BOOK OF THE DAY: Tehran, Lipstick and LoopholesBy Nahal Tajadod Translated from French by Adriana Hunter Virago Press, £7.49
NAHAL TAJADOD'S Tehran, Lipstick and Loopholesis the story of the author's painfully funny struggles to renew a passport in her country of birth, Iran. Tajadod, a Sinologist and scholar of Persian mystical poet Rumi, lives in Paris with her renowned screenwriter husband, Jean-Claude Carrière.
Her book throws light on the minutiae of life in a country where “upgrading” – tuning satellite channels to banned western TV stations – or using over-sized designer glasses to cover the mandatory headscarf are daily acts of heroic defiance.
The story begins in a photography studio specialising in passport photos compliant with Islamic requirements for women – no visible hair, no make up.
The owners become a part of Nahal’s daily life. They fix her hairdryer, get their wives to fit new covers on her chairs and elicit her help to find a son who disappeared a decade ago in Sweden. They also introduce her to one of many surreal characters, a surgeon who trades in human organs.
Together they set out on a quest for this most elusive object of Iranian desire, a valid passport.
Along the way, they meet a property developer in search of an eye to compensate an injured workman who has threatened to sue, a woman who sells girls for prostitution in Dubai and an old woman who under her traditional chador carries a live chicken for bribing passport officials.
In the end, her saviour arrives in the form of a theatre director who had known Tajadod’s mother, a playwright, from the halcyon days of the Shah.
The book’s style harks back to the dark political satire of Milan Kundera, but the humour is often at the expense of its characters rather than the political system.
Unlike other exiled Iranian writers – Marjan Satrapi’s Persepolis comes to mind – Tajadod has little empathy for her compatriots. She has no patience for taarof, the ritual of outdoing each other in courtesy and generosity, yet resents that, with the revolution, formal modes of address have vanished.
To her relief, the formalities return once her interlocutors hear her speak French on her mobile phone. She is adept at using French to intimidate unhelpful shopkeepers and impolite tradesmen. There is a tone of disapproval even for those close to her. The elderly aunt, devoted to her bed-ridden husband, the resourceful friend who manages to reclaim her confiscated factory, are a constant presence but fail to come to life or win our sympathy.
Tajadod is at her best when commenting on Persian rituals and artistic traditions.
Describing the Shia ceremonies of religious mourning, she remarks how the mourner “recognised in the Imam [Hossein’s] martyrdom the injustices in his or her own life and over and above any individual experience, the tragedy of the human condition”.
By giving a universal meaning to this local expression of grief, she removes the stain of fanaticism associated with Shia.
On hearing a poem of Hafez, Iranian’s favourite poet, she reminds us “in Tehran we are never alone: we have our poets as companions, friends, parents”.
These reflective moments give us a glimmer of a writer whose proper subjects are mystic poets and ancient cultures. Tajadod’s sympathies, and hence strengths, seem to lie with a glorious past, rather than the surreal and incongruous country that is today’s Islamic Republic of Iran.
Maria Baghramian is associate professor of philosophy at UCD and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. She was born and grew up in Iran.
