Domestic Monsters - A Short Story by Fereshteh Ahmadi - Translated from Persian by Caroline Croskery - 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

 Domestic Monsters - A Short Story by Fereshteh Ahmadi - Translated from Persian by Caroline Croskery - 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

The Guardian has a very informative article focusing on the literary career of Fereshteh Ahmadi under the restrictions of the laws of Iran.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jun/20/iran-writer-fereshteh-ahmadi-i-want-to-stroll-tehran-streets-at-night-like-men-can

"Domestic Monsters" by Fereshteh Ahmadi, 15 Pages, is the life story of a woman raised by an indifferent at times cruel mother who she came to hate.  Her only friend was her tutor.

This is a very powerful unflincing look at how women struggle to exercise a measure of freedom in a repressive society that values their opinions much less than those of men.  

I do not wish to give away the developments in the woman's life.

I will just share a bit about what she says about living in Tehran.

"A city like Tehran; a remote city where they couldn’t reach me. A city big enough for me to get lost in. And I did. I was able to get lost in there and at the same time, find myself. Standing where I am now, I am strong enough these days to turn around and look at how far I’ve come, and to write this letter without my hands shaking. I owe it to this city. A lot of people think Tehran is a place where innocence is lost, but it woke me from a very long sleep. Your daughter also wanted to find refuge here. She wanted to lose herself in the halls of the university dormitory. I didn’t teach her these things."

Fereshteh Ahmadi is a novelist, short story writer, literary critic and editor. After studying architecture at the University of Tehran, she became a journalist in the late 1990s, and has since gone on to publish three collections of short stories: Everyone’s Sarah (2004), featuring ‘Television’, selected by the Hooshang Golshiri Foundation as one of the best short stories of the year; Hyperthermia (2013); and Domestic Monsters (2016). She has also published two novels: The Fairy of Forgetfulness (2007), finalist of the Mehregan Award and the Rouzi-Rouzegari Awards for the Bookseller’s Choice of the Best Novel, and Cheese Forest (2008), as well as a children’s book: Nameless. She works as an editor for several publishing houses and is a member of the jury of the Golshiri and Rouzi-Rouzegari awards. 

The Neighbour- A Short Story by Amirhossein Khorshidfar- Translated by Niloufar Talebi from Persian - 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

 

"The Neighbour" by Amirhossein Khorshidfar was first published in 2002, selected for Sadegh Hedayat literary award.

(Sadeq Hedayat Literary Awards was initiated in 2003 in honor of the 100th birthday of the great writer of The Bind Owl and since then it has been awarded to the Best Persian Short Stories.

The annual Sadeq Hedayat Literary Award is organized and sponsored by the Hedayat Office and the Sokhan Website. Jahangir Hedayat, the nephew of Sadeq Hedayat, as the head of the Hedayat Office in Tehran, has made an enormous contribution to promoting Sadeq Hedayat’s work, both inside and outside Iran. He has personally helped many scholars around the world, in person or via correspondence, with his great knowledge and library of Sadeq Hedayat’s literary works.

The competition for the award is now very well known and very well respected. The aim of this award is to encourage young writers to write and to have the chance to take part in a respected literary contest.

The competition is for all Persian-speaking people. So writers of Persian from other countries) from Parsagon - The Persian Literary Review)

http://www.parsagon.com/

The Neighbour, five pages, does have what you could call a plot line.  A woman in Tehran forgets to bring a key and when her husband went out he locked the door.  A neighbour invites her to wait in her apartment.

Here is a sample of the story:

"I didn’t bring a key,’ Sima laughed. She heard footsteps. Still smiling at the neighbour’s wife, she stood up and looked down the stairwell. An Afghan boy was climbing up them. As soon as he turned the corner on the landing, he greeted the neighbour’s wife, carrying a broom in one hand and a big bucket in the other.  ‘Come in. Come in and make yourself comfortable at mine,’ the neighbour’s wife said. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’ll be home soon, I just don’t know where he’s gone.’ The Afghan boy was standing at the top of the stairs staring at them with a perplexed look. The neighbour’s wife said, ‘Come on in. I’m on my own as well. Assad needs to wash the stairway and is about to start running the tap.’ Assad grinned. He put the bucket down and scratched his neck. ‘Come in, let’s have some tea together,’ the neighbour’s wife insisted. ‘Let’s not do the ta’arof dance.’1 As Assad continued to scratch behind his ears, Sima picked up her shopping bag, swung her purse round her shoulder and walked into the neighbour’s apartment – a more expansive one than hers which, being on the other side from it, faced the sunlight with its pale grey walls that verged on blue."

