My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir

by Zarah Ghahramani, Robert Hillman (With)

Overview

At the age of twenty, Zarah Ghahramani was swept off the streets of Tehran and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side in conditions of legendary brutality. In this richly textured memoir, she tells the terrifying, inspiring story of her time in prison. My Life as a Traitor celebrates a triumph of the individual over the state and is an affecting addition to the literature of struggle and dissent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374531645
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	01/06/2009
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	839,907
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Zarah Ghahramani was born in Tehran in 1981. After her release from prison, she moved to Australia. My Life as a Traitor is her first book. Robert Hillman is a journalist and novelist who has traveled widely in the Middle East.

Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussion

1. As you read about Zarah's youth, which aspects of Iranian life surprised you the most? What discoveries did you make about the history of Iran and Iraq and their recent war?

2. Zarah describes the rich spiritual traditions of Zoroastrianism, which sustains and inspires her. In what ways did the Islamic Revolution affect secular life in Iran? How do religious wars in general affect the faith of civilians? Should governments have any role in regulating faith-based organizations?

3. How did your perception of Arash shift as details about him unfolded? How did the reality of his friendship with Zarah compare to the images conjured by her interrogators?

4. In chapter eight, Zarah describes her relationship with Behnam, including the magazine-style checklist that spelled doom when she first met him. How might her experience with dating have differed in a less repressed culture? Would she have fallen in love with him so easily?

5. How did the memoir's dual timeline enhance your reading? What was the effect of interweaving memories of an idealistic childhood with scenes of brutality in Evin?

6. Discuss the title, My Life as a Traitor. Where does the true betrayal lie in Zarah's story? What does it take to build genuine patriotism among a citizenry? Should all forms of political expression be legal?

7. In chapter ten, Zarah describes a cousin who died after setting herself on fire. Why was it impossible for her cousin's husband to understand that her "daydreams [were] dismissed forever when she was a child . . . She had her soul thieved from her"? Why would many Iranian women, some of them Zarah's relatives, not understand it either? What convinced another cousin, Ellie, to believe the mullahs in chapter eighteen?

8. Chapter twelve describes the history lessons Zarah received at school and at home. Through what process can "official" history become manipulated? How can truth outlast propaganda?

9. In chapter thirteen, Zarah recalls grudgingly having to learn Arabic, feeling disdain for the Arabs who brought Persia to its knees fourteen hundred years ago. How does such ancient history manifest itself in current events? Why do western audiences often lack knowledge of the history beyond western civilization, while non-westerners such as Zarah can quote classics of British literature?

10. What did Zarah gain from her conversations with Sohrab, the uninhibited man imprisoned above her? What do their two very different situations indicate about justice in Iran?

11. At the end of chapter twenty, Zarah writes, "My political activism was to my mother a form of vanity, a boast to the world of my moral beauty." Can political activism exist without a sense of moral superiority and exhibitionism?

12. Throughout her imprisonment, Zarah is vocal about loathing her captors, and she refuses to concur with their lies. How would you have fared in a similar situation? What separates those who remain courageously defiant from those who succumb to aggressors?

13. Speculate about the reasons for Zarah's release. What did the government accomplish by arresting and torturing her? What determined her fate in their hands? In what way were the terms of her release like a second imprisonment, leading to life in exile?

14. Was Zarah's gender an advantage or a liability during her time in prison? How did her mother serve as a role model for survival in a misogynistic society?

15. How did you react to commentary delivered by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University in 2007? Does his regime offer any promise of reform, or does it signal higher levels of corruption and intolerance?

Editorial Reviews

[Ghahramani] records, in harrowing detail, the dire consequences of indulging her defiant 'pink-shoe sensibility..." Ghahramani writes in a spare, eloquent prose style that reflects both her child's view of the world before arriving at Evin and the pared-down perceptions of her prison experience.” —The New York Times

“In Ghahramani's graceful, chilling memoir, her naiveté gives way to fearless insights about her country and herself. Questioning the status quo made her a traitor to a fundamentalist regime, but in this searingly honest, brave book, she's nothing short of heroic.” —People

“[Ghahramani] recounts her beatings with dignified anger in this vivid, sometimes horrifying memoir… Her strength: she doesn't let outrage overtake the striking feminine vitality of her storytelling.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Chilling… Riveting… Like the best-selling graphic novel series Persepolis, My Life as a Traitor is compelling for its seemingly unvarnished glimpse at the experiences of an ordinary young woman in post-1979 Iran…. The memoir illuminates truths about inflexible and dictatorial regimes.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Married and now living in Australia, Ghahramani has had time to reflect. In this memoir, she does so, evoking both the beauty of her culture and the horror of its regime.” —New York Daily News

