This past weekend, I was in conversation with fiction writer and memoirist Nahid Rachlin about her books and writing career. for my radio show on KPTZ ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.? It had been over a decade since she and I had last held an interview, printed in The Writer?s Chronicle and still available as Part I and Part II in the Writing It Real archive.

It was delightful to hear about her continuing work, which includes a new collection of short stories to be published this fall and a novella Crowd of Sorrows, available as a Kindle Single.

Although the airing of our KPTZ conversation and the creation of a podcast for the Writing It Real KPTZ archive is a few months away, Nahid has given me permission to share this short piece about her beginnings as a writer followed by excerpts from her memoir Persian Girls as she presents the book in readings

***

My Writing Room

by Nahid Rachlin

I began to write when I was in high school, in the 1960’s, in Ahvaz, an oil town in Southwest Iran. I still vividly see the room, where I wrote. It was one of a row of bedrooms, on the second floor of our two-story house with a wrap around balcony. I had furnished my room sparsely– a wooden desk and chair, an iron bed covered by a quilt my grandmother made, a rust-colored Persian rug on the floor. But the room had a window overlooking Pahlavi Square, full of discordant color. Beyond the tall palm trees redolent with dates, I could see vendors with their carts, displaying all sorts of merchandise from dried whitefish to American imported handbags to dates and coconuts. Within my view were also the bright turquoise and gold minaret of the Friday Mosque, and the canopy of the Sahra Cinema, where American movies were shown. I could hear the muezzin calling people to prayers, Allah o Akbar, as well as the soundtrack of the movies, combined with the vendors hawking their merchandise.

The juxtaposition of the mosque and the cinema captured the character of Ahvaz. Iranians, Americans employed in oil refineries, and Iraqi Arab immigrants, all intermingled. Their clashing beliefs and mores, their unequal levels of wealth and education, were a constant source of conflict, eventually leading to the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah.

My desire to write was embedded in all the tension, not just from that uneasy amalgam outside but also within my home. When I was an infant I was adopted by my aunt and then, when I was nine years old, my father forcefully took me back from her to live with my birth family. This change was traumatic. I had been totally attached to my aunt and viewed her as my mother. I viewed my parents as distant relatives whom I saw only occasionally. My aunt had no other children and her husband had died. I was the focus of her attention. At my birth family’s home, I had to share my parents with six other siblings. My aunt, though an orthodox Muslim, was completely lenient with me. My parents?were modernized Muslims but in inconsistent ways. My father ruled with an iron hand.

I was drawn to books, hoping to find answers to what I could not make sense of. The desire to read led to a desire to write. I found that writing, giving shape to what seemed chaotic and incomprehensible, made me feel peaceful, even happy. As soon as I came home from high school, I went to my room, changed from my gray uniform to a skirt and blouse, and began to write.

Among the sketches I wrote, one was about our servant, Ali, whom I pitied immensely. He was half-blind with trachoma, and illiterate. He occupied a room on the first floor of the house; during his free time he sat in the courtyard and threw seeds on the ground for pigeons who would soon gather around them and peck. Ali asked me if I would read to him from an adventure book he had and I agreed to it. He would come to my room one or two evenings a week and bring his book. He sat cross-legged on the rug and I on the chair. When the book was finished he asked me to begin again.

As the end of high school approached, after a long battle, I convinced my parents to send me to America to study. Writing had become an ingrained habit and need in me and I continued with it during my college years and up to now. At some point I translated that sketch about Ali and it became my first publication in a literary magazine in America.

