LitMinds Blog and Interviews

While the daily news headlines remind us of the US role in the Middle East, most of us are much less familiar with the people and culture of the region.  At a time when the US is tied up in a seemingly endless war in Iraq, and the media is obsessing over a guessing game of George Bush’s policy towards Iran, some of us at LitMinds think we should be working towards better understanding the common people from this region.  Even in the most democratic of nations, politicians represent only a proxy for the voice of the common people.  And for authoritarian regimes like Iran, it would be a huge mistake to assume that their politicians speak for more than a small minority of people.  So, who are the common people of Iran, what are they like, how are they similar or different than us?  For answers, we turn (predictably) to the world of literature and books as it offers the keys to understanding this region that has been responsible for great beauty and art. 

So, we decided to interview Zara Houshmand, a noted theater artist, who recently co-authored a memoir about Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian.  In the words of Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist, “This thought-provoking, heartbreaking, delightful memoir spirits us across the battlefield of today’s headlines into a kaleidoscopic landscape of Iran in all its magical richness. Monir Farmanfarmaian boldly follows her dream of becoming an artist in the West before following love back to a new Iran. Like a Persian Audrey Hepburn, she recounts her adventures among boorish fanatics, elegant spies, celebrities, and, best of all, her own eccentric family, with a combination of plainspoken pluck and grace under pressure that is inspiring and irresistible.”

This interview was conducted by our fellow LitMind, Dr. Persis Karim.  Enjoy!

Q: Tell us a bit about Monir's extraordinary story.
A: It’s the story of a woman whose curiosity, creativity, and fearless spirit defy the Western stereotypes of Middle-Eastern women as powerless victims.  Privilege and wealth made a difference in Monir’s life, but they weren’t constant—for long stretches she struggled like the rest of us.  The bigger difference is that she is wonderfully resourceful and resilient.  Her natural creativity, perseverance, and sense of humor extract her from the most difficult circumstances that history throws at her—and the history covered is most of twentieth-century Iran, as well as an insider’s view of the New York art scene mid-century.

Monir’s story is also a portrait of an artist—the unique visual magic of how an artist sees and remembers, how the creative process unfolds from moment to moment, and how making art strengthens one against life’s challenges, whether the indignities of a bad relationship or a tragedy that shatters your whole life.  And in Monir’s case, that creative lens also looks deeply into Iranian culture, its traditions and aesthetic, offering a view much richer than any single artist’s work. 

Q: How did you come to this project of co-authoring the memoir of Monir Farmanfarmaian's life? What made it compelling to you?
A: Monir has probably been told a thousand times, from listeners entranced by bits and pieces of her story, that her life would make an amazing book.  When she finally decided to do it and asked for my help, I was intrigued, naturally—I’ve known Monir and her art for thirty years, and traveled in her footsteps through the remoter parts of Iran. 

But I had doubts at first. The Farmanfarmaian name is closely linked to the Shah’s regime, and I had no desire to play the porter for that set of political baggage.  Of course, the problem vanishes if you know Monir, but I feared that Iranians would rush to judgement without reading the book.  If you read it, you’ll know that Monir stands at a certain subversive angle to her powerful in-laws, and her irreverent sense of humor offers a fresh take on life at the top.

Ultimately, two things convinced me that I couldn’t not write this book.  One was Monir’s assurance that I would have complete creative freedom in the writing, insofar as possible with nonfiction.  As an artist herself, she understands what that means and values it.  The second, the real clincher, was when she told me her father’s story—how his faith in Islam was shaken to the root at his mother’s death, how it turned him into an activist for women’s rights at the beginning of the last century, and ultimately shaped Monir’s own free spirit.  That story moved me very deeply and was so ripe with a larger meaning—how could I resist?

Q: What are some of the challenges of co-authorship that you hadn't considered before you started this writing project?
Although Monir is a marvelously animated story-teller in person, very little of that came through in the transcript of our interviews, in part because her English is limited.  I had to create a voice that captured her personality and sense of humor, her sharply observant way of looking at the world and her charismatic presence.  For the purposes of the book, I knew her voice had to be as expressive verbally as her art is visually.  I had plenty of information in front of me, but it wasn’t in the form of words, and I had to somehow translate all those visual cues—the art itself, her tone of voice and body language, the subtext of thoughts implied by her actions, into a consistent and lifelike verbal style.

            But overall, there were more unforeseen rewards than unexpected challenges.  We became very close friends in the process of working together, not least because of the confidence she placed in me and because so much of what she told me was coming out for the first time, memories that she had never shared with anyone before.  The ending of the book was also a wonderful surprise, events unfolding in real time after I had completed a first draft and which provided a delightful resolution that so rarely graces a true story. 

Q: What were some of the ways that you felt like the author of this text vs. the subject? Did these lines ever get blurred for you?
If a memoir is to succeed in literary terms, it can’t be just a retrospective diary. You need to be selective about what you include, and you need to find the narrative arc that’s buried in the details.  In other words, you need to make judgments about the meaning of this life, why it’s worth telling.  In our interviews, Monir offered very little in the way of self-reflection—I often had to tease that out by implication.  I also had to make choices about what really mattered, where she offered little perspective.  It felt like a huge burden of responsibility at times, finding this core of meaning and bringing it to the foreground with a light touch.  Sometime I felt like I was an actor developing a role, looking for the aspects of my own personality that resonated with her script—the actual transcript of events as she had told them—so that I could let the voice come naturally and spontaneously.  And then constantly checking that I wasn’t imposing my own ideas inappropriately.

I also relied a lot on my own memories of Iran—the landscape, the sense memories of smell and flavor and texture and the quality of the light, as well as the unique style of human interactions.  It certainly helped that I had known Monir in the 70s in Tehran, lived at the fringes of the art scene there that she describes, and also traveled around the country much as she did.  (I was working at the time with a photographer who often traveled with Monir, and we retraced many of the routes she describes.)  She could communicate with me in a kind of shorthand:  “You remember the light on the mountains there, how it changed?” “Yes.” From that one reference I might write a paragraph.

Q: What is your next project?
I’m working on a novel, set in the eleventh century, about a sea journey made by a Buddhist monk who travels from India to Indonesia… It’s premature to talk about it, except to say that I’m having the best time of my life.

You can see Zara’s LitMinds profile here.  She will be doing a reading and book signing at the Booksmith in San Francisco on Wednesday September 12th and at Diesel bookstore in Oakland on Thursday September 13th.