Pars Arts

Q&A: Nahid Rachlin on Persian Girls

For readers that haven’t yet read the book, what’s it about?
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.

My aunt couldn’t get pregnant and she had always been begging my mother, who was very fertile, if she could adopt one of her children. In fact my mother gave birth to ten children. When I was six months old my mother allowed my grandmother to take me to my aunt, who lived in Tehran, an eighteen hour train ride from Ahvaz where my parents lived. At the time my father was a circuit judge and traveled a great deal. Then when I was nine years old he decided to take me back. By then he had resigned from being a judge and started a private practice. He was more focused on his family and missed this child away from home.

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. We were allies against our middle sister, whose dream was closer to what was expected of her.

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. I was stronger and more determined than Pari, perhaps because of all the love and attention that my aunt Maryam had given to me, whereas Pari didn’t have that kind of attention from our mother.

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.

Why did you write Persian Girls? Who did you write it for?
I believe if I write about a subject that means a lot to me and I am passionate about the chances are I can convey it to others. So, first I wrote it for myself, and then hoped others will connect to it. For a long time I was totally obsessed by how my path went in an entirely different direction from that of my sister Pari’s. I wanted to bring her to life by writing about her.

You’ve primarily published fiction in the past. How was the process of writing a memoir different from that of writing fiction?
Writing Persian Girls was more of an emotional journey for me than writing fiction, as in it I directly confront the pain of my past. I partly wanted to bring Pari alive and partly to examine how she, like many women, become trapped by forces of traditions that are not suitable to them.

Ultimately the process was healing but not completely. I still day dream that she’s going to read the book and give me feedback as she used to when we were adolescents and I showed her the pieces I wrote.

There’s been a spate of memoirs by exiled Iranian women in recent years. As one of these women, why do you think this is happening recently? (And where are all the male voices?)
I think Americans are fascinated by the fact that Iranian women have so many problems to deal with and still many of them manage to survive and do significant things with their lives. The contradiction is puzzling and interesting to them. Iranian men’s lives don’t seem as complex and interesting.

What are you working on now?
I am always preoccupied by issues of identity and belonging. Many of my shorts stories and novels focus on those issues. In my new novel, with Iranian identical twin sisters as protagonists, I will be developing similar themes.

You’ve lived in the US for many years; how has your writing become more “American,” if at all, since your earlier years? When you write, do you think in English or Persian, and how does this affect your stories?
I don’t think my writing has changed in that respect. When I was in Iran I always read books in translation, many of them by American writers. So I was influenced in my writing, not just by Iranian writers but American ones too. By now I think in English.

Do you have any words of advice for young Iranian writers?
Write about what you are passionate about and is meaningful to yourself. If you feel strongly about a subject, the chances are you will be able to convey it well to your readers. It is best not to try to calculate and say, ‘Well, if I write about this subject, it will sell or it will reach such and such reader.