Here is a fragment of the sketch:

… Ali would sit before me with his head bent, his back hunched, while I read from Amir-Al-Salaam, a long, heroic tale of a brave man in pursuit of his beloved. The book was very old and had been bound several times. As I read Ali would gasp or thrust his body forward at the hero?s mishaps or would smile triumphantly, revealing his crooked teeth, at the hero?s good fortune. Because he had a very small stature, sometimes I would imagine him to be a child and myself his mother. He would never tire of my reading and when I put the book aside he would thank me profusely and shake his head up and down, still tantalized by the book?s flowery language and Amir?s adventures. Then he would take the book from me very gently and mark the page with a pigeon feather. On a warm starry night I was sitting on the porch watching the green frogs jumping and out of the round pool in the courtyard , the bats traveling back and forth in straight lines under a canopy and I suddenly became aware of Ali standing inside of his room near the doorway. In the light of a kerosene lamp in his room I could see him bending and straightening up, his hands gesticulating widely. Then I saw the glimmer of a knife he was holding. I got up and walked towards his room. I coughed and made noise with my wooden slippers but he didn?t seem to hear me. He threw the knife on the floor with an elan uncharacteristic of him and knelt before an imaginary figure. ?I?m Amir, Amir the fearless, the brave,? he chanted. ?I?m here to free you.? I walked away, wary of being seen by him. After that night, he did not ask me to read to him. I had glimpses of him while he washed clothes in a pail or prepared meals. His face was tense with thoughts, his gestures had acquired grandeur. He never was aware of anyone even when they came near him and he often whispered unintelligible words…

***

Excerpts from Persian Girls, a memoir

Author note: Persian Girls extends from the time of the late Shah to the present in Iran and goes back forth between Iran and America. I develop my relationship with my aunt, Maryam, who adopted me from my mother when I was six months old, and with my birth mother, after my father forcefully took me back from my aunt when I was nine years old.

A big part of Persian Girls is also focused on the stories of my sister Pari?s and my own lives in Iran and then as we took different paths– she remaining in Iran and I coming to America. When I started living with my birth family I became very close to my older sister Pari. We both resisted the roles prescribed for us by our parents, our school, the wider society. She wanted to become an actress and I a writer, both considered undesirable for one reason or another.

Then I managed to come to America while Pari got trapped in a bad arranged marriage and had to give up her aspiration to become an actress and all the independence she was striving for.

After I had been in the U.S. for many years and witnessed the Islamic Revolution from here, I got a phone call that Pari had fallen down the staircase of her house and died. I was married then and had a child and was involved in writing and teaching but I dropped everything and went to Iran to find out more about what happened to Pari. I knew it wasn?t murder because she was with her friends when she fell but I feared it could have been self-inflicted, since she had been depressed about her life for a long time.

Chapter 1 (The author is still living with her aunt in an old-fashioned section of Tehran)

The day began like any other day. I woke to the voice of the muezzin calling people to prayers, Allah o Akbar. After Maryam finished praying we had our usual breakfast–sangag bread still warm from the stone oven it was baked in, jam that Maryam made herself with pears and plums, mint-scented tea.

On the way to Tehrani Elementary School I stopped at my friend Batul?s house, at the mouth of the alley, to pick her up. We passed the public baths and the mosques, sights visible on practically every street in the Khanat Abad neighborhood. It was a crisp, cool autumn day. The red fruit on persimmon trees on the sidewalks were glistening like jewels in sunlight. Water gurgled in joobs running alongside the streets. The tall Alborz Mountains surrounding Tehran were clearly delineated in the distance. We paused at a stall to buy sliced hot beets and ate them as we walked on.

At a class recess, as I stood with Batul and a few other girls under a large maple tree in the courtyard, I noticed a man approaching us. He was thin and short with a pock-marked face and a brush mustache. He was wearing a suit and a tie. Even from a distance, he seemed powerful.

?Don?t you recognize your father?? he asked as he came closer.

In a flash I recognized him, the man I had met only once when he came to Maryam?s house with my birth mother on one of her visits.

I was afraid of my father, a fear I had learned from Maryam. Having adopted me informally, Maryam didn?t have legal right to me; even if she did, my father would be able to claim me. At the time in Iran fathers were given full control of their children, no matter the circumstance. There was no way to fight if he wanted me back. To make matters worse, my father was also a powerful judge.

So often Maryam had said to me, ?Be careful, don?t go away with a stranger.? Was Father the stranger she had been warning me against? Our worst fears were coming true.

?Let?s go,? he said. ?I’m taking you to Ahvaz.? He took my hand and led me forcefully towards the outside door.

