Houshang Moradi Kermani: Striving for Survival

Biography

Celebrated children’s author Houshang Moradi Kermani, who has made Tehran his home for the past 45 years, looks back on his childhood experiences as an orphan in his recent autobiographical book, Shoma ke Gharibeh Nistidid [Believe It or Not]. This is a departure from his past body of work which has only presented the reader with mere glimpses into his personal life.

Moradi Kermani’s innovative work has been strongly influenced by the loss of his mother at the tender age of six months, and his father’s struggle with mental illness, and reflects his perseverance in the face of hardship. Born in 1944 in Sirch, a village near Kerman, Iran, he was raised by religious grandparents in their rural home. His grandfather is the headman of the Sirch and a great story-teller. The family patriarch’s storytelling and love of Iranian poetry and literature—particularly the works of Hafez and Saadi’s—inspired Moradi Kermani’s childhood writing. His paternal uncle—the village teacher—quickly discovered his nephew’s literary talent.

At thirteen Moradi Kermani, then a young teenager with no family to support his father, was forced to live in Kerman with his uncle. Kerman proved to be a font of literary inspiration for Moradi Kermani, and his stories become a refuge from loneliness and the harsh realities of life. He opted for a yearlong truancy to work in a bakery and bookstore, where the young bibliophile could feed his passion for books. He also began to write film advertisements in pursuit of another longtime interest: the cinema and the theatrical arts.

Spellbound by Iranian classic literature, art and cinema, Moradi Kermani traveled to Tehran in 1964 to become an actor, where he was more successful as a writer than an actor, publishing his first story, “Alley’s of the Fortunate,” in 1968, in Khusheh magazine. He studied translation at the Academy of Foreign Languages in Tehran in 1970. From then on, he wrote for the press and hunted for a job. At last, he found a five-year placement with the National Radio from 1970 to 1975. In 1974, the radio station asked Moradi Kermani to write a humorous piece for Norouz, the Iranian New Year. This request produced “Clothes for Eid”, the short story of an overlooked orphan child who has no new clothes for the New Year celebrations. This piece—first published in 1980 in the Tales of Majid collection—garnered much critical acclaim for Moradi Kermani.

Since then, Moradi Kermani has earned many national and international awards and the notice of renowned filmmakers—such as Kiumars and Marzieh Broumand—and his works have been published in numerous countries and translated into many languages.

Themes

Moradi Kermani firmly believes in his dreams and has overcome many obstacles, tenaciously pursuing his goals. He gazes with sympathy into the lives of deprived communities, and opts for a complex array of social motifs in his writing, such as family, poverty, children’s rights, social cooperation, among others, and is also a critic of the traditional educational system. Four main elements are reflected in his writings: the narration of the life of an orphan and his loneliness, “honorable poverty,” the portrayal of village lifestyle, and the presence of a moral, which is invariably about perseverance in the face of difficulties. He introduces young readers to rural life in Iran with all of its hardships and helps this younger generation to find their identity.

He masterfully uses the technique of defamilarization² to shape a simple subject and turn it into a critical issue, which is exemplified in “The Samovar,” one of the stories from Tales of Majid. In the story, Majid has to carry the Samovar—a wedding Present— to the Bride’s home, and during his journey he has an unexpected experience. An aunt mistakenly thinks that the Samovar is a present for her, and Majid, who does not have a heart to disillusion her, is struck dumb with embarrassment. The reader experiences discomfort as they read about the event. “The Samovar” emphasizes the social conventions of Iranian cultural—such...