Us & Them

by Bahíyyih Nakhjavání

Lili and Goli have argued endlessly about where their mother, Bibijan, should live since the Iranian Revolution. They disagree about her finances too, which remain blocked as long as she insists on waiting for her son--still missing but not presumed dead yet--to return from the Iran-Iraq war. But once they begin to "share" the old woman, sending her back and forth between Paris and Los Angeles, they start asking themselves where the money might be coming from. Only their Persian half-sister in Iran and the Westernized granddaughter of the family have the courage to face up to the answers, and only when Bibijan finally relinquishes the past can she remember the truth.

A story mirrored in fragmented lives, Us&Them explores the ludicrous and the tragic, the venal and the generous-hearted aspects of Iranian life away from home. It is a story both familial and familiar in its generational tensions and misunderstandings, its push and pull of obligations and expectations. It also highlights how "we" can become "them" at any moment, for our true exile is alienation from others. Acclaimed author Bahiyyih Nakhjavani offers a poignant satire about migration, one of the vital issues of our times.

Genres: Fiction, Iran, Contemporary

272 pages, Paperback

Published June 5, 2018

About the author

Bahiyyih Nakhjavání is a Persian writer educated in the United Kingdom and the United States. After teaching literature at universities in North America and Europe, she came to live in France where she has been conducting workshops in creative writing/reading for the past decade. Bahiyyih Nakhjavání's books, both fiction and non-fiction, have been translated into many languages. In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège.

Reviews

[Fionnuala]

When I finished reading Us & Them, my first impulse was to turn to the first page and begin it again, so mesmerized was I by the story and the telling of it. I immediately acted on that impulse and was rewarded in the most perfect way: what I hadn't realised when I'd initially read the opening pages was that they might serve just as easily for a conclusion as they do for an introduction. They work both ways, like almost everything else in this very wise and beautifully written book: the title 'Us & Them' can be interpreted as its mirror image 'Them & Us'; the writer can be the reader, and the reader, the writer.

The first chapter opens with the words: We had been expecting this book to come out for quite some time. Such an obvious subject, just waiting to be exploited.. and closes with the following: If we wanted the world to know about us, we had to do something about it ourselves. We had to...author our own stories.
What is happening here, the reader wonders? Is the reader reading what 'we' authored? Who is 'we' in the first place? It's a puzzle the reader solves little by little, as if piecing together the shards of a broken mirror in order to construct this story of mirror images.

That first person plural point of view, that 'we' voice which is present at the beginning, dominates half of the book in alternate sections. Using the first person plural is a way of writing that is particularly Persian, the reader is told at the beginning: We use this point of view to show our modesty, to demonstrate our humility. At times, we have to admit, we also use it to evade responsibility. But that is another issue… and the 'we' voice sidesteps neatly in the first of many sidesteps. The reader, and the writer too perhaps, can only smile at such elegant trickery, such obvious satire. It is the softest soft-shoe shuffle ever.

But shuffling is a word that is used in this story in its primary meaning too; alongside the many conmen in these pages, there are elderly men and women for whom 'home' is something long ago and far away, but for whom an alternative 'far away' has provided a new 'home'. They may not fully master the language or the cultural references of the new place but they are grateful to call it 'home', and so they shuffle to Starbucks or some other worldwide coffee chain to meet with one another instead of gathering at the old familiar coffeehouse of their former lives. Sitting on plastic chairs, they reminisce about the long ago time, the time of the Shah before the Revolution. And they gossip about their relatives, near and distant, about friends of friends, those in exile and those still at 'home', the ones in prison and the ones who are dead.

In the course of the gossip, the reader gets to hear snippets about the characters who feature in the alternate half of the book: Bibi, and her exiled daughters Goli and Lili. Their story is mainly told in a different voice however, a third person point of view, which makes them 'Them'. But their lives are not dissimilar to the other exiled lives the 'we' voice tells about. And yet they are different, and their fate tugs at the reader's heart in a unique way; Bibi's stoic bravery, Goli's mangled Americanisms, Lili's impassioned rebellion, the reader experiences it all directly: we become them.

But this is satire after all, so we laugh as we read. In fact we laugh a lot. And it's ok to laugh because the author invites us to snigger alongside the characters, and to weep beside them too.

