Domestic Monsters - A Short Story by Fereshteh Ahmadi - Translated from Persian by Caroline Croskery - 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

 Domestic Monsters - A Short Story by Fereshteh Ahmadi - Translated from Persian by Caroline Croskery - 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

The Guardian has a very informative article focusing on the literary career of Fereshteh Ahmadi under the restrictions of the laws of Iran.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jun/20/iran-writer-fereshteh-ahmadi-i-want-to-stroll-tehran-streets-at-night-like-men-can

"Domestic Monsters" by Fereshteh Ahmadi, 15 Pages, is the life story of a woman raised by an indifferent at times cruel mother who she came to hate.  Her only friend was her tutor.

This is a very powerful unflincing look at how women struggle to exercise a measure of freedom in a repressive society that values their opinions much less than those of men.  

I do not wish to give away the developments in the woman's life.

I will just share a bit about what she says about living in Tehran.

"A city like Tehran; a remote city where they couldn’t reach me. A city big enough for me to get lost in. And I did. I was able to get lost in there and at the same time, find myself. Standing where I am now, I am strong enough these days to turn around and look at how far I’ve come, and to write this letter without my hands shaking. I owe it to this city. A lot of people think Tehran is a place where innocence is lost, but it woke me from a very long sleep. Your daughter also wanted to find refuge here. She wanted to lose herself in the halls of the university dormitory. I didn’t teach her these things."

Fereshteh Ahmadi is a novelist, short story writer, literary critic and editor. After studying architecture at the University of Tehran, she became a journalist in the late 1990s, and has since gone on to publish three collections of short stories: Everyone’s Sarah (2004), featuring ‘Television’, selected by the Hooshang Golshiri Foundation as one of the best short stories of the year; Hyperthermia (2013); and Domestic Monsters (2016). She has also published two novels: The Fairy of Forgetfulness (2007), finalist of the Mehregan Award and the Rouzi-Rouzegari Awards for the Bookseller’s Choice of the Best Novel, and Cheese Forest (2008), as well as a children’s book: Nameless. She works as an editor for several publishing houses and is a member of the jury of the Golshiri and Rouzi-Rouzegari awards. 

The Neighbour- A Short Story by Amirhossein Khorshidfar- Translated by Niloufar Talebi from Persian - 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

 

"The Neighbour" by Amirhossein Khorshidfar was first published in 2002, selected for Sadegh Hedayat literary award.

(Sadeq Hedayat Literary Awards was initiated in 2003 in honor of the 100th birthday of the great writer of The Bind Owl and since then it has been awarded to the Best Persian Short Stories.

The annual Sadeq Hedayat Literary Award is organized and sponsored by the Hedayat Office and the Sokhan Website. Jahangir Hedayat, the nephew of Sadeq Hedayat, as the head of the Hedayat Office in Tehran, has made an enormous contribution to promoting Sadeq Hedayat’s work, both inside and outside Iran. He has personally helped many scholars around the world, in person or via correspondence, with his great knowledge and library of Sadeq Hedayat’s literary works.

The competition for the award is now very well known and very well respected. The aim of this award is to encourage young writers to write and to have the chance to take part in a respected literary contest.

The competition is for all Persian-speaking people. So writers of Persian from other countries) from Parsagon - The Persian Literary Review)

http://www.parsagon.com/

The Neighbour, five pages, does have what you could call a plot line.  A woman in Tehran forgets to bring a key and when her husband went out he locked the door.  A neighbour invites her to wait in her apartment.

Here is a sample of the story:

"I didn’t bring a key,’ Sima laughed. She heard footsteps. Still smiling at the neighbour’s wife, she stood up and looked down the stairwell. An Afghan boy was climbing up them. As soon as he turned the corner on the landing, he greeted the neighbour’s wife, carrying a broom in one hand and a big bucket in the other.  ‘Come in. Come in and make yourself comfortable at mine,’ the neighbour’s wife said. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’ll be home soon, I just don’t know where he’s gone.’ The Afghan boy was standing at the top of the stairs staring at them with a perplexed look. The neighbour’s wife said, ‘Come on in. I’m on my own as well. Assad needs to wash the stairway and is about to start running the tap.’ Assad grinned. He put the bucket down and scratched his neck. ‘Come in, let’s have some tea together,’ the neighbour’s wife insisted. ‘Let’s not do the ta’arof dance.’1 As Assad continued to scratch behind his ears, Sima picked up her shopping bag, swung her purse round her shoulder and walked into the neighbour’s apartment – a more expansive one than hers which, being on the other side from it, faced the sunlight with its pale grey walls that verged on blue."

