Page 152 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

chase me around the room. I suppose he thought he could

terrorize me into submission. I wrote a great deal at that time,
long, scandalous poems dripping with adolescent passion.
Rather melodramatic and histrionic as well, I fear. Caged
birds and shackled lovers, that sort of thing. I am not proud
of them.

I sense that false modesty is not her suit and therefore can
assume only that this is her honest assessment of these early
writings. If so, it is a brutally unforgiving one. Her poems
from this period are stunning in fact, even in translation,
especially considering her young age when she wrote them.
They are moving, rich with imagery, emotion, insight, and
telling grace. They speak beautifully of loneliness and
uncontainable sorrow. They chronicle her disappointments,
the crests and troughs of young love in all its radiance and

promises and trappings. And there is often a sense of
transcendent claustrophobia, of a shortening horizon, and
always a sense of struggle against the tyranny of circumstance
—often depicted as a never named sinister male figure who
looms. A not so-opaque allusion to her father, one would
gather. I tell her all this.

EB: And you break in these poems from the rhythm, rhyme,
and meter that I understand to be integral to classic Farsi
poetry. You make use of free-flowing imagery. You heighten
random, mundane details. This was quite groundbreaking, I

understand. Would it be fair to say that if you’d been born in
a wealthier nation—say, Iran—that you would almost
certainly be known now as a literary pioneer?

She smiles wryly.

NW: Imagine.

EB: Still, I am quite struck by what you said earlier. That you
weren’t proud of those poems. Are you pleased with any of
your work?