Interview With Writer Sheida Mohamadi

By Maris­sa Bell Toffoli

An intro­duc­tion to Iran­ian jour­nal­ist, poet, and nov­el­ist Shei­da Mohama­di. For almost a decade Mohama­di has made her home out­side of Iran, ever since inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism caused her to lose her job and have her own life threat­ened. No longer feel­ing safe to fight for women’s rights through writ­ing in Tehran, where Mohama­di was born and raised, she has since rebuilt a life for her­self in the US, where she is free to write about the issues that are impor­tant to her. Mohamadi’s most recent col­lec­tion of poems, Aks‑e Fowri-ye Eshqbazi (The Snap­shot of Love­mak­ing), was pub­lished under­ground in Tehran in 2007. Giv­ing a voice to women’s rights issues has roused many peo­ple to respect and appre­ci­ate Mohama­di, but oth­ers wish to tame her into silence.

Liv­ing in the US means bat­tling cen­sor­ship from abroad to con­tin­ue to reach a Far­si-speak­ing audi­ence in Iran. There is the dou­ble-edged sword of trans­la­tion when mar­ket­ing Mohamadi’s poet­ry to non-Far­si readers—it may reach more read­ers while sac­ri­fic­ing some poet­ic lan­guage. Fel­low writer Mehrdad Bal­ali described Mohamadi’s poet­ry as decep­tive­ly sim­ple, and chal­leng­ing even for Far­si speakers:

“Her lan­guage is very flu­id, and it keeps chang­ing shape. It throws words and expres­sions at you in way that you haven’t thought of before. That’s real­ly the mag­ic of her poetry—it brings out some­thing new in you; it pro­pels you into a new realm. It is so intel­li­gent, but at the same time so simple.”

