Tehran is Iran’s most secular and liberal city. It is a city that is so much more than the usual chaotic maze of concrete and traffic jams thick with air pollution. This is the beating heart of Iran, a creative tour de force and the place to be to get a handle on modern Iran and what its future will likely be. The outside world focuses on extremes in Iran, but what the included writers set out to portray are their inner stories, and where they stand in all of this; their identity, their connections and their private lives. These are the stories till now untold because of a Western focus on only the big, bold issues in Iran. What may surprise the reader is the similarities between their lives and our own. Ten short stories, showcasing some of the most exciting, emerging voices in Iran today, guide the reader through the most populous city in Iran and Western Asia, and the second-largest metropolitan area in the Middle East today.
On their website Comma Press write about why they publish short story anthologies.
“an anthology of short stories has certain advantages over a novel: it is better equipped, for example, to give readers access and insights into new cultures, because it is able to embrace difference and diversity within any one culture”
In the introduction to this latest collection from Comma’s ‘Read the City’ series, Orkideh Behrouzan asks the reader to set aside the
“over-simplified accounts of Tehran […] in Western media: from click-bait cliches about veiled women to images of a youth in revolt”
What these ten stories offer is a window into ordinary life in the Iranian capital. Most are written from the points of view of young people – male and female. Their outlooks on life are, obviously, coloured by their upbringing. While some feelings expressed are universal, and the cultural restrictions are generally accepted, it was hard to read these tales as requested – without judgement. The men and women appear to regard each other as almost different species. The girls aspire to marriage despite the fact many of the older, married couples speak of their partners with disdain. Women are routinely locked in rooms overnight. A young female character is told
“a girl’s virginity is her most prized asset”
In one of the notes sections that accompany some of the stories it is explained that the term ‘girlfriend’ is regarded as an insult.
“Since the use of this word was and still is a taboo in Muslim cultures, it has derogatory overtones. Used by men of lower classes”
The book was therefore read with a chasm between the morality policed outlooks of the characters depicted and this liberal, feminist reader. Gaining a better understanding of why such differences in attitude are accepted in different countries is one reason why the series is so worthwhile.
“Great fiction doesn’t disguise: in revealing contradictory emotions and contrasting worlds, it urges us to imagine and to challenge what we assume to know about a people.”
The collection opens with Wake It Up in which a young man is looking forward to the heartbreak he expects to feel when his partner emigrates, and how he hopes this will ignite his writing. Finding that he simply sleeps better after she leaves, he moves apartments and comes to the attention of a small boy. There is much humour in the tale alongside a touch of pathos.
The Other Side of the Wall tells of a young girl from a wealthy family who is required to take piano lessons despite showing no musical aptitude. Each week she must wait for her lessons in the apartment of distant relatives. She observes the neighbours, so different from the affluent adults her parents socialise with. She is especially drawn to one lady of ill repute. Despite dreading her lessons, the girl wishes to please her family.
“what they do and where they stand is predictable and fixed, and we, the younger generation, will inherit this ‘fixed place’. That is a comfort to us”
Sharing her short life to date with the successful and respected, she is then shocked when hypocrisy is revealed.
Mohsen Half-Tenor offers a picture of addiction and greed based around ancient antiquities. As in several of the stories, certain characters regard women with contempt. It is not stated but I wondered if this was based on class or behaviour. There appears to be little social mixing between the sexes, except within families or what are regarded as the lower orders.
My favourite story in the collection was In the Light being Cast from the Kitchen. A man wakes in the night and observes a smartly dressed stranger sitting on the sofa in an adjacent room. He is afraid of what will happen if he confronts the unexpected and uninvited man, yet also fears for his sleeping wife’s safety believing it is his duty to protect her. He starts to feel guilty at his reactions and to dissociate.
Sunshine focuses on a man’s obsession with a woman’s looks. She is having fun, experimenting with hair colour and other changes. He grows annoyed that she will not settle to his ideal. Wrapped around their encounters are dealings the man has with guards who warn him about possessing a photograph showing a woman’s body.
Domestic Monsters is a tale of families and their resentments which are passed across generations. Written in the form of a letter from a niece to her aunt it describes how the young women’s eyes have been opened to the older woman’s manipulations over many years. This was one of the stories that made me question why marriage was seen as desirable. Could the life of a single woman in Iran be even worse?
There are tales of potential poisonings, of wanting to impress a neighbour, of an intended punishment that goes awry when a man refuses to be controlled by a woman.
