The Other Side of the Wall - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - Translated by Sholeh Wolpé 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

The Other Side of the Wall - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi 25 Pages- Translated by Sholeh Wolpé 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

"A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. No single depiction would suffice; and yet, over-simplified accounts of Tehran abound in Western media: from click-bait clichés about veiled women to images of a youth in revolt, from the colourful elegance of Tehran’s emerging fashion scene to the belligerent rhetoric of international tensions. Tehran’s political representation on the global stage has been marred by the post-war-on-terror misfortune of depicting everything in black or white. There are, however, many stories in between these simplifications, where ordinary life takes place across a multitude of fragmentary scenes and in the messy grey area that anthropologists call lived life." From the introduction 
 

A link to four short Stories by Goli Taraghi on Words without Borders

https://wordswithoutborders.org/contributors/view/goli-taraghi/

I was delighted to discover there is a short story by Goli Taraghi in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories. I have been reading her work for years.  In today's story, " The Other Side of the Wall", a generous 25 pages, a 15 year old girl living with her parents in a big apartment complex in the market area of Tehran, gives us a cinematic picture of her growth into adulthood.

The women in the complex all hate one particular woman.  In the mean time the girl's parents force her to take piano lessons, which she hates.

Everything comes to a wild conclusion on the day of her piano rehearsal.

Born in Tehran in 1931, Goli Taraghi is the daughter of a Member of Parliament, publisher and journalist. She began her writing career with a collection of short stories entitled I Too Am Che Guevar (1969). Her works include the novel, Winter Sleep, and the short story collections, Scattered Memories, Another Place, The Second Chance, and An Occurrence. Her short story ‘The Great Lady of My Soul’ (1982) was translated into French in 1985, and won the Contre-Ciel Short Story Prize. She was the recipient of the 2009 Bita Prize for Literature and Freedom, and has been honoured as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Her work has been widely translated and anthologised. 

Mel Ulm