exist in this world of shadow and light on the screen, then is that world real? And if it is real, then how can I enter it? And if I enter it, who will I be?"

[outis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why aren't more people reading this book?!?!? I don't hand out 5 stars all that often, but I just couldn't give this one 4 stars without feeling like I was cheating it. Wonderful novel about a brother's forced, but at the same time longed-for, journey from Iran to L.A. in the late 70's/early 80's. Intimate and soaring at the same time, with beautiful passages that make your heart hurt a little, sometimes in a good, hopeful way and others in a despairing way. Non-linear telling, mixed with interlocutory ghosts weaving in the tales of of others who chose (or were forced) to stay or to make similar journeys, blends time and images and leaves you with a real feeling for the lives of those journeying or left behind, the power of family and place and the heartbreak and hope of crossing the threshold from one home to another, from one time to another, from an old self to a new one.

One of my favorite passages from the narration of one who stayed behind: "And when we no longer have the energy to conjure the image of you loving us from afar, missing us, wishing we were there, we imagine the days we had, the afternoons of slippery games in the shallow rivers, the summer nights asleep under the stars, the shape of your face in the mirror, until even those memories grow into fictions, stories from a past for which we will soon no longer have proof." (p. 77) Amazing sense of loss amid the hope of the ones breaking away.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a haunting and beautifully-written novel. Laleh Khadivi's lyrical, poetic style creates a dreamlike beauty that is interwoven like a soft mist into the story that begins in Iran at the time of the Islamic Revolution and ends in America. It is at times a story of the love of family and culture but also of fear, confusion, grief, and displacement...and eventually of redefining oneself in a new country. The novel is, for the most part, the story of Saladin, one of two Iranian brothers who escape from Iran. It is written in the third person, but the voices of other immigrants in America gradually appear, and are an almost ghost-like presence that speak in first, second, and third person. This novel takes its time, moving slowly to not only describe events and experiences, but it also transports the reader there to experience and feel what Saladin and others like him are experiencing and feeling. I could feel their pain and taste their tears...and I shared in their small joys as well. It is an unforgettable novel...a magnificent sculpture in words. I highly recommend it!

[Ilyhana Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Walking" is the second book in a proposed trilogy, the first being "The Age of Orphans". Both of these books trace the lives of several generations of people of Kurdish descent, their struggle against oppression, their flight to freedom and the consequent effort to simply survive.
The second book has less poetic appeal but this seems somehow necessary, as it is very much a story of spareness, stark survival.
I truly admire this author's work, her literary skill, her courage to tell a story that people would rather not hear.
I like the way the story is shaped, moving back and forth in time, until time coalesces into its ultimate moment.
These stories are an education in the little known Kurdish culture, and the experience of being an exile of Iran.
The misplaced perceptions of both the "illegal immigrant" and those he now lives amongst are acutely contrasted, neither being able to really see each other; one dreaming a Hollywood version of America and the American seeing a fundamentalist Muslim in every Iranian.

[Judith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I selected this book because I had so enjoyed the author's first one: "The Age of Orphans", but they are as different as night and day. I couldn't even finish "The Walking", though technically speaking it was an exciting story and should have held my attention. Two young boys are forced to flee Iran at the outset of the 1979 revolution after a gruesome execution in which they are unwilling observers. Saladin and his brother Ali journey through deserts, cross the ocean, before Saladin lands in Los Angeles alone. It sounds thrilling and it should be, but it seems like it's all been said and done before. If you read and enjoyed "The Kite Runner," or "Not Without My Daughter" or " A Thousand Splendid Suns" or "The Age of Orphans" , you can skip this one. If you can't get enough of this genre, you might really enjoy this one.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exile and immigration, less satisfying as a story

This "novel" is less a story than it is a reflection on the state of being an exile from your "own" country and an immigrant into another country. Especially when the country you left, in fact just one village in that country, had been your family's home for many generations.

That wasn't my experience at all growing up. My ancestors lived all over the US and Europe, each generation in a new city, so in that way this book was interesting for me. I begin to understand that for many people in this world, moving to a new country, or even just a long way away from your childhood home, can be wrenching.