Sheida Mohamadi Photo By Marissa Bell Toffoli_0
Quick Facts on Shei­da Mohamadi
Shei­da Mohamadi’s web­site: http://www.sheidamohamadi.com
Home: Mon­terey, California
Top reads: My favorite books and authors change all the time because they depend on my mood, the books that I am read­ing, and my own writ­ing. How­ev­er, there are authors whom I admire and enjoy regard­less: Rumi, Hafiz, Omar Khayyam, Charles Bukows­ki, Sylvia Plath, Milan Kun­dera, Jorge Luis Borges, For­ough Far­rokhzad. My favorite books include mod­ern col­lec­tions of poems, and The Lit­tle Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Cur­rent reads: The Best Poems of the Eng­lish Lan­guage by Harold Bloom
What are you work­ing on at the moment ?
I have sus­pend­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of my fourth lit­er­ary work, a col­lec­tion of poems, for two rea­sons: The first is that I am still in the process of edit­ing it, some­thing that I haven’t real­ly done before with my oth­er works. I want to make sure to get the best result. Sec­ond­ly, I haven’t been able to find the pub­lish­er I want. This book can­not be pub­lished in Iran due to its erot­ic con­tent, and also because of its fem­i­nist under­tone. A cou­ple of lit­er­ary hous­es in Iran offered to pub­lish it a few years ago, but they lat­er chick­ened out for polit­i­cal rea­sons, in the wake of the mas­sive crack­down on free speech that fol­lowed the dis­put­ed 2009 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Iran. Since then, most inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers have gone out of busi­ness or slipped under­ground. In the present cli­mate, no one is will­ing to take the risk of pub­lish­ing such a con­tro­ver­sial book that deals with the taboo sub­ject of sex.
More­over, I’m reluc­tant to have the work pub­lished only out­side Iran because I would not gain as wide a read­er­ship. So I am in a state of lim­bo now, until I final­ly make a deci­sion about publication.
What would it mean to pub­lish your work under censorship ?
An inter­est­ed pub­lish­er has asked me to revise the book man­u­script and let some poems go because they can’t get per­mis­sion to pub­lish the col­lec­tion as is. I have to wait and see for sure how many poems or lines the poten­tial pub­lish­er wants to delete. I know myself, and if they want to make big changes, I’d pre­fer not to pub­lish my poems yet.
What kinds of poems are you being asked to remove from the book ?
The poems that have erot­ic imagery or talk about soci­etal issues. Any­thing about the woman’s body, or if the poem explains or imag­ines love­mak­ing. It seems with any­thing that comes from love or fem­i­nin­i­ty they’ve asked me to change the point of view, the nar­ra­tor, or how it reads. Those top­ics are seen as too dan­ger­ous, and the pub­lish­er can­not get approval to print these things. But for me, love is every­thing. With­out love, life is empty.
Do you believe writ­ing can affect change ?
Yes, I believe lit­er­a­ture is impor­tant and can change peo­ple. Right now in Iran­ian uni­ver­si­ties and schools, the gov­ern­ment has cut clas­si­cal poet­ry with even mild themes of erot­ic love from the cur­ricu­lum. I think it’s because they are afraid of a lit­er­a­ture that lib­er­ates. Poet­ry can be revolutionary—think of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion poets in the city of San Fran­cis­co. The lit­er­a­ture of every coun­try is what makes the cul­ture of that country.
Over time, how do you feel the threat of cen­sor­ship has changed your work ?
When I lived and worked in Tehran they cen­sored all of my work—my short sto­ries, my nov­el, my poems. But I kept writ­ing. When I came to the US, I felt freer. That’s why in my first poet­ry col­lec­tion most of my poems are fem­i­nine, erot­ic, and social­ly con­scious. I don’t care about mak­ing polit­i­cal judg­ment. I write the things I feel strong­ly about. This is some­thing that I owe to my par­ents. Both my par­ents are very open-mind­ed, and they taught me and my sis­ter to be strong and inde­pen­dent-mind­ed. They shield­ed us against the prej­u­dices of our soci­ety, a soci­ety that teach­es chil­dren from ear­ly on that female is the infe­ri­or sex. But mil­lions of oth­er girls in that coun­try are not so lucky.
Do you have a phi­los­o­phy for how and why you write ?
There is a thought behind every piece of writ­ing and that is some­thing that gives impe­tus to the author. What looms large in my work is the woman. I come from a land where being a woman is in itself a lia­bil­i­ty. It is the cen­sored gen­der, con­ve­nient­ly repressed. The laws of this land open­ly seek to hol­low women out of their spir­it, and mold them into obe­di­ent matrons.
In gen­er­al, every poem I write springs from my sub­con­scious mind. It hap­pens in a flash and then sud­den­ly goes dark. More often than not I try to recon­nect with that mys­ti­cal moment, but it can­not be done through con­scious effort. It is hard to go back and find the poet Shei­da and her mood in that fleet­ing moment. For me, it is a third world, some­where between the inner and out­er world. I do not make con­scious deci­sions what to write about, even if it deals with some social or polit­i­cal issue that pre­oc­cu­pies me—famine and star­va­tion in Africa, the mas­sacre of chil­dren and inno­cent peo­ple in wars, or the plight of women in the Third World. For me, poet­ry is about pain and long­ing. The two togeth­er make a recipe for that del­i­cate moment when I become over­whelmed with the need to write.
When and why did you leave Iran ?