Born in Tehran in 1981, Amirhossein Khorshidfar is an award-winning Iranian writer, journalist, translator and literary critic. While studying industrial design at University of Tehran he wrote four children’s book: The First Days on Earth, The Day the Sky Broke, The Son Who Had No Star and The Rain Story. His short story ‘Neighbour’ received the Sadegh Hedayat Literary Award Letter of Honor, and his debut short story collection, Life Goes on According to Your Will (2006), received the Golshiri, Mehregan and Rouzi-Rouzegari awards. His other works include the short story collection, Betting on a Race Horse, and a novel, Tehraniha. He was jury member of the Roozirozegar and Golshiri literary awards from 2008 to 2011, and has also worked as Editor at Ofoq Publications and as a journalist for progressive newspapers such as Bahar, Shargh, Etemad, and Roozegar from 2006 to 2015. In recent years he has led various creative writing courses in institutions such as Rokhdad Taze, Baharan, Maktab-e-Tehran and Tehran Universities. 

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 

Wake It Up - A Short Story by Payam Nasser - Translated by Sara Khalili 2019- included in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

Wake It Up - A Short Story by Payam Nasser - Translated by Sara Khalili 2019- included in The 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 

Today's story, "Wake It Up" by Payam Nasser, is narrated by a professional writer whose long time girl friend has just left to move to America forever. He has long thought a writer requires tragic life events to achieve depth in his work.   All he feels however is a desire to sleep 14 hours a day. Then he decides it might motivate him out of his lethargic state to move.  This sets in motion an encounter with a young boy that will give him a depth of concern for others and ability to see into possible futures he never had before.

The more I read on in "Wake It Up", the more I was captivated by the strange boy.

Born in 1969, Payam Nasser is an author and screenplay writer. His debut collection of short stories, Consternation (2012), was a finalist for the Golshiri prize, as well as the Haft-Eghlim Literary Award for the best short story collection of the year. It also featured the story, ‘Wake it Up’, which received the 2014 Houshang Golshiri Literary Award. He is author of one novel, The Trifles Thief, as well as numerous screenplays, including the film One Long Day, which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the International Orthodox Film Festival in Russia in 2015.

Mel Ulm 

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi - 2016 - translated from French by Tina Kover - 2018

Disoriental by Négra Djavadi - 2016 - Translated from French by Tina Kover - 2018

Lambda Prize - Best Bisexual Fiction - 2019

Albertine Prize Winner - 2019 - Reader’s Choice for best novel translated from French to English

National Book Award Finalist - 2019

These are just a few of the awards won by Négra Djavadi’s debut novel Disoriental.

The narrator, Kimiâ Sadr, emigrated at age ten, along with her family, from Iran to Paris.  Now age twenty-five, she sits in the waiting room of a fertility clinic in Paris. She is flooded with memories of her families long tangled  history.  Her great grandfather had 52 wives, her parents were strongly opposed both to The Shaw and the clerics who followed him. She has a huge family. She just identifies her six uncles by number.

In a series of flashback like episodes The narrator tells in relays 
The chaos of post World War Two Iran.  The educated elite of Iran, her Family was once quite rich, had Cultural and emotional ties to France, especially Paris where  lots of Iranian expats had homes, fled to Paris to escape extreme clerical rule.  

As history of Iran is unsettlling told, we slowly see the narrator come to accept she is sexually attracted to women not men. Homosexual behaviour, mostly this happened to men, sometimes lead to death sentences. 


The story line skips around a lot in time to contemporary Paris and Tehran to pre-revolutionary days in Iran and her families early days in France.


Technically Didoreintal is a stunning novel.  The characters are very well developed.  

I felt The chaos and sometimes terror of life in Tehran coupled with the strains of adjusting to life in Paris.  To anyone willing to read carefully, I recommend this work.


Négar Djavadi was born in Iran in 1969 to a family of intellectuals opposed to the regimes of both the Shah and Khomeini. She arrived in France at the age of eleven, having crossed the mountains of Kurdistan on horseback with her mother and sister. She is a screenwriter and lives in Paris. Disoriental is her first novel..from Europa Editions.