?Nahid, Nahid,? Batul and my other classmates were calling after me. I turned around and saw they were frozen in place, too stunned to do anything but call my name.

?Does my mother know about this?? I asked once we were on the street. My heart beat violently.

?You mean your aunt,? he said. ?I just sent a message to her. By the time she knows we’ll be on the airplane.?

?I want my mother,? I pleaded.

?We’re going to your mother. I spoke to your principal, you aren?t going to this school any more. You?ll be going to a better one, a private school in Ahvaz.?

I tried to free myself but he held my arm firmly and pulled me towards Khanat Abad Avenue. Still holding me with one hand, he hailed a taxi with the other. One stopped and my father lifted me into the back seat and got in next to me, pinning my legs down with his arm.

?Let me go,? ?Let me go!? I screamed. Through the window I saw a white chador with polka dot design in the distance. It was Maryam. ?Mother, Mother!? As the car approached the woman I realized it wasn?t Maryam.

?Don’t put up a fight,? my father said as the cab zigzagged through the hectic Tehran traffic. ?It won’t do you any good.?

Before I knew it we were in the airport and then on the plane. The stewardess brought trays of food and put them in front of us. I picked up a fork and played with the pieces of rice and stew on my plate, taking reluctant bites. Nausea rose from my stomach in waves.

“I have to go to the bathroom.?

“Go ahead,? my father replied.

“The toilet is in the back,? the stewardess said.

I must hold it until I get to the toilet, I said to myself, but my stomach tightened sharply and I began to throw up in the aisle. The stewardess gave me a bag and I turned toward the bathroom with it pressed against my lips.

When I returned the stewardess had cleaned up the aisle.

“How do you feel?” Father asked me. “Better?”

I didn?t answer.

?You?ll be fine when we get home, your real home,? Father said, caressing my arm. ?Your mother, sisters and brothers are all waiting for you. And I?ll look after you.?

Finally I fell asleep; when I awoke we were in the Ahvaz airport. I was groggy and disoriented as we rode in a taxi. Flames erupted from a tall tower, burning excess gas from the Ahvaz petroleum fields. A faint smell of petroleum filled the air.

We passed narrow streets lined by mud and straw houses and tall date and coconut palms.? ? ? ???Stop right here,? Father said to the driver as we entered a square.

The taxi came to a halt in front of a large modern, two-story house, with a wrap-around balcony and two entrances.

“We?re home,? Father announced. I felt an urge to bolt, but Father, as if aware of that urge, took hold of my hand, and grasping it firmly, he led me into the house.

A woman was sitting in a shady corner of the courtyard holding a glass of lemonade with ice jingling in it. She wore bright red lipstick and her hair in a permanent wave. She looked so different from Maryam who wore no make-up and let her naturally wavy hair grow long.

?Here is Nahid, Mohtaram joon, we have our daughter back with us,? my father said to her.

Mohtaram, my birth mother.

She nodded vaguely and walked over to where we were standing. She took me in her arms, but her embrace was tentative, hesitant. I missed Maryam?s firm, loving arms around me.

?Ali, show her to her room,? Mohtaram said to the live-in servant, who came out of a room in the corner.

“Go ahead,” Father said to me. ?You can rest for a while.?

***A few pages later in the same chapter***

??????????? Gradually everything around me blurred and I plunged into a deep, dark sleep.

When I awoke, it was the middle of the night. I felt dehydrated and reached for the earthen pitcher of water Maryam always kept beside my bed. Instead my hand hit a vacuum. I have been taken away from Maryam, I thought in a panic.

I sat up, breathing with difficulty. My arm, on the spot that my father had held so tightly at school, was throbbing with pain and my eyes burned with tears that wouldn?t come out.

***A few pages later***

??????????? The next morning, Ali called me down to breakfast with my parents and siblings. My mother spoke of the day ahead: the ceaseless chores, something to be bought for this child, something else for another. I had just arrived, and yet it seemed that I was the one she was complaining about, as if I had somehow tipped the scales and now she had far too many children. I looked to my siblings for solace. But none let their eyes rest on me except for my sister Pari, who stared at me with curiosity, a look that would blossom into love.

