”Encounter” - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - April, 2007 - translated from Persian by Sara Khalili

“Encounter” by Goli Taraghi

Goli Taraghi on The Reading Life

I first encountered the Short Stories of Goli Taraghi in August of 

Last year. As part of my participation in Women in Translation Month I read and posted upon two of her stories.  Both of those stories are set in Iran after The 1979 Revolution, as is “Encounter”

An organization known as The Islamic Guard became very powerful as an enforcer of very conservative social values.  There were extreme strictures places on the behaviour of women.  Failures in behaviour for things like not covering up properly or socializing out side their homes could result in whippings.  The lead characters in the stories are women who left Iran after the revolution.  The narrator in “Encounter” is an affluent Iranian woman who  years ago moved from Tehran to Paris, taking her young son. At the time of the revolution just having ties to the old regime could get all your property confiscated and possibly yourself in prison.  

Time has gone by, maybe twenty years, the narrator is at a party, during a visit back from her now Paris home.  She is at a party, things are happing there in violation of strict religious law, drinking, socialising between the sexes, drinking, displaying of western art and such. Some at the party are worried.  What if men from the revolutionary guard show up?  In a very exciting scene, a group does show up, in uniform and heavily armed.  Two buses come, one for men and one for women are called and they are escorted to a court designed to deal with cultural crimes.  The women fear they will be whipped. Others say it is just an excuse to extort fines.  All this is terrifying enough but something worse happens.  One of the female guards turns out to be a maid the narrator fired twenty years ago, a deranged woman obsessed with the narrator’s baby, now grown.  The narrator fears she will be whipped for revenge.

I will leave the very interesting close of this story for you to discover.  I hope to read another of Taraghi’s stories in February.

GOLI TARAGHI (b. 1939 in Tehran) has been honored as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France and won the Bita Prize for Literature and Freedon given by Stanford University in 2009. She earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in the United States and returned to Tehran to study and work in international relations and, later, to teach philosophy. Most of her work has been published in France and, though frequently censored in Iran, circulates widely there and internationally. Her stories have been included in various anthologies, including including Reza Aslan’s Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (Norton, 2011); Words without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers (Anchor: 2007); and Nahid Mozaffari’s Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade, 2005). She lives in Paris

SARA KHALILI’s translations include Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, and Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir by Shahrnush Parsipur. She has also translated several volumes of poetry by Forough Farrokhzad, Simin Behbahani, Siavash Kasraii, and Fereydoon Moshiri. She lives in New York.  - from the publisher.

Mel u

"The Pomegranate Lady and her Sons" - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi (June, 2006, translated from Persian)

You can read this story on the web site of Words Without Borders, June, 2006

Information on Women in Translation Month - August, 2017

Goli Taraghi on The Reading Life

Short stories I have read so far for Women In Translation Month - August, 2017

1. "Happy New Year" by Ajaat Cour - Translated from Punjabi
2. "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino- Translated from Japanese
3. " A Home Near the Sea" by Kamala Das - Translated from Malayalam
4. "Maria" by Dacia Maraini- Translated from Italian
5. "Zletka" by Maja Hrgovic - Translated from Croatian
6. "Arshingar" by Jharna Raham - Translated from Bengali
7. "Tsipke" by Salomea Perl - Translated from Yiddish
8. "Mother" by Urmilaw Pawar - Translated from Marathi
9. "My Creator, My Creation" by Tiina Raevaara - Translated from Finnish
10. "Cast Offs" by Wajida Tabassum - Translated from Urdu
11. It's All Up to You" by Slywia Chutnik - Translated from Polish
12. "Covert Joy" by Clarice Lispector- Translated from Portuguese 
13. "The Daughter, The Wife, and the Mother" by Arupa Kilita - Translated from Assam
14. "Red Glow of the New Moon" by Kundanika Kapadia - translated from Gujarati
15. "Breaking Point" by Usha Mahajan- translated from Hindu
16. "The Gentleman Thief" by Goli Taraghi - translated from Persian
17. "Spider Web" by Mariana Enriguez- translated from Spanish
18. "My New Home" by Glaydah Namukasa - translated from Swahil
19. "Maybe Not Yem" by Etik Juwita - translated from Indonesia 
20. "Baking the National Cake" by Hilda Twongyeirne - translated from Runyankole, also called Nkore
21. "The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons" by Goli Taraghi - translated from Persian

I have greatly enjoyed participating in Women in Translation Month, August, 2017.  I love discovering new to me writers, learning about new cultures and pondering the artistic methods employed by the author.  Short stories require a lot of concentration. A powerful twenty page or less short story like several of those on my list can be all I can absorb in one day.  A few days ago I read an amazing story, very much on a par with the works of writers like Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro, "The Gentleman Thief" by Goli Taraghi, translated from Persian.

That story begins in Tehran in 1979, the Shah has been deposed and The Revolutionary Guard is in control.  The family of the narrator was affiliated with the past government, their house is confiscated and the narrator moves to Paris.  Fifteen years later she returns to an amazing discovery, a very moving affirmation of dignity and honor in hard times.

I was very happy to find three more of her short stories on the website of Words Without Borders, I will be posting on all of them pretty soon. My main purposes in these posts is to let my readers know they can read these stories online and to journalize my reading experience.