"Green Sour Orange" . A Short Story by Nada Kavoosifor - July 2013 - translated from Persian by Sara Khalili

Short Stories from Iran's Post Revolutionary Generation

From Words Without Borders

July 2013

Neda Kavoosifar, born in 1971, is a radiation therapist and a graduate of Shiraz University Medical School. She started writing fiction as an occasional pursuit in 1993 and a decade later decided to pursue it professionally. Her first work, a novella for young adults titled Three On a Bicycle: Me, Monkey and Father, was published in 2009 and received the Gaam-e Aval Award for best work of fiction. In 2010, her collection of short stories, Sleeping with Open Eyes, won the Golshiri Foundation Award,  the Haft Eghlim Prize, and received a commendation from the Mehregan Adab Award. .from Words Without Borders, July 2013

"Green Sour Orange" - A Short Story by Neda Kavoosifor - translated from Persian by Sara Khalili - 2013

There are 52 world heritage sites in Iran.  In retaliation for the 52 American hostages taken by the Irainian government in 1971, the current president of the United States has issued a threat to destroy many, maybe all of these sites.  These sites are part of the collective heritage of mankind.  The biggest number of victims would be people not yet born in 1971, more than half of Iranians.

I am beginning a mini-project spotlighting short stories by Irainian women.  The stories were all originally written in Persian. Persian is at least a thousand years older than English and is spoken by about  110 million people. I know readers and authors of short stories are all repulsed by these threats.  My blog is my forum to try to show what might be loss, it is my only way of speaking out.  It is my effort to show the humanity of potential innocent victims.  

"Sour Green Orange", is told in the first person by a young woman just beginning to work as a technician in a Tehran hospital.  She stops to look at notices on a wall and sees an obituary for Mr. Moadab.
Mr. Moadab sexually abused her with his hand when she was ten.  Her mother sent her to his haberdashery shop to get a red ribbon.

Throughout her day she has involuntary memories of this event, she cannot get the sensation of blood and urine flowing down her leg from her mind.  She tries to force it back in her consciousness but it continues to intrude.

Kavoosifor gives us a glimpse of what working in a Tehran hospital is lime.  The narrator cannot stop imagining blood and urine flowing down her leg as she makes her hospital rounds.  It appears she never has told anyone about this incident.  She makes no mention of a husband and we can only wonder how this decades old molestation will impact her life.

"I close my textbook. I think about the icosahedron cell that somewhere in my veins is circulating among the red and white blood cells, in plasma or diluted in platelets, so that one day or one night, in a matter of three seconds it can multiply into two, four, sixteen, and infinite deadly cells.
I take the announcement of Mr. Moadab’s death out of my handbag and I lay it open on the desk. I color his eyes with a red pen and draw a large X across his face. But the patriarch of the Moadab dynasty still ogles me with a vulgar sneer on his face. I purse my lips, look around, and with all my might I spit at his smirk that is now hanging over the edge of the desk. Saliva streams down his lips and wets my feet"

Soon I hope to post on stories by Payima Mojavezi and Behnaz Alpour Gaskari. Additionally I will post on a story by a writer that reminds me very much of Mavis Gallant, both left their birth countries to move to Paris, Goli Taraghi.

"Sara Khalili is an editor and translator of contemporary Iranian literature. Her translations include Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour, The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee, Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir by Shahrnush Parsipur, and the forthcoming Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi. She has also translated several volumes of poetry by Forough Farrokhzad, Simin Behbahani, Siavash Kasraii, and Fereydoon Moshiri. Her translations of Mandanipour’s short stories have appeared in the Literary Review, the Kenyon Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, EPOCH, Words without Borders, and PEN America." From Words Without Borders

Mel u

First Day - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - 2003 - translated from Farsi By the Author

Paris in July 2019

A link to today's story

The First Day is tbe second  short story by Goli Taraghi i have posted upon for Paris in July 2019.  Like The Neighbor it draws on the challenges Taraghi faced after emigrating from Tehran to Paris with her children.

(The Neighbor- A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - 2006. - translated from Farsi by Azizeh Axadi - A Marvelous story about a Family from Tehran adjusting to Life in Paris)

In her preface to this story Taraghi explains her reasons for taking a giant step and her very real issues.

