Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

Foreword

— vii — Foreword Gabriel Garcia Marquez once defined magic realism as the way in which his grandmother told stories to him; even when nothing made sense, he believed her every word, first because she was his grandmother, second because she told her story with such conviction that he didn’t dare question her. In Women Without Men, Shahrnush Parsipur too becomes the master of ceremonies. She creates her own universe where no outside rules apply. She makes you believe the unbelievable with such ease, subtlety, and grace that you don’t dare doubt her. She unleashes a dead woman and brings her back to life; she plants another woman to grow as a tree; the men in a WWoM_v4.5.indd 7 11/3/11 1:51 PM — viii — brothel suddenly become headless; a woman gives birth to a flower and they fly off to the skies. It’s difficult to summarize my personal journey, the six years I spent in the process of adapting this magnificent and majestic novella into a feature film. This exhilarating and, at times, painful experience became my entry into Shahrnush’s wild imagination. I was first drawn to this novella because of its visual, mystical, and allegorical force. Unlike in any other contemporary Iranian literature , Shahrnush’s style of writing achieves a universal significance while remaining fully authentic to its local cultural context. Essentially, I found that at its core, Women Without Men has a powerful and paradoxical arc that traverses various notions of opposites: magic/realism, nature/culture, local/universal, men/women, mystical/political. Shahr­ nush situates the city of Tehran as a point of entry to all sorts of cultural, sociopolitical, and historical realities, while the orchard functions purely on a metaphoric level. Not unlike the Garden of Eden, this orchard becomes a utopian island, a place of exile where women may take refuge, as long as they respect its rules. When in the city of Tehran, fully conscious of time and place, we delve into a specific country’s cultural and collective political crisis. But once inside the orchard we abandon all logic of time and place, and face the deeply existential and personal crisis of a few women. Adapting Women Without Men into a screenplay and balancing the allegorical versus the sociopolitical tendencies of the narrative proved to be a lengthy and complicated WWoM_v4.5.indd 8 11/3/11 1:51 PM — ix — process. Together with Shoja Azari, and in consultation with Shahrnush herself, we discussed and analyzed the novella’s characters, symbolic intentions, and narrative plots endlessly, and how we might best translate them into a film. We faced many barriers, including the fact that magic realism is notoriously difficult to turn into a screenplay. Among other obstacles were how to develop the stories of five main characters with equal importance into a single narrative. Each female protagonist was unique in her socioeconomic background, and emerged with a radically different emotional and moral predicament . Even more challenging, some of the characters were fully realistic while others were highly allegorical. So along the way, we had to make difficult decisions such as eliminating one of the characters, Mahdokht, who was the most magical protagonist among the women. (In 2003 I made a video installation devoted to Mahdokht). We also took other liberties and expanded the historical and political aspects of the narrative, most specifically the CIA-organized coup of 1953, which remains in the background in the novella. But the difficulties didn’t stop there. Women Without Men had been banned in Iran, and Shahrnush herself lived in exile. Therefore, we had to abandon the idea of shooting the film in our native country. We took on the challenge of recreating Tehran and Karadj in Casablanca, Morocco, where our wonderful team took meticulous care to bring Shahrnush’s fantastic images to life and beautifully captured the life of Iran in the 1950s. Ultimately Women Without Men became a genuinely international effort—a WWoM_v4.5.indd 9 11/3/11 1:51 PM — x — German, French, and Austrian production, directed by Iranians, and shot in Morocco. Most important of all, this beautiful journey brought me the gift of deep friendship with Shahrnush Parsipur. Throughout the six years we worked together on the film, I often wondered whether my motivation behind making WomenWithoutMenwasduetomydevotiontothenovellaor to Shahrnush herself. I have always taken inspiration from Iranian women writers, and have often inscribed some...