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.
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.
posted by Ryan Stephens at 1:29 PM
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