?Now all my children are here with us,? Father said, trying to pull me in, his stern face brightening.

*** From another chapter***

??????????? My new home was chaotic, filled with a clashing and confusing mixture of traditional Iranian/Muslim customs and values, and Western ones. None of us prayed, followed the hejab, or fast. But my parents believed boys and girls shouldn?t mingle with the opposite sex until they were married by the religious law, that marriages should be arranged by parents, that unmarried girls shouldn?t draw boys? attention to themselves by wearing make-up or suggestive bright colored clothes, that education was for sons. Daughters should marry as soon as a suitable man came along. Tension from unexpressed desire permeated the house–desire of any kind–for more clothes, a different type of clothing, to say certain things, to be with a particular person.

The mixture of values at home mirrored the ones among the people of Ahvaz. Ahvaz?s population, consisting of a few thousand Americans and English, about seventy thousand Iranians and a few hundred Arabs, mainly immigrants from Iraq, was an amalgam of the modern and the old fashioned. There was a great deal of antagonism in the city among people with opposing views. There were the conservative Iranians and the half-westernized ones, like my parents. Then there were the Americans and English employed by the oil companies, not to mention the Arab immigrants who were Sunnis (in the midst of Shiite Iranians). They mingled in uncomfortably. As people lined up in front of the cinema that showed American movies, a mosque across the street broadcast a sermon warning people against worldly pleasures such as seeing movies. Men and women were forbidden to each other and yet romantic songs were always blaring out of radios.

The Shah himself, caught between America?s pressure and the mullahs opposed to his westernization, allowed certain things but not others.

***CHAPTER 18 (The author has managed to come to the U.S. for college, under the condition she attend an all-woman college, near one of her brothers already in the US.)***

??????????? This is in the college: My isolation initially felt like freedom. But soon the reality of the college and my separation from the other students began to hit me.

Beauty contests, mixers with boys the school invited from colleges in the area, sermons in the Presbyterian chapel at which attendance was required no matter what our religion– all just floated around me without meaning. The ideal young girl, one whom the staff and parents approved of and promoted, was a good Christian, dressed properly, was agreeable and sociable. If a student didn’t go on frequent dates with boys she was “anti social,” or “a loser.” If a student had plans with a female friend, and then a boy called and asked her out at the same time, she would automatically accept the date and cancel plans with the girlfriend. If a student dated a boy from outside her religion it created problems. Smiling was compulsory. One girl in my dormitory said, ?Smile,? every time we passed each other in the hall.

The pocket money Father sent me through my brother shrunk, when converted from toomans to dollars. The other girls flew home often for family gatherings or to reunite with a high school sweetheart. They had their hair done in expensive beauty salons in St. Louis, then went shopping and returned with packages of hats, gloves, blouses, shoes. They often skipped dormitory meals to buy their own food. The girls who didn?t have cars took taxis everywhere, rather than buses, which ran infrequently on limited routes. They decorated their rooms with their own personal furniture. I was out of the prison of my home but then I was here all alone. I didn?t know a single other person.

One day, towards the end of the semester, I found a note from the dean in my mailbox. She was inviting me, along with the other three foreign students on the campus, to participate in Parents’ Day, and asked that I stop by in her office. The dean was wearing a linen suit, her blond hair set in neat short curls; she greeted me with a warm smile. ?I?m telling this to all the foreign students on the campus,? she said. That you should wear your native costumes on Parents? day.???? I was silent, feeling awkward. I had no costume. She was waiting.

?In Iran, some women cover themselves in chadors, but they wear them on top of regular clothes, similar to what people wear here,? I said.

?Then wear a chador,? she said.

My awkwardness was only increasing.

?I never wore one in Iran,? I said finally, my voice drowned in the sound of laughter and conversations in the hall.

?I still want you to wear it for this occasion, to show a little of your culture to us,? she said, smiling cheerfully.

To me the chador had come to mean a kind of bondage. It felt ridiculous to wear it in this American college. ?Maybe I can think of something else to wear,? I mumbled.

