Luck or Lock
Am I a lucky writer?
Did any miracles happen in my life?
What is the meaning of luck and miracles?
At my birthday party, via Zoom, an Iranian friend mentioned that I was lucky to be famous in this situation.
I don't have any American friends who don't believe I am an underestimated writer. They all believe if there is such a thing as luck, I don’t have any.
Words have different meanings in different cultures.
In my culture, ‘luck’ means that one has achieved something one or gotten something without much effort. You achieve your goal by a miracle. A genie comes and helps you.
I have written many times in my newsletter about how hard it was for me to continue writing and to live. I don't want to repeat myself, but dancing in the storm is my ritual. I have many questions I can ask of friends who believed they knew me, but actually they didn't.
When I published my first book, Kanizu, after at least eight years of waiting, the book was welcomed by the people and the target of some jealous colleagues. Nobody wrote a review of it; for two years, there was critical silence. To purposefully upset me, some colleagues intentionally called me the name of my eponymous character, Kanizu, a prostitute, instead of Moniro. They wanted to destroy me and say I am a prostitute, not a writer.
When I published my first novel, The Drowned, people welcomed me. Still, some of my colleagues attacked. In those days, they spread rumors and talked about me. I hid and escaped from the capital because some of them were referring to my novel, "The Drowned"—Ahl-e Gharq (اهل غرق) in Persian—as Ahl-e Araq (اهل عرق). These two names can change very quickly by deleting one dot from The Drowned, thus changing the meaning to The Drunk.
In Tehran, during the Iran-Iraq war, I rented one-third of a room and finally wrote a book about those days, Heart of Steel. Those days were horrible for me. There were no jobs for educated people, and I didn't have a place to write. Also, my family was under attack. However, the book was finally published, and a bright, knowledgeable girl translated it into English. I was in Iran when she found an American publisher. They read the book and loved it and sent it to an Iranian for her opinion. The Iranian lady wrote to them that it wouldn't have enough readers and blah, blah, blah. They stopped its printing? Later, when I was here in the USA, the same book was published by an Iranian publisher without having any contract with me. Is this luck? I don't have money to hire a lawyer to follow the case and ask them to at least change the spelling of my name. As an author, I can offer it on my Amazon author page and sell it for them. They have been selling my book since 2015. Is this luck?
The government banned almost all of my books and did whatever it could to stop me, but I didn't stop writing. They even published my books on the black market. After 40 years of writing, Persian readers inside the country don't have access to my books. Instead, they can find free PDFs of them everywhere. When I came to the United States, I couldn't bring my library. What is the meaning of a writer without her library? I left many notebooks in Iran and I am not sure if I can ever recover any of them. Have they been torn up?
I wrote I Will Call You When I Arrive in Kyiv and led a complimentary coaching and memoir class for the Ukrainian flight victims' families.
One year after Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down over Iran, a reporter from the
Washington Post contacted me. She interviewed me, and I thoroughly explained what we did in the class. I added her to my Facebook page to watch a class that I had recorded. She spoke to the students and then disappeared. After almost a year, a friend of mine sent me a news article that she wrote, which shocked me. It was full of mistakes and did not mention any of what the reporter and I had discussed, not even a single paragraph! She even wrote the wrong information about my classes.
The reporter was a girl, a third-generation Iranian-American. I believe I know what happened. I do not belong to any party or group, so they don't want to elevate my status, or they don’t care about an independent writer, regardless of what I have done. Is this luck?
Wold Literature Today magazine asked me for photos for its cover, sent a photographer, and took a whole day of my time; when the magazine was published, there was another picture on the cover.
Is this luck? Do you know who changed their mind and why?
I can continue about how a Hollywood filmmaker contacted me to make a documentary about my life, but the pandemic stopped everything, even my presentations around the world.
The reality of my life is fighting and writing. I fought not only with the government but also with those who claimed they were against censorship and brutality.
Let me say this in another way. I spent my life fighting against the Taliban. I fought against them both in Iran and here in America. Being a Talib is about neither wearing particular clothes nor having a long beard and smelling like shit. It is a kind of brutality and belief system that hacked into our culture and shaped our tradition. It is a chronic habit.
Here in the heart of America, I have met people whose throats were torn by a cry for freedom, but they have not defeated me any more than the Islamic Republic has.
We have a definition of a woman in our culture- a woman can’t be independent. She is almost helpless and lacks the power and capability to run her life. She is emotional. She can’t make decisions for herself. She doesn't know what is terrible and what is good and constantly needs help. She is desperate. She has to ask for help; otherwise, she can't go forward.
The only hero who can protect and save her is a man.
My life was different. I never waited for a prince to come and save me. I am my own prince and princess, so naturally, I reject this definition.
I have stood on my own feet all my life.
I do not owe any man, not even my father.
No man in my life has taken my hand and taught me how to walk.
There is no woman without a man in Taliban culture.
I have stood and will continue to stand in front of those who drink a glass of wine and cheer for equality and freedom but do not want to see an independent, thoughtful woman succeed.
I worked hard and will continue working until the end of my life.
I am a human being. Life is not about having a vagina or a penis; rather, it is about how you think, behave, live, and learn.
The miracle of my life is my birth, and my luck is having the ability to work and learn.
Source: Substack