1940s
-
Mahin in the Wind
The story of my grandmother, Mahin Banu (Persian for “lady like the moon”). Written in three vignettes, No. 1. Mahin Banu had a dark but lustrous imagination, which unlike her static coiffures, ran windswept and untamed. One winter afternoon, as the curly trees and clouds of Tehran blew across the city, Asqar Aqa came home…
-
Part One. The Moftakhar House in Moftakhar Alley
A vignette describing my mother’s house in Tehran in the 1940s. Most of Part I of my book is set here. The Moftakhar house snaked itself around Moftakhar Alley with all the wiggling hips of a Wednesday market girl. When they first assigned surnames in Tehran, Asqar Aqa’s father, Ali Aqa, chose the name “Moftakhar”…