?No, no, the idea of the chador is excellent. I?ve seen pictures of women in the Islamic countries wearing them. It fascinates me. What is the point??

?Well in Islam, exposed hair and skin is considered to be seductive to men.?

?I wish I could feel my hair and skin are so seductive that I?d have to cover them up,? she said with a chuckle. But her attempt at humor only made me more insecure in this unexpectedly alien environment. I was realizing quickly, how different from my expectation of America this place was.

*** From another chapter***

??????????? Entering my dormitory later that day, the housemother, Cynthia, approached me in the lobby and asked me to come to her room, on the first floor.

?You keep to yourself too much. Is something the matter??

?I don?t know anyone,? I said.

?You can try to mingle more, make friends. To start with I want you to go to the mixer next week.?

I had no idea what a mixer was and was embarrassed to ask. So I just looked at her.

?We invite boys from the surrounding colleges. We?ll have dance music. We have the mixers a few time a year. Our girls love them.?

I nodded, non-committally.

?You must go, be more sociable. There may be a few foreign boys there from the Missouri School of Mines. The engineering school attracts foreign boys.

A clock on the wall chimed, interrupting us.

She got up. I assumed that meant it was time for me to leave. So I got up too and left.

Before the party on Saturday night, the bathrooms on my floor were filled with girls checking their make-up, spraying perfume on their necks and arms, fluffing up their hair and examining their dresses one more time. I put on a pale yellow dress I had made in my home economics course, and low-heeled shoes I had brought with me from Iran. The shoes were hand-made with good leather but had an old-fashioned, un-party like look. The other girls wore dresses with low cut necklines and high heels. They wore rouge, lipstick, eye shadow. I wore no makeup, being unused to it.

As soon as I entered the room where the mixer was I regretted coming. Girls stood around the room with smiles glued on their faces. And none of the other foreign students were there, neither were there any foreign boys, from what I could tell. The boys scrutinized us superciliously. A few asked some of the girls to dance. The girls who weren?t asked began to talk among themselves and laugh in an artificially cheerful way.

Since I was neither asked to dance, nor pulled into conversation by other girls, I walked out and sat on a swing on the far corner of the campus. A full moon was shining in the sky. I thought of Pari and me standing on the terrace at night, talking, with the same moon dangling in the sky. Now we were so far away from each other.

*** Later in the chapter***

??????????? As I trudged through my days in a place where I didn?t fit, I tried to focus on my future. I would go somewhere in America where I could blend in more, though I had no idea yet where that was or how I would get there. I thought about what Maryam had said to me, ?As soon as a baby comes into the world an angel writes its destiny on its forehead.? I hadn?t accepted that as a child, and now too I believed that it had been my own sheer determination that enabled me to come to America. I should be able to determine what I would do next.

I reminded myself of the luxury of being able to read and write what I wanted without Father?s vigilant eyes on me, or the fear of SAVAK in my heart.

Late at night I turned to my writing, my long-lasting friend. I wrote in English now, though I had to constantly look up words in a dictionary. Even though no one was watching me, fear of discovery still attacked me at times, as if Father or a SAVAK agent, the secret police, were lurking in the dark. Writing in English gave me a freedom I didn?t feel in Farsi. Yet, everything I wrote had to do with people I knew growing up. Though Iran and people in it were out of reach in the college, as if in a different lifetime, they occupied my deepest emotions.

*** From another chapter***

??????????? On my graduation day Linden trees were all in bloom on the campus. Wearing a gown and hat and standing with other girls on the lawn, I was the only one without any family members attending the graduation ceremony.

After the ceremony, while the air was still filled with congratulatory remarks and cheers, I wandered back to my room to pack. I planned to take the bus the following day to New York. I wrote a letter to Father that night, telling him that I had decided to go to graduate school and work part-time, that I wouldn?t be returning home. I gave no information about my intention to go to New York. Putting that letter in the mailbox was more painful, even frightening, than I had anticipated. It was as if I had been dangling from a rope Father held and had just been cut loose.