But in the end, I read for good stories and interesting, believable characters. This book was not intended as that kind of novel.

[Natasha Hagen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book. This book made me realize how precious one's life is. Some people struggle on a day to day basis to survive. The actual story was easy to read. You experience life thru the eyes of the main character and all of his struggles, losses and happiness. The only thing that I did not like about the book was that it just ended. Once the character reaches his destination in life you keep waiting for that big ending that never comes and the book just ends.

I loved the fact that its a soft cover paperback, it makes it easy to hold and read. Something strange kept happening while I was reading, some of the pages kept coming undone as I turned the pages. It was nothing serious, but rather annoying.

[Noralo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I want a book to be. Measured, thoughtful, about one person and about every person.

Fast read but not a page-turner by any means. This is an extremely patient book that explores what it means to leave a home that hurt you, and what it means to arrive in a place that doesn't want you. By the time Khadivi turns the novel from micro to macro, I was invested enough in Saladin's story for it to be powerful to consider that this story wasn't just about Saladin, but the experience of a country and a culture. At that point it became clear that it wouldn't matter where Saladin's story ended or what the outcome was, plotwise. I knew Khadivi would bring the novel to a close in a meditative fashion, and she really did deliver. I loved this book from start to finish.

[Pamela Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book! It should be required reading for all teenagers in America! Well told frightening story of two Iranian Kurdish brothers who escape with their "lives" from Iran in the late 70's when the Shah came to power. One brother wanted nothing else than to come to Hollywood and live the American dream while the other longed for returning to their homeland. The narrative moves back and forth between Iran and California and places in between. A tribute to all immigrants and their struggles. I remember my "family" in the 90's in San Francisco - the Ghorbani brothers (Majid and Hamid) whose father (smart man!) made sure his young sons were in America before the violence in their homeland grew worse! Please read - a powerful look at this massive historic migration!

[Lissa00 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel, follows two brothers as they escape Iran and flee to unknown parts. One of the brothers eventually winds up in the U.S. and has to reconcile the world he imagined with what was instead waiting for him. It took me a little while to get used Laleh Khadevi's writing style, but once I got into this book I could not put it down. The book alternates not only between the characters current struggles as a recent immigrant and his past life in Iran but there are also chapters that detail the common immigrant experience. It was both eye opening and heart wrenching and I am not sure that I have read anything like it.

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about two brothers who try to escape during the Taliban takeover. His dream was to get to la where the movies are . His mother always talked about and gave him money to go see. It's interesting to see the states through the eyes of a foreigner whose culture was vastly different. The time switches from past to future until you finally find out how he got there. The characters and descriptions of the locations weren't well developed.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

SALADIN always wanted to leave Iran. He does in 1979 when the revolution begins. He walks with immigrants through countless dangers. He eventually boards a ship and arrives in Los Angeles. He finds hostility due to the hostage crisis back in his homeland. Does he find a new home in this new city?

Khadivi writing is flowing.

QUESTION: When did authors give up quotation marks?? I need to see them as a reader. (That's the retired teacher in me!!)

[Judith Yeabsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really disliked the style of writing. It was really disjointed and the author goes on long rants to "create atmosphere" and to bring in general immigrant experience rather than just focusing on the central characters. Should have dumped it after a chapter but found I actually did want to find out what happened to the two brothers exiled from Iran. The story itself could have been fabulous for me if written differently.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a Kurd and his brother who leave Iran during the 1979 Revolution. Informational, interesting.
really more 4.5 than 4.
I liked this book Very much, and really looked forward to spending time with it on the bus.
The only thing that kept it from being a "5" for me was that it became to inner-directed, too reflective for me, but the fault therein lies with me, not the writer.

[Rachel Oppenheim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book and I learned a lot about the Iranian Revolution and its effect on individuals & families. However, I thought that the two main characters (brothers) could have been more developed. I would have been more invested in their outcomes if I cared more about them.