To Keep the Sun Alive: A Novel - Softcover

Ghaffari, Rabeah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1948226766 ISBN 13: 9781948226769

Verlag: Catapult, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

"[A] tenderhearted début novel . . . A wide–ranging narrative, showing the enduring ramifications of filial and political violence." —The New Yorker

The year is 1979. The Iranian Revolution is just around the corner. In the northeastern city of Naishapur, a retired judge and his wife, Bibi–Khanoom, continue to run their ancient family orchard, growing apples, plums, peaches, and sour cherries. The days here are marked by long, elaborate lunches on the terrace where the judge and his wife mediate disputes between aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews that foreshadow the looming national crisis to come. Will the monarchy survive the revolutionary tide gathering across the country? Will the judge’s brother, a powerful cleric, take political control of the town or remain only a religious leader?

And yet, life goes on. Bibi–Khanoom’s grandniece secretly falls in love with the judge’s grandnephew and dreams of a career on the stage. His other grandnephew withers away on opium dreams. A widowed father longs for a life in Europe. A strained marriage slowly unravels. The orchard trees bloom and fruit as the streets in the capital grow violent. And a once–in–a–lifetime solar eclipse, set to occur on one of the holiest days of year, finally causes the family—and the country—to break.

Told through a host of unforgettable characters, ranging from servants and young children to intimate friends, To Keep the Sun Alive reveals the personal behind the political, reminding us of the human lives that animate historical events.

“How do we recognize the moment our future has been written for us? In To Keep the Sun Alive, as the Islamic Revolution looms just outside the gate of an Iranian family orchard, Rabeah Ghaffari has built a world so lush, so precise that you will find yourself rewriting history if only to imagine it could still exist.”—Mira Jacob, author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

RABEAH GHAFFARI was born in Iran and lives in New York City. She is a filmmaker and writer whose collaborative fiction with artist Shirin Neshat was featured in Reflections on Islamic Art, and whose documentary, The Troupe, featured Tony Kushner. Her most recent feature–length screenplay, The Inheritors, was commissioned by producer/costume designer Patricia Field. To Keep the Sun Alive is her first novel.

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Preparations for lunch were in full swing. Mirza had spread the sofreh on the deck just outside the house. He squatted on the thick cloth and set plates on the edges with a spoon and fork for each. He then brought out a tray with two pitchers of doogh and glasses. He placed each pitcher of the yogurt drink at opposite ends of the sofreh and added a glass for each plate. He stood back and looked—satisfied everything was in its right place.

Bibi-Khanoom and Nasreen were in the kitchen negotiating with a giant pot of rice while Jafar hovered in the doorway. The scent of saffron and butter wafted through the air. Nasreen held an oblong silver platter over the pot, and on the count of three, the two women flipped the pot over onto the platter and set it down on the counter. Bibi-Khanoom slowly pulled the pot up and revealed a perfectly domed rice fortress, the tahdig crust, slightly burned to a golden brown. The tahdig was the delicacy of the meal. There was never enough, and it was always a tense experience for all involved as it was broken down and dished out.

After Nasreen’s first kiss with Madjid, she had placed her tahdig on his plate. During the siesta that immediately followed that meal, Madjid chastised her for her carelessness as they kissed. “Do you want them to know what is going on?

“Of course not.”

“Then stop giving me your tahdig.”

During the lunch preparation, Bibi-Khanoom philosophized about food to Nasreen. You can tell a lot about a person, she said, by how much and what parts of the tahdig they take.

“Those with quiet personalities with a slimmer build always take pieces of the light golden edges. And those with rousing personalities and gluttonous tendencies take pieces of the burned, browned center.”

Next they dished the khoresht. One was Khoreshteh Ghormeh Sabzi, a lamb-and-kidney-bean stew made with finely chopped parsley, chives, fenugreek, and dried whole lemons. Turmeric softened the bitter scent of the lemon, and the lamb and kidney beans gave the stew its earthy color and depth of flavor. The second khoresht was Khoreshteh Bademjan made with eggplant and lamb in a tomato base with sour grapes and rich, aromatic cinnamon.

Bibi-Khanoom loved to talk to Nasreen during their preparations. She explained how some foods—like cucumbers, watermelon, mint in hot water, eggplant, and radishes—had a cooling effect on the body, slowing down its functions, while others—like garlic, onions, walnuts, lamb, and cinnamon—warmed the body and stimulated its functions. To know these qualities, she told her, was to know your own body.