The collection finishes with The Last Night – a tale of four young college students who are together in their dorm for the last time. These women are educated yet long for marriage, worrying it will not happen for them. They talk of being brides rather than dreaming of future careers. One of the women plans to emigrate suggesting this is the only way to attain any sort of personal freedom.
These portrayals of life in Tehran were well written and interesting but so far removed from my own experiences as to throw up many further questions. Few of the characters, male or female, talk of how they earn a living – several of the men seem to sleep a great deal, even in the day. Morality plays a significant role in life choices, as do family expectations. I pondered, is their culture a choice or an imposition? What role does the acquisition of wealth play in acquiring status as happens in the west?
The stories offer a taster and I would be keen to learn more about how those living in Tehran, particularly the women, view the lifestyle they are required to adhere to. As the introduction states
“To solely read Tehran’s stories through the lens of politics and censorship, therefore, would be to overlook the tenacity of the life that pulsates through them.”
Readers are invited to immerse themselves
“in the deep and complicated currents of these stories.”
I struggled to empathise with many of the characters’ attitudes and wondered how they would view my supposedly liberal perspectives.
A new addition to their award-winning Reading the City Series, The Book of Tehran from Comma Press (edited by Fereshteh Ahmadi) is a beautiful, insightful peek into a lesser-explored area of the world and the literature that such a diverse and troubled city can produce. A selection of Iran’s best known writers merge together into one intensely emotional collection, with short pieces which offer their own interpretation of Tehran and the people that inhabit it. It is an anthology about the past, the present and therefore also the future; it shows us, the reader, what it means to be a citizen of Tehran, through the eyes of those who have lived there.
However, this is by no means a joyous celebration of Tehran and its history. While the Western-conjured image of the area may be a simplistic, one-sided stereotype, an illuminating introduction in the anthology – vital in setting the scene for what we are about to read – discusses Tehran and Iran and it’s mixed past. This is not a collection of emphatic love letters to the city, or a declaration of support for the city that many have indeed been misunderstood. As the introduction tells us, Tehran is best known for its conflicts and its suppression’s, which are certainly not belittled in the short stories that follow. But, as the writer (Orkideh Behrouzan) continues, it is also a city of art and experimentation, especially with regards to literature and the mesmerising words it has produced. The Persian language is arguably one of the most poetic in the world, made clear by the complex meanings of one dainty word, and the ability to have a word for just about any human act or emotion that can be experienced. As Westerners, we may struggle with the unfamiliar pronunciation, but once you begin to have a grasp on things, the language takes on this new, ethereal feeling that is somewhat difficult to achieve in our own tongue through the sounds of words alone.
Of course, The Book of Tehran contains pieces that are translated into English, all for the first time. The beauty of translation must therefore be appreciated in this instance too. Reading it, I felt that the original meaning of metaphors, the rhythm of the pieces and the tone of them too, had not been lost in the act of translating this complex language. In fact, I was intrigued by just how nuanced some of the metaphors were. The writers put two images together that I had never seen paired before. They pushed the boundaries of imagery within literature, which is difficult already in a short work, let alone a piece written in a different tongue and then translated. They conjured amazing images that fit the setting so perfectly, that turned the mood of a piece in a single sentence and made me consider it in a different, opposing way. I am in awe at the quality of the translation; it is a task that in this collection, demands recognition.
One thing that I did note – if I were to compare the stories to Western ones that I am more familiar with – was just how different the pace felt to anything I have experienced before in a short story. A lot of them took the reader on a very fast journey, full of the dramatic – though not necessarily plot-changing – twists and snippets of the unsaid. Some were a flurry of events, of dialogue, of characters, that we merely got a taster of, before the narrator was off again and back with the reins of the story. The unsaid teased us and offered up a pause where one was needed, but they didn’t dwell too long and the rhythm certainly kept moving forward. One story in particular achieved this particularly well: Sunshine, by Kourosh Asadi (translated by Lida Nostari). In this short story, the narrator appears – or at least that’s how I read it – to be drunk. He is infatuated with an imperfection on his lover’s body, and is thrown into an emotional spiral when the relationship does not go as planned. He speaks at length to characters who are barely introduced, the obsession growing to consume him and sending him into rambling fits about the situations he finds himself in, many of which are unclear to the reader. We access them only through the odd bit of speech, or a brief scene that is disclosed. It makes for an exciting, if not confusing, piece, that leaves the reader with more questions than answers when it finally ends.