Because there is no 'Them' in the end. There is only 'Us'.
……………………………………………

Author's Website

Here's Bahíyyih Nakhjavání, writing in the Stanford University Press blog about the concept of being 'alien':

I first came across the word “alien” in a non-stellar context when I had to sign a card identifying myself as one, soon after the Immigrants Act of 1962 was passed in the UK. Even though my family had been the only Persians living in Uganda, I had never felt like an alien growing up there. But the sense of being one came home to me forcefully in cozy Rutland. I walked into the local constabulary of the small market town thinking I was a fourteen year old human being; I left, duly registered, feeling as though I had just been dropped out of a flying saucer from outer space.

Like many other adolescents, I wandered in elliptical orbit after that till marriage transformed me from one of “them” into one of “us,” and I graduated from being an Iranian student to becoming a UK-citizen-by-marriage. And my induction into this select club happened once again in Kampala, Uganda, the town of happy childhood, the place where my grandfather would be buried soon afterwards, his Jewish Iraqi bones enriching forever the blood-red soil of the high Kikaaya hill.

But Uganda was to haunt me some years later, as I stood in a queue at Pearson International Airport, waiting to pass through Canadian immigration. By then, although the passport had stuck, the marriage had not, and having entered the US on one visa, I was obliged to leave it to apply for another, as a divorcée. However, as bizarre as American logic seemed to me, even then, it was nothing compared to the Canadian sequel waiting for me on the other side of the border.

By a stroke of fate, my arrival in Toronto coincided with that of some two thousand Indians fleeing Uganda from Idi Amin. And given my links to that country, the immigration officer behind the desk, whose nametag clearly announced Polish ancestry, was understandably suspicious. So I was hauled to one side and subjected to a cross-examination. Who was I? Where was I coming from, and where did I really belong? Was I an illegal immigrant...

Read more of this article here

Another blogpost from the author on the divisive rhetoric of our times:
The Language of Nowhere

Here's an interview with the author posted in the EuropeNow blog of the Council for European Studies (CES):
http://www.europenowjournal.org/2017/...

[Fionnuala]

16/04/2017
Author's Website

25/02/2017
From the author of Us&Them: A Novel, another excellent blogpost on the divisive rhetoric of out times:
The Language of Nowhere


09/02/2017
Us&Them: A Novel will be out in April. I'm making it a priority.

Here's the author, Bahíyyih Nakhjavání, writing in the Stanford University Press blog about the concept of being 'alien':

I first came across the word “alien” in a non-stellar context when I had to sign a card identifying myself as one, soon after the Immigrants Act of 1962 was passed in the UK. Even though my family had been the only Persians living in Uganda, I had never felt like an alien growing up there. But the sense of being one came home to me forcefully in cozy Rutland. I walked into the local constabulary of the small market town thinking I was a fourteen year old human being; I left, duly registered, feeling as though I had just been dropped out of a flying saucer from outer space.

Like many other adolescents, I wandered in elliptical orbit after that till marriage transformed me from one of “them” into one of “us,” and I graduated from being an Iranian student to becoming a UK-citizen-by-marriage. And my induction into this select club happened once again in Kampala, Uganda, the town of happy childhood, the place where my grandfather would be buried soon afterwards, his Jewish Iraqi bones enriching forever the blood-red soil of the high Kikaaya hill.

But Uganda was to haunt me some years later, as I stood in a queue at Pearson International Airport, waiting to pass through Canadian immigration. By then, although the passport had stuck, the marriage had not, and having entered the US on one visa, I was obliged to leave it to apply for another, as a divorcée. However, as bizarre as American logic seemed to me, even then, it was nothing compared to the Canadian sequel waiting for me on the other side of the border.

By a stroke of fate, my arrival in Toronto coincided with that of some two thousand Indians fleeing Uganda from Idi Amin. And given my links to that country, the immigration officer behind the desk, whose nametag clearly announced Polish ancestry, was understandably suspicious. So I was hauled to one side and subjected to a cross-examination. Who was I? Where was I coming from, and where did I really belong? Was I an illegal immigrant...

Read more of this article here

Read the first chapter of Us&Them: A Novel here:
Immigration

Link to Waterstones Us &Them: An Evening with Bahiyyih Nakhjavani and Omid Djalili on Tuesday 16th May 19:00 - 20:30 in London.

