This autobiography written (with some assistance) by an upper-class Iranian woman is both a profoundly moving personal document and a perfect introduction to the history of Iran in the 20th century. Born in the harem of a member of the Qajar nobility, Sattareh Farman Farmian lived through the dissolution of the old Kingdom, the reigns of the two Pahlevi Shahs (the first, a soldier randomly chosen and installed by the British, the second, installed by the CIA), and finally through the first stages of the Revolution of the Ayatollahs. Her chosen ambition, to build a modern school to train social workers to improve the lot of the average Iranian, brought her into contact with the famous and powerful, but little personal gain. Her loyalties lay with the handful of people who wished for a democratic, constitutional monarchy and a self-directed modernization. These hopes were continually dashed, as first one tyrant, then another, and another came into power, mostly through the interference of the Great Powers. Her work put her in the position to observe much, and her natural spunk and intelligence gave depth to her observations. Anyone bound by the pre-conceptions of both Islam and Iran that prevail in the North American or European press will find many surprises. The subtlety with which she communicates her attitude toward the United States, where she studied, and whose society and customs she deeply admired, but which installed and financed a brutal tyranny in her homeland, are particularly fascinating. Few books I’ve read have put across this particular type of dilemma so strikingly. One brief passage would shock a young reader today. She met, and fell in love with a young Bengali studying film directing in Los Angeles. This was in 1948. The couple went to L.A. City Hall to get a marriage license:
There, the clerk on duty refused to issue one until Arun produced a passport to show that he was a foreign national and not, as the clerk suspected from his dark complexion, an American Negro trying to marry a white woman. Furious and shaken at this indignity, I had to force myself to remember that our happiness would not depend on how bigoted people judged our union.
Just as moving are her musings on the failings of her own society, and on the travesty of her sincere faith when the mullahs came into power. All is woven together by the story of her family. Her mother and father, different in character, but both of them admirable and loving in her eyes, are rarely absent from the narrative. Iranians, she says, trust nobody but their own families. She felt that Iran’s weakness was a shortfall of trust, in both public and private life, but ultimately, it seems that her family was the only thing that she could rely on, or trust. So, while the book ends on a note of loss and failure, it does not end in bitterness
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