Persian cuisine, according to Bibi-Khanoom, was a study in equilibrium, an intense negotiation of opposing flavors that somehow found a way to coexist without being overpowered by each other. The tartness of fruits was tempered by the delicate fragrance of saffron, turmeric, and cinnamon—a perfect union of masculine and feminine, of prose and poetry, of earthly and mystical.

She let out a sigh and wiped her hands on a dishrag. The food lecture had tired her out more than the preparation. Talking demanded the vitality that doing created. She reached out and stroked the young woman’s cheek. Nasreen turned and looked at her shyly—the gesture a tonic to her mother’s criticism.

Jafar slipped into the kitchen unseen. His favorite part of lunch, the loghmeh, happened before the meal. He stood in the doorway staring at his mother until she noticed. Bibi-Khanoom took a spoonful of the Ghormeh Sabzi and used her hand to mix it with leftover crumbs of tahdig in the bottom of the pot. Jafar hummed as he waited, rubbing his stomach in anticipation of the loghmeh. Bibi-Khanoom bent down and pushed a large, savory dollop into his mouth with her fingers. Then she prepared a plate with rice, stew, a piece of tahdig, and pickled eggplants, which she covered with a cloth and handed it to Jafar. “Take this to the midwife and come straight back for your lunch.”

The family gathered around the sofreh and waited in silence for the judge. As soon as he sat down, silverware clanked against plates, dishes were passed. The mullah couldn’t keep the frustration off his face. Only moments earlier, when he had sat down, no one made a move to begin the meal. His presence was barely acknowledged. And he was the elder.

Ghamar sank into her chador with a pouty look on her face as her husband piled the rice onto her plate. She then chastised him for overserving her, even though she had asked for it. “You are always trying to fatten me up.”

Nasreen served herself only the tiniest of portions, which didn’t get past her mother. “Why don’t you eat something? You eat like a cow at home.”

Nasreen shot a look at her mother that would make a bull wither and drifted away into the recesses of her mind. She had spent a great deal of time there. She played out scenarios of ways to kill her mother at the hammam. She could hold her mother’s head in the basin of water and drown her; during the afternoon siesta, she could swat the beehive in the tree and let the bees devour her. At last, Nasreen would be liberated. She would stay up past midnight and blast her music and sleep in her own bed with Madjid. This final thought brought a smile to her face as she served herself another portion of rice.

Shazdehpoor fidgeted, trying to find a comfortable position. He hated sitting on the ground. He selected one piece of meat from the stew at a time, then added a few vegetables, then rounded the plate with a scoop of rice and some herbs he diced on the corner of his plate. Ghamar whispered to her husband, “Fokoli is dining on bifteck with the Queen of England.”

Madjid always sat next to the judge and used it as an opportunity to speak about his newest books, but today he was unusually quiet. The judge studied his face. “What have you been reading?”

“We just read Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard in our literature class.”

“What did you think of it?”

“The discussion we had about it in Mr. Moeni’s class was very intense. So much of what is happening around us here is in that play.” Madjid looked down at his food and pushed it around with his fork.

“What is troubling you?”

Madjid leaned into the judge and whispered, “Yesterday when we got to class, Mr. Moeni wasn’t there. He had been taken away by the secret police. They said he was spreading communist propaganda. What does Chekhov have to do with Soviet communists?”

“He was Russian. And that’s about as much thought as they’ve given the matter.”

“What are they afraid of?”

“People in power are always afraid of losing it, Madjid. But the play is a revelation. I saw it performed in the capital many years ago.”

“Yes. I was very surprised by it. People can be so frustrating. The choices they make. The things they don’t do. As if their privilege breeds inertia.”

A smile of pure delight crossed the judge’s face as he listened to him. For a man barely eighteen years of age, Madjid thought with gravity and nuance. It gave his presence a melancholic quality that was strangely comforting.

Madjid stopped speaking and half closed his eyes. He could hear the clanking of silverware and the voices around him and the wind moving through the trees. He thought of the play in which an orchard is chopped up into little pieces for maximum profit. He turned to the judge. “I can’t imagine...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Catapult
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1948226766
• ISBN 13: 9781948226769
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar