Chahdortt Djavann: Je viens d’ailleurs

And the blog takes a decided step toward ponciness, as I review a book that’s only available in French that half the visitors (maybe more) can’t actually read. But if you like the sound of it, write to your MPs and publishing houses, and maybe I can get my recently-finished translation of it published.

Chahdortt Djavann is an Iranian-born writer now residing in France, and writing in French. She’s lived there since 1993, when she fled Iran's Islamist regime and claimed refugee status. Je viens d’ailleurs (roughly translated by yours truly as I’m not from Around Here) is, as she herself admits, her attempt to confront and lay to rest the trauma of living through the 1979 revolution which disposed of the shah and saw Khomeini return to claim power and implement a fascistic Islamic regime, and the following years of repression. The book is roughly separated into 3 parts: Djavann’s early adolescence, which coincides with the revolution and her communist, anti-Islamic revolt; her time as a medical student in Bandar Abbas; and her first return to Iran in 1998.

The first part shows an idealistic young girl and her equally idealistic friends caught up in the early stages of the revolution. As portrayed in the book, its early phase is led by Marxist ideology, but it is ultimately hijacked by Khomeini who establishes a totalitarian Islamic republic soon after returning from exile. In short, he forces everyone into a type of Islamic servitude, and anyone seen disobeying or protesting is liquidised by the pasdaran, Khomeini’s military enforcers.

The tale of the abuse of power is set against the steady breaking apart of Djavann’s friendships with Sara and Mahsa, and the young girl’s loss of innocence and idealism as her friends disappear and she is forced to conform or share their fate. This part also talks about Iran’s economic crisis in the 1980s, as children were forced down mines while their older brothers and fathers fought in a war with Iraq. And the pasdaran show their faces at a graveyard to attack a group of mourners who aren’t following proper Islamic burial practices.

The second part continues the idea of a loss of idealism, as a disillusioned Djavann is studying medicine and being forced to obey the country’s Islamic laws. She talks at length about the strict rules on relations between men and women, and their efforts to overcome them. But perhaps the most shocking segment of this part of the book is the description of a 13-year-old girl who miscarries her uncle’s child. Despite the efforts of the midwife, the pasdaran wait outside the building and demand the girl be handed over to them. Her fate is left to our, and Djavann’s, imagination.

Finally, the third part of the book which is perhaps the most interesting. On her return, Djavann tries to show us as many sides of Iranian culture as possible: friends who have tried to flee the country and failed; friends who are happy to stay as they're wealthy enough to live outside the law; an old revolutionary acquaintance who is now prepared to accept marriage to a devout Muslim. But while these three sections give the impression that things have changed and are less totalitarian than in her youth (at least for some people), the final chapter reintroduces the pasdaran and shows them killing a young girl, firmly cementing the Marxist idea that even if the rich can get away with anything, the young and the poor will always be the victims.

The book is very well structured and told in a hauntingly zeitgeisty present tense despite being made up mainly of flashbacks. But I do remain a little sceptical of many of Djavann’s opinions. Obviously much of what she lived through and witnessed was truly horrifying, as this book accounts for. But she is particularly insulting of Islam. Obviously this religion is a large part of the atrocities committed in her home country and the hardships she had to endure, but it is simply another example of someone taking an ideology and adapting it for their own bloody means. As a communist she should know that Lenin did exactly the same thing with Marxist ideology, and killed many times more people than Khomeini did. She mentions totalitarian communism several times, but never ties a direct link. The result is that the book oscillates between being politically confused and overly simplistic, often seemingly saying ‘Islam = bad’, which is a dangerous sweeping blanket statement, rather than ‘totalitarianism (in its myriad forms) = bad’, which is more apt generally and specifically in the case in Iran.

All in all, a fascinating book, but certainly not one to go into with the same wide-eyed naïveté shown by the young Djavann, or the sometimes simplistic thinking she leans toward throughout the book.

Belle and Sebastian: Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, 9th May 2006

Belle and Sebastian arrived in town to promote their new album (The Life Pursuit – well worth picking up, much better than Dear Catastrophe Waitress), and to honour the great unwashed masses of Brussels with their cultish divine presence.

This would be my second time seeing them live, the last time being in Clermont-Ferrand two years ago, in a highlight of what was a very shitty year living in France. And for those who’ve already had the pleasure of seeing them live, you know what to expect: tight, well-performed music from the septet (with special mention to Mr Stevie Jackson on guitar), as they all instrument swap several times and do a superb job with whatever they happen to be playing at the time, and witty audience participation from Stuart Murdoch (which, much to my delight, included insulting Americans a lot this time round). Old songs are freshened up with some new arrangements, and new songs are played to urge those who haven't bought the new album to venture to FNAC and purchase it. This time they were even good enough to include some older b-side material which was recently re-released on Push Barman to Open Old wounds (another worthwhile purchase), such as Belle and Sebastian, a song which predates the band and where they ultimately took their name.

One thing that was disappointing, though, is the band’s continued reliance on tracks from If You’re Feeling Sinister... When I saw them in France, the entire encore was made up of tracks from that album, complete with the stage being bathed in red light. Obviously it is not only their best, but also their most well-known album, and these are songs that the less die-hard fans will be familiar with, but I can’t help but feel that they’re using it as crutch. After all, they have a very large back catalogue, and yet I'm reasonably sure that they didn't play anything from Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant or The Boy with the Arab Strap (nothing from Storytelling, either, but I’m not going to complain about that), and only one track from Dear Catastrophe Waitress, I’m a Cuckoo (again, the best known track and the band’s 2nd highest charting single ever). I’d like to see them do a gig without playing a single track from that album. It would certainly be refreshing.

I was paranoid about going to the gig alone and more than a little self-conscious about looking like a loner, which was really only a problem before the band came on. I adopted a ‘waiting for friends, where the fuck are they’ pose, and once the band comes on, everyone ignores each other anyway. And occasionally I lost interest as songs with extended solos got to the point of being overindulgent. But Belle and Sebastian are an overindulgent band, and that’s one of the reasons we devoted fans love them so much. All in all, an enjoyable night.