"The Pomegranate Lady and her Sons" begins in the international Airport in Tehran, our narrator is getting ready to board an Air France flight to Paris.  She was inspected for security and moral propriety and the "Sister's Gate" where she was told to fasten another button on her blouse.  Taraghi does a wonderful job capturing just how unpleasant international travel can be.

"I hate this life of constant wandering, these eternal comings and goings, these middle of the night flights, dragging along my suitcase, going through Customs and the final torture, the humiliating body search. "Take off your shoes, open your handbag, let's see inside of your pockets, your mouth, your ears, your nostrils, your heart and mind and soul." I am exhausted. I feel homesick—can you believe it? Already homesick. And yet I want to get away, run, flee. "I will leave and never come back," I tell myself. "I will stay right here, in my beloved Tehran, with all its good and bad, and I will never leave. Nonsense. I am confused. All I want is to close my eyes and sleep, to slip into that magic land of oblivion and disappear.

Leave-taking. Silently, without a backward glance at those who have come to see me off, cold and quick, with a concealed lump in my throat and an inexplicable anguish, which should not be revealed.

The so-called "Sisters Entrance"—women only. My appearance is not acceptable. My headscarf has slipped back and the lowest button on my Islamic coverall is undone. Fine. "You are right, sister." I make the necessary adjustments".

The excitement of this powerful story begins when she meets and tries to help and eighty year old lady, who has never left her village, who is on the way to Sweden to see her son. She has been told the temperature there is like a perpetual deep freeze.  She is terrified by the idea of the trip but desperately wants to see her son and her never seen grandchildren.  She is carrying some pomegranates to fix her son's meal once she gets to Sweden.  

I will leave the rest of the very exciting plot untold.  I loved this story.  

Mel u

"The Gentleman Thief" - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi (translated from Persian, 2013)

Information on Women in Translation Month - August, 2017

Short stories I have read so far for Women In Translation Month - August, 2017

1. "Happy New Year" by Ajaat Cour - Translated from Punjabi
2. "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino- Translated from Japanese
3. " A Home Near the Sea" by Kamala Das - Translated from Malayalam
4. "Maria" by Dacia Maraini- Translated from Italian
5. "Zletka" by Maja Hrgovic - Translated from Croatian
6. "Arshingar" by Jharna Raham - Translated from Bengali
7. "Tsipke" by Salomea Perl - Translated from Yiddish
8. "Mother" by Urmilaw Pawar - Translated from Marathi
9. "My Creator, My Creation" by Tiina Raevaara - Translated from Finnish
10. "Cast Offs" by Wajida Tabassum - Translated from Urdu
11. It's All Up to You" by Slywia Chutnik - Translated from Polish
12. "Covert Joy" by Clarice Lispector- Translated from Portuguese 
13. "The Daughter, The Wife, and the Mother" by Arupa Kilita - Translated from Assam
14. "Red Glow of the New Moon" by Kundanika Kapadia - translated from Gujarati
15. "Breaking Point" by Usha Mahajan- translated from Hindu
16. "The Gentleman Thief" by Goli Taragri - translated from Persian

Participating in Women in Translation Month has been a great experience for me, discovering wonderful new to me writers.  

Goli Taragri is a leading Persian writer of short stories, born in Tehran into a distinguished family, she moved to Paris in 1980 after the Iranian Revolution, she never returned to live in Iran but in the 1980s she would occasionally visit.  Much of her work deals with the social and emotional consequences of the revolution.  

"The Gentleman Thief" is the lead story in her 2013 collection, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons, translated from Persian by Sara Khalili.  It centers on a once affluent family in Tehran, a daughter, working on a degree in philosophy, her nervous mother, her father is dead, and her very eccentric grandmother.  The keep to themselves in fear of The Revolutionary Guard, they have lots of valuable antiquities but the government is now claiming ownership nationwide of all such items.  One days three young men from The Revolutionary Guard enter their house and advise them they must move out as it has been declared government property.  They are given just a few days to leave a house they have occupied since before the daughter was born.  They are all in great emotional turmoil, especially the grandmother who points an antique riffle at the guards.  After some very emotional days, they wind up in an uncle's house.  He has spent years in India, absorbing spiritual teachings.  He has a servant and a dog. 

One night a thief enters their house.  This sets in motion a plot a series of events so strange and beautiful I just must leave it untold.   I almost exclaimed for joy as the story continued.  I will say the daughter left Tehran and came back fifteen years later to an amazing discovery.  

There are two of her translated stories online online at Words Without Borders.  I hope to get to them soon.

Persian (also called Fersi) is the official language of Iran, with about 110,000,000 million speakers.  It also an official language of Afghanistan.  

GOLI TARAGHI (b. 1939 in Tehran) has been honored as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France and won the Bita Prize for Literature and Freedon given by Stanford University in 2009. She earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in the United States and returned to Tehran to study and work in international relations and, later, to teach philosophy. Most of her work has been published in France and, though frequently censored in Iran, circulates widely there and internationally. Her stories have been included in various anthologies, including including Reza Aslan’s Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (Norton, 2011); Words without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers (Anchor: 2007); and Nahid Mozaffari’s Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (Arcade, 2005). She lives in Paris

SARA KHALILI’s translations include Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, and Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir by Shahrnush Parsipur. She has also translated several volumes of poetry by Forough Farrokhzad, Simin Behbahani, Siavash Kasraii, and Fereydoon Moshiri. She lives in New York.  - from the publisher.

Mel u