Another common factor between many of the stories is the setting of the home, more specifically, an apartment. In the introduction, Behrouzan discusses this section of ‘apartment stories’, “characterised by plots set in around the interiority of homes and a persisting nostalgia for a time when homes were primary houses rather than apartments”. Their tales were confined into four walls, but these stories show that that did not necessarily limit them. Wonderful things and creative analyses happen within these apartments. A handful of the stories centre their themes on the relationship of women in these spaces, which makes for interesting reading when the ‘home-maker’ assumption is shattered. Female partnerships and familial tiffs are unearthed; one of my favourite stories is an incredibly short piece called The Neighbour, by Amirhossein Khorshidfar (translated by Niloufar Talebi). A young woman, a new resident in the apartment block, spends a curious afternoon with ‘the neighbour’s wife’. She feels belittled by her overwhelming presence and the piece is heavy with sexual connotations – images of red, pale, delicate limbs, the seductiveness that smoking still alludes to. The women taint and reshape an area that is traditionally thought of as pure, and questions arise as to what a ‘neighbour’ really can be.
However the stand-out of the anthology comes at the end of the collection, in the form of a story aptly called The Last Night by Atoosa Afshin Navid (translated by Susan Niazi). This blew me away, truly. Each young woman is at a turning point in her life, exploring what path the future holds for her and how exactly she will fare down that route. The story discuses marriage or belonging to another person, whoever that may be. The beauty and complexity of female friendships is shown perfectly too; as women, they hurt one another, they are envious, cruel, but they are also undeniably loyal and supportive, even when clashing personality types may want to push them against each other. It is a tragic story full of captivating scenes and equally captivating characters. This one actually isn’t set in Tehran – instead, it is the dream of the city, of something bigger and things to come, that connects main character to it.
The writers are all clearly talented and also respected, within their own right. The anthology is a celebration of this skill from established voices who understand best what the city resembles for them. However I am curious how (or indeed, if) the anthology would have been any different, if younger or more unknown voices were included. Like any complex city, there must be an abundance of talent emerging from it, ready to portray the life that they have lived and the future that they see for the place. While the anthology does not necessarily include these unheard voices, it does open the door for more exploration into the literature of the place, by those who read it. If the work we have sampled is any indicator of the talent that is yet to be pushed into the limelight, not only in the West but in Tehran itself, then it is a very exciting time to be discovering Iranian literature.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Comma Press are an indie publisher (a big yay) and The Book of Tehran is another part in an ongoing series where short stories about a featured city are collected.
My idea of Tehran is shakey and one sided. As Orkideh Behrouzan states in the introduction, most westerners view Tehran as a country plagued by war due to the media portrayal of it. In reality it is a vibrant city. Thus although I never approach a book with preconceptions, I did expect this anthology to present a full picture of Tehran.
Thankfully it does.
The first story Wake it Up by Payam Nasser and translated by Sara Khalili is a strong opener which sets the tone of the book, consisting of a loner who is visited by a boy on a daily basis, offering him household items, until one day the boy needs the man’s help in a big way. It is tender, slightly humorous and ditches all media stereotypes of Tehran that is pumped in our television sets.
However it is in the second story, The other side of the Wall (Goli Taraghi, Sholeh Wolpe, trans) where a true picture of Tehran emerges. As this tale is about a girl who escapes her piano lessons and spies on her neighbors. Although most of them are doing quotidian things albeit told through a child’s point of view, it is a snapshot of what Persian life is like.
I will not describe every story but there are funny moments Mohammed Half-Tenor is brilliant, in which someone mistakes opera for Oprah. This also shows the influence of western television as well. There are some tragic story, the closer The Last Night should bring a tear to one’s eye. However there is variety even in styles with one experimental story (In The light being cast from the Kitchen) in the collection.
For those who have been brainwashed by television, The Book of Tehran provides a refreshing alternative. Tehran, as seen through these stories is a city full of eccentricities and a population who like observing the lives of others. Sure there are moments of war but it is not something that is constant. Personally this is the first time I have been presented with a balanced view of this multi faceted city.
Many thanks to Comma Press for providing a digital copy of The Book of Tehran in exchange for an honest review
Yet again the form of the short story collection fails to grip me. Just find it so hard to get invested in a character/idea that I know is gonna be gone in like 15 pages time. If anyone knows any collections you think I'd like hmu.
Superb collection of stories. All of them are stand-outs in their own way, but perhaps "Wake It Up" by Payam Nasser, translated by Sara Khalili was the one that impacted me most. A smart introduction by Orkideh Behrouzan, too.
An eye-opening and thought-provoking read. The translation felt a bit clunky at some points but perhaps that’s just as good as it get, and I suppose that’s also not what the book is about.
Definitely worth a read to discover parts of Iranian culture through short-fiction.