I left Iran in 2003 and came to the US in 2004; and I have not been able to go back ever since. My name is on the black­list as a result of my jour­nal­ism. When I start­ed my career as a jour­nal­ist, I dis­cov­ered that my pas­sion was with Iran­ian women’s tram­pled rights. I espe­cial­ly felt for run­away young girls from the coun­try­side. They fled their oppres­sive small town lives in search of a dream, but most end­ed up on the street and even­tu­al­ly dead, either from mur­der or sui­cide. These were the sub­jects that I was inter­est­ed in, and that’s why I decid­ed to become an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist. But the Islam­ic repub­lic is not a place for that kind of thing. I was thrown out of one news­pa­per after anoth­er for try­ing to write about these women, and even­tu­al­ly had to flee the country.
Before I left Iran, when I was pub­lish­ing those sto­ries about abused women, the cen­sor­ship depart­ment of the cul­ture min­istry called me three times, seek­ing an expla­na­tion for my work. One day, I arrived at my office and found all of my things packed and stacked up by the ele­va­tor. When I asked what was going on, nobody would tell me any­thing. Final­ly, at the end of the day I was told, “We don’t need a women’s page anymore.”
Anony­mous peo­ple from the gov­ern­ment even called some fel­low jour­nal­ists to ask about me. They warned if I con­tin­ued to pub­lish my arti­cles my fam­i­ly would find my dead body out in a for­est. I was seri­ous­ly alarmed. At that time my sis­ter was liv­ing in Lon­don, and she was able to get a visa for me to vis­it, think­ing it would be a good idea for me to leave Iran for some­thing like three weeks, and then when things qui­et­ed down I would go back. So I left in a hur­ry, with­out even say­ing good­bye to my fam­i­ly or my friends, not know­ing I wouldn’t be able to return. The pain of sep­a­ra­tion was too much, and it was only two months ago when my par­ents were final­ly able to get a visa to come and vis­it me in the US.
What do you hope read­ers will take away from your work ?
I believe poet­ry is for enjoy­ment. It is meant to induce a deep inner plea­sure in the read­er, and uplift their spir­it. It has the poten­tial to awak­en a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown, nov­el feel­ing in the reader—a feel­ing of love, pain, loss, or what­ev­er it is that prods one to action. For me, read­ing a good poem is always marked with a new dawn, a great sense of satisfaction.
Who do you pic­ture as the ide­al read­er of your work ?
There was a time when I had a lim­it­ed read­er­ship among mere­ly the literati, but now my poems are reach­ing a wider audi­ence. When a poem comes out, it takes its own inde­pen­dent iden­ti­ty and I, as the poet, like to stand back and watch how it affects the reader.
What is the trans­la­tion process like from Far­si to English ?
Poet­ry, like jokes, does not cross over. Poet­ry is the most con­densed expres­sion of a land, pul­sat­ing with all its music, col­or, and cul­tur­al nuances. It is tough to bring off this whole expe­ri­ence in a new tongue. When I write, for example:
My hus­band
who is the hus­band of the world’s roofs
every night sleeps with the sky at the
             oth­er end
             of my win­dow
and in the morn­ing
spreads the smell of onion, per­fume and 
             my roommate
My hus­band
whose under­stand­ing of Islam only is
             its four wives
and from Judaism, Men’s left rib
and from Christ
the puri­ty of the vir­gin
for all of the neigh­bor­ing women
ele­men­tary school friends
and my office co-work­ers
he has full atten­tion
devotes time
and talks about the beau­ty of their eyes
and breasts
and every time he shakes the left­overs
above my head
He says :
“This Spring, you need to be with child!”
This draws upon the native cul­ture of a land where a woman is prone to be humil­i­at­ed for her infer­til­i­ty by allow­ing her hus­band to take more wives.
But some­times poet­ry can be uni­ver­sal, like:
Noth­ing mat­ters out­side this flow­er­pot  
Not the brush­fire in Mal­ibu
Nei­ther the slo­gans on the walls of Kan­da­har
Nor the siz­zling corpses of Bag­dad
Oh my love!
If the mean­ing comes through trans­la­tion accu­rate­ly, do you mind if the sounds are dif­fer­ent? How much do you wor­ry about trans­lat­ing the music of your work ?
The sounds of the lines and the music are a trans­la­tion prob­lem. I use a lot of sounds togeth­er on pur­pose, and with rep­e­ti­tion, so they sound pleas­ing in Far­si. It cre­ates inter­nal rhyme. Some­times I include sounds that aren’t real­ly words, but are a com­mon­ly under­stood sound or song in Iran, and there isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly an equiv­a­lent in Eng­lish. It’s hard to recre­ate that part of the expe­ri­ence of the poem in anoth­er lan­guage and get the exact mean­ing in the trans­la­tion. Here’s an exam­ple of one poem in Eng­lish and in Farsi:
The sun moves slant (Poem by Shei­da Mohama­di, Trans­lat­ed by Sholeh  Wolpe)
Too late now,
too late to undo your but­tons
and let loose my liq­uid blue fin­gers
on your chest,
to turn the lock in my throat
and hear the hal­la hal­la hal­la
of your com­ing
from among apples and lemons.
Your shad­ow moves slant through mine.
Why is it that your kiss­es no longer leave
their mark on my pur­ple dress?
Why is it that your body’s tan­ger­ines
no longer swell from suck­ing my breasts?
Your voice no longer sends frogs
crrrrrrrrrrrroak­ing along my thighs.
Now, each time your voice grows cold-blue,
you snuff out your cig­a­rette in my eyes
and half the clock’s cir­cle face
sinks to sleep in the ash­es of my hair.
رفتن اریب آفتاب
دیگر دیر است
برای باز کردن دکمه هایت
و خنده انگشتان آبی ام بر سینه تو
و چرخیدن قفل
در حنجره من
و هلا هلا هلا
در آمدن میان لیمو و سیب ها
و سایه ات که
اریب می رود از سایه من.
چرا دیگر بوسه ات بر پیراهن بنفشم لک نمی اندازد؟
و نارنجی های تنت ازمکیدن پستانهایم
باد نمی کند ؟
دیگر صدایت
قورباغه ها را در ران هایم  غو غو غو غوک نمی
حالا هر وقت
صدایت کبود شود
سیگارت را در چشمان من خاموش می کنی
و نیم دایره ساعت
در خاکستر موهایم
به خواب می رود.
شیدا محمدی
نوامبر 2006
 
