She considers herself a free woman and not a feminist, Shahrnush Parsipur, the Iranian writer banned for speaking in her books of politics, men, women and love. For the first time in Italy, upon invitation of the Griselda Writing School, based in Certaldo, province of Florence, she did not hide her faith in the future.
Despite the years of prison in Teheran, the censure she was subjected to, the voluntary exile into Europe and America, where she has been living for seven years, away from her family and from her only thirty-three year old son, badly looked upon by the tough Iranian secret police. It is him who, with just a few others, clandestinely circulates his mother’s work.
Shahrnush Parsipur’s books, in all seven between novels and short stories, are sought everywhere in Iran. Every month, at the black market around 700 copies are sold. For Iranian women, open to the West, but decided to safeguard their cultural identity, she is a point of reference. They practically adore her.
Do you believe you will sooner or later return to Teheran?
«To be honest I don’t know. I could be crazy enough to do it. The Iranian government would be very pleased to welcome me. But I would have to withstand a whole lot of compromises that I still consider unacceptable today ».
Before moving to America, to Los Angeles and then Barkeley, near San Francisco, you were put in jail four times in your country’s jails. What were the charges?
«None in particular. After the Khomeinist revolution of 1979, some political newspapers were discovered in my mother’s car and a letter of mine addressed to the terrorists’ chief to ask him to desist from his doings. It wasn’t even read, but it was enough to have me arrested, with my mother and two of my four brothers. I was 33. Without a formal charge I remained in prison for almost five years. In the following years, I was arrested another three times. The last one dates back to 1992, in the occasion of the publishing of the novel, "Tuba and the meaning of the night ", where i tell of a century of my country’s history, starting from 1890, through the story of a strong and courageously human woman. After another three months of jail I decided to leave. A difficult, yet necessary choice ».
What do you think of women’s situation in the West?
«Western women want to change the world, but they are not as free as they believe. They are, despite themselves, object women ».
(Image taken from Tranchida publishing)