“Author's note: I left Iran in 1979, the year of the Islamic Revolution, and settled in Paris with my two small children. I was naïve enough to think that the chaotic upheaval of the beginning eventually would settle into normal life, and I could return. The increased hostility of the government toward the intellectuals and the war with Iraq, which lasted eight years, forced me to stay longer than I had imagined. I was educated in America and did not speak French. I had to start from zero. Fear of an uncertain future, financial worries, being lost and homesick, and many other problems, conscious and unconscious, all contributed to my nervous breakdown. I believed I could fight back personally. I underestimated the destructive force of the enemy. After a year of suffering, I was finally hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic. Taking the right medication restored my mental stability and helped me to overcome my dreadful anxieties, but what came to my rescue and pulled me out of the dark well of depression was the magical force of literature.”

Many deeply into a reading life as well as the writers among us will see the truth in the final lines.

I really urge you to take the few minutes to read this powerful story so I will not go into much detail.

A Story set Psychiatric Clinic of Ville d'Avray. Outskirts of Paris

Imagine the trauma an immigrant to a country whose language you do not speak and finding yourself strapped to a bed in a mental hospital.  The narrator of the story came to Paris from Tehran with her two children,there is no mention of a husband but she is brought to the hospital by a man deeply concerned for her well being.  Her children are in the care of another woman who immigrated from Tehran. At first she sees it as like a prison, gradually she comes to trust the woman doctor in charge of helping her.  

The stories of Goli Taraghi remind me of those of Mavis Gallant and Jhumpa Lahari.

There are two presentations by Goli Taraghi on YouTube.  

Mel u

The Neighbor- A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - 2006. - translated from Farsi by Azizeh Axadi - A Marvelous. story about a Family from Tehran adjusting to Life in Paris

Paris in July - Hosted by Thyme for Tea 

Words Without Borders - A link to four stories by Goli Taraghi

 Works Read so for Paris in July 2019

1. At the Existentialist Cafe:Freedom, Being and Apricot  Cocktails by Sarah Blackwell.  2016 - An exploration of the Parisian origins of French post World War Two Existentialism 
2. Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson. 2017- an important addition to French Holocaust Literature
3. Journey to the Edge of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine -1932
4. Death on The Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine - 1936
5. "Luc and his Father" - a set in Paris short story by Mavis Gallant - 1982
6. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer - 2010
7. Paris Vagabond by Jean-Paul Clebert - 1952, translated 2016
8. Cheri by Colette- 1920
9. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain - 2011 - Hemingway’s first marriage 
10. The Bath of Madame Mauriac- A Short Story by Andre de Mandiargues,first published in translation from the French by Albert Herzing, in The Paris Review, Issue 76,  a very weird delightful surrealist story
11. The Neighbor- A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - 2006. - translated from Farsi by Azizeh Axadi - A Marvelous story about a Family from Tehran adjusting to Life in Paris

Today’s story by Goli Taraghi is about a family of Iranian exiles getting adjusted to life in Paris.  Just today CNN said  Iran and the USA are moving toward war.  Despicable American and European politicians rant about immigrants. As he began his first trip in office the current American president said in 

Paris that immigrants were destroying European culture.  The ignorance behind this is nearly unfathomable.  

I have been reading Goli Taraghi for years. I was very happy to discover Words Without Borders has online two of her stories dealing with Iranian exiles living in Paris.  Today I will talk briefly on one, “The Neighbor” and hopefully the other before Paris in July Is over.  If you have not yet read any of her stories either in Farsi or translation, you are in for a treat.  Her work reminds me a bit of another Parisian Exile, Mavis Gallant.

The narrator of “The Neighbor” has recently,along with her family left her ancestral home in Tehran to move to Paris to escape from political violence.  Used to comfort at home, the family lives a in cramped apartment.  She misses the warmth of the people back home.  She gets mixed messages from friends, some say the danger is exaggerated and others report cases of women being beheaded for going outside dressed in violation of tradition.  The biggest problem is she has a horrible neighbor woman living below them constantly complaining about the noise the family makes.  She even demands that thick carpet be installed to muffle sound.

As the story progresses we see the narrator adjusting to life in Paris. Most of all we see a transformation of her perception of the crazy neighbor.

For sure this story is worth reading. 

YouTube has several interesting interviews with Goli Taraghi 

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