For now, I think maybe the mood and mean­ing of the poem is more impor­tant to me in trans­la­tion than the exact words or poet­ic lan­guage. But it is hard to sac­ri­fice one for the oth­er. This is a dif­fi­cult issue for me; I have heard some peo­ple say that a bad trans­la­tion can be worse than not being trans­lat­ed because it can gen­er­ate a false rep­u­ta­tion for my work. Peo­ple may not want to read my work if the trans­la­tion is poor or ineffective.

 

Do you ever write poems or sto­ries in Eng­lish first ?
No, only some haikus in English.
Where and when do you pre­fer to write ?
I don’t like to be ground­ed. I like to be always on the move, to explore and make new dis­cov­er­ies; and my best writ­ings come out when I am mobile. My mind is more flu­id when I’m on the move, whether dri­ving, fly­ing, or rid­ing in a train. I have com­posed many of my poems while dri­ving. But I also must have my pri­va­cy, and it is in my room that I feel most at peace.
Where would you most want to live and write ?
As I said, I am a gyp­sy girl. If I stay in one place for too long, I get bored. I pre­fer to trav­el. Mov­ing has helped me to write a lot of poems. But, I would love to live in a place with a mix of East­ern and West­ern cul­tures, the best of the two worlds.
What advice would you give to aspir­ing writers ?
Just as I am not a fol­low­er, I do not like to have a cult of fol­low­ers. I just tell aspir­ing writ­ers to fol­low their dreams and their hearts, and to also be aware that cre­ative writ­ing is a painful process.
What is the best advice you were giv­en as a writer ?
To edit my work before sub­mit­ting it for publication.
Is there a ques­tion you find sur­pris­ing that peo­ple ask about your work ?
What used to sur­prise me and doesn’t any­more is that many of my read­ers mis­take the poet with the nar­ra­tor; and since my work con­tains erot­ic ele­ments, some­thing that Ira­ni­ans’ puri­tan­i­cal mind­set is not used to, they often become shocked by the direct­ness of my lan­guage. There have been few erot­ic works in Per­sian lit­er­a­ture and almost none by a woman until For­ough Far­rokhzad broke big taboos with her dar­ing poems back in the six­ties. It was an exer­cise in rebel­lion by a free spir­it feel­ing suf­fo­cat­ed in a deeply tra­di­tion­al and male-ori­ent­ed cul­ture, a soci­ety where women were assigned a set role to play and were not allowed any spontaneity.
For me as well, erot­ic poems are an attempt to break free, and reveal that rest­less side of my soul. I want to freely express myself, and if I end up shock­ing or anger­ing some prudes, then let it be.
What do you find most chal­leng­ing about writing ?
Find­ing the dis­ci­pline to write.
When you are not writ­ing what do you like to do ?
I live.

 

About Sheida Mohamadi

Shei­da Mohama­di is a jour­nal­ist, poet, and writer of fic­tion born in Tehran, Iran in 1975. While liv­ing in Tehran, Shei­da edit­ed and wrote for the women’s page (Safheh-ye Zanan) at Iran news­pa­per in 2002–2003, and at Farhangestan‑e Honar Month­ly Review in 2003. She pub­lished her first book, a work of poet­ic prose titled Mahtab Delash ra Goshud, Banu! (The Moon­light Opened its Heart, Lady!) in 2001, and her sec­ond book, a nov­el titled Afsaneh-ye Baba Leila (The Leg­end of Baba Leila) in 2005. Her third book was Aks‑e Fowri-ye Eshqbazi (The Snap­shot of Love­mak­ing), a col­lec­tion of poems pub­lished under­ground in Iran in 2007. In 2010, Shei­da Mohama­di was a Poet-in Res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land. Her poems have been trans­lat­ed into dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing Eng­lish, French, Turk­ish, Kur­dish and Swedish. She has lived in the US since 2004, and con­tin­ues to main­tain her weblog, www.sheidamohamadi.com, which she launched in 2001.

Source

Tof­foli, Maris­sa Bell. “Inter­view With Writer Shei­da Mohama­di.” Words With Writ­ers (August 24, 2011),
http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/08/24/sheida-mohamadi/

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Marissa Bell Toffoli

Maris­sa Bell Tof­foli lives in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia where she works as an edi­tor, poet, and cre­ative writ­ing teacher. She holds an MFA in Writ­ing from Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts, where she focused her work on poet­ry. In 2011, TheWrit­eDeal pub­lished an e‑chapbook of her poems, Under the Jacaran­da. You can read her inter­views with authors at http://wordswithwriters.com. When not read­ing or writ­ing, Tof­foli loves to trav­el, and kick back watch­ing Bol­ly­wood movies.