Born in Tehran in 1981, Amirhossein Khorshidfar is an award-winning Iranian writer, journalist, translator and literary critic. While studying industrial design at University of Tehran he wrote four children’s book: The First Days on Earth, The Day the Sky Broke, The Son Who Had No Star and The Rain Story. His short story ‘Neighbour’ received the Sadegh Hedayat Literary Award Letter of Honor, and his debut short story collection, Life Goes on According to Your Will (2006), received the Golshiri, Mehregan and Rouzi-Rouzegari awards. His other works include the short story collection, Betting on a Race Horse, and a novel, Tehraniha. He was jury member of the Roozirozegar and Golshiri literary awards from 2008 to 2011, and has also worked as Editor at Ofoq Publications and as a journalist for progressive newspapers such as Bahar, Shargh, Etemad, and Roozegar from 2006 to 2015. In recent years he has led various creative writing courses in institutions such as Rokhdad Taze, Baharan, Maktab-e-Tehran and Tehran Universities. 

The Other Side of the Wall - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - Translated by Sholeh Wolpé 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

The Other Side of the Wall - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi 25 Pages- Translated by Sholeh Wolpé 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

"A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. No single depiction would suffice; and yet, over-simplified accounts of Tehran abound in Western media: from click-bait clichés about veiled women to images of a youth in revolt, from the colourful elegance of Tehran’s emerging fashion scene to the belligerent rhetoric of international tensions. Tehran’s political representation on the global stage has been marred by the post-war-on-terror misfortune of depicting everything in black or white. There are, however, many stories in between these simplifications, where ordinary life takes place across a multitude of fragmentary scenes and in the messy grey area that anthropologists call lived life." From the introduction 
 

A link to four short Stories by Goli Taraghi on Words without Borders

https://wordswithoutborders.org/contributors/view/goli-taraghi/

I was delighted to discover there is a short story by Goli Taraghi in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories. I have been reading her work for years.  In today's story, " The Other Side of the Wall", a generous 25 pages, a 15 year old girl living with her parents in a big apartment complex in the market area of Tehran, gives us a cinematic picture of her growth into adulthood.

The women in the complex all hate one particular woman.  In the mean time the girl's parents force her to take piano lessons, which she hates.

Everything comes to a wild conclusion on the day of her piano rehearsal.

Born in Tehran in 1931, Goli Taraghi is the daughter of a Member of Parliament, publisher and journalist. She began her writing career with a collection of short stories entitled I Too Am Che Guevar (1969). Her works include the novel, Winter Sleep, and the short story collections, Scattered Memories, Another Place, The Second Chance, and An Occurrence. Her short story ‘The Great Lady of My Soul’ (1982) was translated into French in 1985, and won the Contre-Ciel Short Story Prize. She was the recipient of the 2009 Bita Prize for Literature and Freedom, and has been honoured as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Her work has been widely translated and anthologised. 

Mel Ulm 

Wake It Up - A Short Story by Payam Nasser - Translated by Sara Khalili 2019- included in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

Wake It Up - A Short Story by Payam Nasser - Translated by Sara Khalili 2019- included in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

"A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. No single depiction would suffice; and yet, over-simplified accounts of Tehran abound in Western media: from click-bait clichés about veiled women to images of a youth in revolt, from the colourful elegance of Tehran’s emerging fashion scene to the belligerent rhetoric of international tensions. Tehran’s political representation on the global stage has been marred by the post-war-on-terror misfortune of depicting everything in black or white. There are, however, many stories in between these simplifications, where ordinary life takes place across a multitude of fragmentary scenes and in the messy grey area that anthropologists call lived life." From the introduction 

Today's story, "Wake It Up" by Payam Nasser, is narrated by a professional writer whose long time girl friend has just left to move to America forever. He has long thought a writer requires tragic life events to achieve depth in his work.   All he feels however is a desire to sleep 14 hours a day. Then he decides it might motivate him out of his lethargic state to move.  This sets in motion an encounter with a young boy that will give him a depth of concern for others and ability to see into possible futures he never had before.

The more I read on in "Wake It Up", the more I was captivated by the strange boy.

Born in 1969, Payam Nasser is an author and screenplay writer. His debut collection of short stories, Consternation (2012), was a finalist for the Golshiri prize, as well as the Haft-Eghlim Literary Award for the best short story collection of the year. It also featured the story, ‘Wake it Up’, which received the 2014 Houshang Golshiri Literary Award. He is author of one novel, The Trifles Thief, as well as numerous screenplays, including the film One Long Day, which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the International Orthodox Film Festival in Russia in 2015.

Mel Ulm