[notgettingenough]

The lack of stars is because I am not the person to decide how many this should get. Some books one hates but can be confident that it is a bad book. Not the case here, it isn't that I think it's a bad book. I don't know what it is.

I'm afraid I have let Fionnuala down, agreeing to read this book she highly favours. After 100 tortuous pages I have decided not to finish it. There was a clue. I've been reading a lot over the last months until suddenly I was given The Leopard, and Us and Them arrived in the mail. They have made my reading life so miserable that I have started watching TV shows on my small screen rather than spend an evening with either book. I almost never watch TV! What am I doing?? And I have hundreds of wonderful books on my shelves all saying 'read me'.

Life's too short. The gift of reading might be the thing that we are likely last to lose, but lose it we will. And I have so much I'd like to get through.

In the case of Us & Them, I won't even say it's not you, it's me. To me it had the alienness of My Name is Red. In that case I did blame myself, but that was because I thought the first of Pamut's I read was a masterpiece. Here I have a blank past.

Sorry Fionnula. The good news is that a local library in Adelaide now has a copy of this book as I asked them to purchase it. I hope others will find it more rewarding.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ambitious book that tries to tell all the stories at the same time. All the stories of Iranians exiled all over the world. At first the “we” perspective seems impersonal, but you soon realize that it's telling a series of representative stories, and that they revolve around a central Iranian family: a mother who is pining for her son (probably dead from the war), a daughter who is assimilated into LA culture (dyed blonde, plastic surgery, etc.), a more rebellious younger daughter who lives in Paris as an artist, a dead husband, a younger step-daughter who doubles as a servant, and some opportunistic men.

The perspective keeps changing so you see them from inside as well as outside. You see them from unnamed strangers’ points of view. And in each chapter, you catch glimpses of the central characters on the outskirts, like a fractured mirror ball in which you can make out your nose or your mouth, but mostly the jumbled bits and pieces of the room. She also constantly shifts the facts so that in one story the mother is going to a reunion in California, but in another they are arriving in Australia. In one the cultural association is in Italy, and in another it is in Paris, and in still another, it is in Barcelona. The details are always multiplied and substituted, they stand in for the larger picture where the stories still hold a common core: the Iranian experience.

You soon realize that the “us” of the novel is the Iranian diaspora, but that the “them” is also Iranians, at least for most of these chapters. This juggling act of perspectives is really about how Iranian’s own prejudices and views of each other is sometimes their biggest downfall, dragging each other down.

People think that Persians are good at plots. They think we are masters of storytelling, the "and then and then and then" of Scheherazade. But it's metaphorical logic we prefer. Metaphors are our forte. We love the way metaphors and similes shift and change, ignoring consequence, reversing temporal direction. p.114

Many of the chapters read like short stories or poems. The details are specific, yet always a metaphor of something larger. For example, in the chapter “Green”, the title originally refers to the emeralds the mother has carried with her, given to her by her late husband. But soon we see the meaning of the emeralds has changed as they are used to purchase the father’s escape as well as the mother's slow denial of her son's death. “Green” becomes a symbol of money now, of the exchange of capital for hopes and dreams. Then we see that the mother exchanges those emeralds for the hope of seeing her son again in LA, but it was a trick, a bait and switch. Instead of her son, she was met with a green card, a green card that she doesn’t even want. “Green” now represents the in-limbo state of being stuck in a foreign land. Many would die for a green card, yet the mother doesn't want to live here, with no hope of seeing her son. Lastly, green also represents the color of her eyes, which we see are blinded by hope, the emerald stone that blocks her vision. Green as in “green behind the ears”, as in the first shoots of green in spring, as in hope, but sometimes behind that hope lies self delusion.

[maria coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

Que livro emocionante e triste. Adorei a escrita depois que me acostumei, com certeza precisa ser relido.

[Emanuela Siqueira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro cheio de pontas como poderia ser as histórias de povos em diáspora. Em meio a saudosismo e assimilações a Bahíyyih estetiza como é sempre ser uma iraniana em qualquer lugar do mundo, mesmo nunca ter vivido de fato no Irã. Deboche e bom humor permeiam as críticas de nós em relação e eles e esse jogo de um e outro que sempre acontece quando o ocidente olha pro oriente.

[alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 estrelas

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult novel to categorise or rate. It is unique. It tells the story basically of a Persian/Iranian family who have fled Iran after the Iran/Iraq war. Goli lives in California with her husband Bahman and children. The more radical sister, Lili lives in Paris. Their mother Bibijan would like to remain in Iran waiting for her son, Ali to return from the war. It has been 20 years. And there is the half sister who cares for Bibi, and Goli’s children. Bibi is ‘shared’ between the 2 sisters. Then there is the Iranian son in law who cheats his wife. Interspersed with their story are chapters about Iranians who have fled around the world.
The story is largely a satire of these people, a satire based on stereotypes seen from the inside. The courteous insincerity and venal natures of many of the characters are laid bare. But there is also fear and a lack of belonging which evoke sympathy. The use of the first person pronoun we, in the interspersed chapters is explained but it does take quite a lot of getting used to.
In London I taught a number of Persian children and got to know their families quite well. I wish I had read this novel before knowing them. It explains a lot.
I hesitate to recommend this novel widely but I am glad I read it.

[Um mar de fogueirinhas · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5, achei a história de Bibi e das filhas confusa e cansada.

[Gisela Hafezparast · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointed in this book. The style of writing, especially using "Us" even when only talking about one person is REALLY irritating. At first I wondered if it should be representing "us Iranian immigrants" but if it is, it isn't working. Whilst from my own experience some of the ways people act and or speak are very familiar, I feel the book is full of stereotypes and doesn't delve deep enough in the immigrant experience. Also, this story mainly talks about those Iranian immigrants who benefitted greatly from the Shah's regime and were able, often by robbing others, to take their money out of the country and build their lives comfortably in the US. No mention of those immigrants who fled the regime after the revolution, ordinary Iranians, who mainly only came with their a few belongings, their skills and ambitions as well as their hope of giving their children and family members a free life that is no longer possible in Iran and whom the pre-revolution and Parlevi-friendly immigrants don't tend to want to know.
It drew on the difficulty of coping in a very different culture, whilst still being judged by Iranians in line with Iranian cultural values, but this should have been delved in much more than it did. Real missed opportunity.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um livro complexo, que mostra bastante sobre a cultura iraniana, a diáspora mundo afora. Um tema interessantíssimo e importante.
A tradução, embora tenha encontrado certas pérolas (bruaca, para descrever uma velha senhora), deixou a desejar, trazendo estranhamentos e traduções simplistas que mais parecem automáticas. Faltou avaliar expressões e naturalizar o português e muita coisa passou batida pela revisão, prejudicando a nuance entre o que autora/tradutora quiseram dizer. Uma pena.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 I enjoyed the basic premise of a story of an Iranian immigrant family separated across continents and countries and their attempts to assimilate or maintain their identity. There were also several passages with wonderful metaphors and language. I just wish the plot had a some more exciting events in it. It was missing some action.

[Juliana · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5
Uau... O outro livro dela é um dos meus favoritos da vida, agora esse... foi tão difícil de ler.... Nossa... Eu terminei por pura força de vontade. O livro pareceu extremamente confuso e várias partes desnecessárias. Ótima premissa, mas execução extremamente bagunçada.

[Spiegel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apesar de ser um livro diferente d'O Alforje, tem uma certa semelhança devido aos múltiplos portos de vista. Bem interessante o recurso de linguagem do nós. Até então só conhecia o majestático. E falando nisso, zero pena do pessoal por ter de parar de comprar Gucci.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful series of interconnected stories about one Persian family. I hated to come to the end.

[Alessandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um livro de leitura fácil, mas irregular. O capítulo em que Bibi está em uma praça em Paris mostra o quão forte este livro sobre a diáspora iraniana poderia ter sido, mas não foi.

[rafalys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leitura fav de 2023

[Helya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Us & Them” hits very close to home. It’s a weird feeling to read the clash of your two environment’s cultural differences fictionalized the way it is. Some of the parts were way too familiar. For some reason that has to do with my thoughts and experience with Persian culture, I didn’t enjoy reading this book. I think it’s a feeling that other Persians will certainly understand. I loved the author’s style of writing and the way it became poetic in its long sentences and Persian in its first-person-plural—how often do you see that? However, I thought the narration became inconsistency/improperly unclear in certain places, however poetically that may have been intended.

[Gabriela Rhoden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aaaahh ainda muito pra processar sobre essa história