Essential home truths

The Book of Fate spans half a century in the life of an Iranian woman, Massoumeh. We first encounter her as a young girl, bright and very beautiful, hungry for knowledge. Despite the walls that hinder her freedom, she enjoys the indulgence of her doting father and exudes happiness, a state that turns euphoric when she falls in love with Saiid, a shy young medical student assisting at the nearby pharmacy. Their secret romance is utterly innocent, a thing of covert glances and smuggled poetry, but when they are discovered the consequences prove devastating. Saiid is threatened and chased away at knife-point by Massoumeh’s violent brother, and she herself is beaten unconscious and quickly married off. Her world is shattered, and her only confidante becomes her mother’s friend, Mrs Parvin, a kind-hearted soul with a reputation as a loose woman. It was Mrs Parvin who helped arrange the marriage, to Hamid, a 30-year-old printer, in order to save Massoumeh the worse fate of an abusive marriage to a local butcher.

For Hamid, this is a coupling of convenience. He is gentle and encouraging, but spends little time at home, preferring instead the company of dissident friends. But when the revolution breaks, he is arrested and eventually executed, leaving Massoumeh to fend for herself and their two children in a world changing with every turn, a world in which a woman’s place seems less secure than ever.

The Book of Fate is a family saga that derives its power from the presentation of inarguable facts. It is also a story of love, friendship and endurance against overwhelming odds. From life under the Shah, which many viewed as corrupt, through the late ’70s revolution that led to the declaration of the Islamic Republic and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s even more restricting regime, and on into the prolonged Iran-Iraq war, we get to see a land and its people exposed to the very core. Iran is one of the cradles of civilisation, but the oppressive social and political mores that haunt these pages feel anything but civilised.

Presented in simple and very readable prose, the first-person narrative is carried off with such aplomb that it is almost impossible to accept this as a novel and not a memoir. For Miss Sainee, this is a monumental achievement and has surely contributed to the book’s banning in its native land and to its international acclaim. Books like this bring us the world, and are to be savoured.