“We think something like that could never happen to us. But it happened to Zarah Ghahramani just a few years ago in Iran.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“Graphic and powerful as her treatment of torturous imprisonment is, Ghahramani retains an irrepressible lightness… Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal beyond a mere record.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ghahramani's shockingly honest recollections grimly complement Marina Nemat's account of her ordeal at Evin in the early 1980s… reminding us of how little has changed for women in Iran.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

With her collaborator, the Australian novelist Robert Hillman, Ms. Ghahramani writes in a spare, eloquent prose style that reflects both her child's view of the world before arriving at Evin and the pared-down perceptions of her prison experience.
—The New York Times

William Grimes

The details here are sharp, evocative—and angry…Ghahramani's descriptions of torture are described unsparingly.
—The New York Times Book Review

Sarah Wildman

The second-year Iranian college student in 2001 knew "that making that speech meant trouble," but she "had no real expectation of being kidnapped in the heart of Tehran and hustled off" to the notorious Evin Prison. Eventually, the 20-year-old Ghahramani is sentenced to 30 days and a few days-and several beatings-later is dumped in a vacant countryside to make her way home. Scenes from a happy family life (crippled by the Iran-Iraq war) and a spirited adolescence (cut short by a repressive regime) alternate with the prison experiences in this multilayered account. Ghahramani, daughter of a Muslim father and Zoroastrian mother, both Kurdish, dips with brevity and grace into personal family history and public political history. Graphic and powerful as her treatment of torturous imprisonment is, Ghahramani retains an irrepressible lightness, perhaps born of knowing that "[a] sense of justice can always benefit from a complementary sense of the ridiculous." Her painfully acquired knowledge of "how easy it is to reduce a human being to the level of animal" does not keep her from "wondering if I'll ever be pretty again." Nothing, however, dilutes the bare bones prison experience. Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal beyond a mere record. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

The second-year Iranian college student in 2001 knew "that making that speech meant trouble," but she "had no real expectation of being kidnapped in the heart of Tehran and hustled off" to the notorious Evin Prison. Eventually, the 20-year-old Ghahramani is sentenced to 30 days and a few days-and several beatings-later is dumped in a vacant countryside to make her way home. Scenes from a happy family life (crippled by the Iran-Iraq war) and a spirited adolescence (cut short by a repressive regime) alternate with the prison experiences in this multilayered account. Ghahramani, daughter of a Muslim father and Zoroastrian mother, both Kurdish, dips with brevity and grace into personal family history and public political history. Graphic and powerful as her treatment of torturous imprisonment is, Ghahramani retains an irrepressible lightness, perhaps born of knowing that "[a] sense of justice can always benefit from a complementary sense of the ridiculous." Her painfully acquired knowledge of "how easy it is to reduce a human being to the level of animal" does not keep her from "wondering if I'll ever be pretty again." Nothing, however, dilutes the bare bones prison experience. Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal beyond a mere record. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

School Library Journal

Determinedly self-critical memoir of an Iranian student's incarceration and torture in Evin Prison. Born in 1981, two years after the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, Ghahramani grew up fairly privileged in a fashionable Tehran neighborhood. Her father, a well-educated Kurdish Muslim, had been a high-ranking military officer under the shah. Her mother still practiced Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion suppressed with varying degrees of severity ever since invading Arabs imposed Islam on Persia in the seventh century. The author lived in two worlds, publicly demonstrating loyalty to the state and dutifully wearing "basic black from the head downward" in school, while at home she could wear what she liked and freely inquire into any subject. In 2001, she was seized off a street in Tehran, blindfolded and driven to the dreaded Evin Prison. Writing in English with the help of journalist Hillman, Ghahramani alternates a grim portrait of her incarceration with happy memories of her youth. She avidly read Garc'a Lorca, embraced Persian culture and the Farsi language and broke up with a young businessman who insisted she wear a chador to a friend's wedding. In jail, interrogated by a series of odious tormentors whose identity she could only guess by the sound of their voice and their smell, she was beaten with a studded belt, her hair brutally shaved off. The terrified young woman wasn't heroic enough to withstand torture; she identified her friends in photos taken by the police. Conversations through a fan grille with a crazy prisoner in the cell above her somewhat assuaged her grief and guilt at having become "a trained rat" for her jailers. Eventually, the author was dumped in a Tehransuburb and returned to her family. She now lives in Australia, but her burning passion for her language and culture remain. Ghahramani's shockingly honest recollections grimly complement Marina Nemat's account of her ordeal at Evin in the early 1980s (Prisoner of Tehran, 2007), reminding us how little has changed for women in Iran.

Kirkus Reviews