Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur

Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur

Iranian fiction

Original title – زنان بدون مردان (داستانک)

Translator – Faridoun Farrokh

Source – Personal copy

I decided to head to the Middle East for my next stop on this year’s Women’s in Translation Month. This has been in my TBR for a good while. It was banned in Iran and is considered a modern classic from that country, even though it is forbidden. This is a writer who has spent time in prison. She spent nearly five years locked up; she has written about those years in another book. She has been a voice for the way females are treated in her country. This book is an example of her writing about the female experience in Iran, and in this book, she has captured a breadth of female voices. She has spent many years living in Exile after she left Iran.

AFTER SEVERAL DAYS OF DOUBT and hesitation Fa’iza made up her mind at four in the afternoon on August 5,

1953. Silence was no longer feasible. If she waited any longer everything would collapse. She’d better stand up in her own defense. Even so, despite the fact that she felt empowered by the decision, it took her well over an hour to get dressed. Slowly and deliberately she put on her stockings, a blouse, and a lightweight cotton skirt. During the process she paused to think, what if Amir Khan is there. The thought sent a rush of heat through her body.

With him around, she wouldn’t be able to say what she wanted, or say anything at all. She would have to hold back and endlessly revise what she was going to say.

Faiza had a choice to make Amir crops up in other stories !

 

The book has a framing device of a garden, and there is a sense that this garden floats between the real world and a safe haven for each of the women within the book. The tales of the five women in the book are told in intertwining vignettes. From A worrying schoolteacher that is trying to escape society Mahdokht.Then Munis, who is killed by her brother after she disobeyed him. Farrokhlaga, from the upper class of Iran, is mistreated by her men, even in her own world. She is pushed by her husband to kill her husband. This shows even someone like her can break when pushed then at the other side of the coin is Zarrinkolah a prostitute Abused and used by Men she isn’;’t seen as a person by them and this pushes her to take her own life but then she reappears in the garden after that the garden and the male gardener are an oassis a different place to the world thaey all know the fifth woman to me Faizeh is maybe the youngest of all these woman is trying to cling to being a girl but also on the cusop of woman hood and looking for love. This is a tale that has it all, lots of commentary about Iran and being a female in Iran, but also on class, religion and life and death.

AT FIRST MUNIS WAS DEAD. Or at least she thought she was. For the longest time she lay on the pavement, her eyes wide open. Gradually the blue of the sky darkened and tears began to flow down her face. She pressed on her eyes with her right hand and slowly rose to her feet. Her body felt sore and very weak.

Farther down the alley a man had fallen into a ditch with his legs sticking out. Uncontrollably Munis moved in his direction. The man’s face was also turned skyward, his eyes open.

“Are you all right?” Munis asked.

“I’m dead,” the man answered

“Can I help you in any way?”

Is Munis dead or has she come back this is part of the magic realism in the book

I think this is a book that should be better known. It’s short, but in these five women, the author captures so much of life for a female at the time the book was written in Iran, a very patriarchal society. From class, how even the highest and lowest women in this country struggle. Family and how the woman in the family has to obey their family or else !. To be a prostitute, a woman is viewed as a piece of meat, really, and how that broke her and drove her to kill herself, it holds no punches in this book. The garden as a framing device worked as their paths cross but also as a sort of safe haven, almost a mythical place. The book has some magical realist touches. Women are practically given a second chance in the garden, a way to escape their world, but also a sort of utopia for those women, or maybe not to repeat mistakes. Have you read any other female writers from Iran?