Ask Iranian writer, translator, and researcher Maryam Ala Amjadi if your reading of one of her poems is correct, and she’ll likely laugh — albeit gently. It’s difficult for poets to talk about the meaning of their work, she explains. This tracks for readers of both her poetry and prose, I suspect. That’s because every time you come back to her writing, you discover something new. She seems to diligently mine each word and phrase to unearth every possible meaning, reconstituting them in elegant, playful layers for you to peel back. It’s a wondrous, if at times bewildering, experience. Currently residing in Las Vegas, the Black Mountain Institute City of Asylum fellow talked with Desert Companion about female oppression, the history of resistance, and the promise of renewal. An edited excerpt of that conversation follows. For a longer version, listen to the recording.
Maryam, you've lived in many places: Iran, of course, where you're from; India, where you spent part of your childhood; Iowa, in the U.S.; and England and Portugal for your studies. How did these sojourns lead you to Las Vegas?
I left Iran in October 2022, and I arrived in Las Vegas in 2023. It was a long, sinuous journey across four countries with a suitcase, and up until the final moments that I got to Las Vegas — maybe a few months until my arrival — I did not know that I was going to end up in Las Vegas, and even getting to the U.S. was not a consideration, because I had made other plans, and I had envisioned my life elsewhere. So, on my journey here, through all these borders that I crossed, it was no longer a question of “What is left behind?” It was all about, “Where are you going next?” When I got here, I was utterly exhausted, mentally, emotionally, physically, and the city, Las Vegas, embraced me. I started absorbing Las Vegas before I even understood it. Las Vegas became a shelter, more than anything else.
The world's awareness of female oppression in Iran was heightened by the 2022 death of Jina Mahsa Amini in police custody. But you had already been writing about the suppression and resistance to it since at least the early 2000s. How did you experience the events surrounding Amini’s passing?
The Woman, Life, Freedom movement that happened in 2022 in Iran was not born in a single moment. It was a culmination of four decades of resistance by Iranian women against the atrocities of the regime that sought to control their agency and bodily autonomy and much more. I think the main difference this time was that the world saw it, because it gained global, international exposure.
A few months before Mahsa Amini’s death, I was in a car with a friend, and we were driving in the streets of Tehran, and it was summer. It was scorching hot. So, my scarf slipped off my head and it fell on my shoulders, and I didn't put it back on, because it was hot. I wanted to breathe, right? And this was behind tinted windows, mind you. Because I knew that at every intersection there are individuals from the morality police who are waiting to catch you and give you a citation. But it didn't matter, because five or six minutes after my scarf fell off, we received a text on our phones with a severe warning that we had violated “civic rights.” That's when I understood that we had been caught on camera. Now this was in 2022 in the summer, and the regime had just begun to use these so-called “smart surveillance cameras” and other tracking devices for the purpose of tracking women who, in their view, violated the hijab mandate.
I would like you to imagine the kind of chaos that this scenario causes. Imagine a woman who is just hot, or maybe she is trying to resist, and she Ubers every day. ... First, they catch you, and then they fine you, they confiscate your car. And then it escalates into other terrifying consequences, depending on whether you have to go to court or not. So being policed for your outfit, your visibility, being snatched off the streets and taken into the police station and getting mug shots of you — it's pretty common. But I would say that it's also done very randomly.
The day I heard that Mahsa Jina Amini was beaten to a coma, I was horrified, but I wasn't surprised. The day that she died was a very bitter day for me, if not the most bitter day of my life, because she was all of us. Mahsa Amini was every Iranian woman.
In October, the Smith College journal, Meridians, published your short story, “The Ice Seller of Hell.” It just won the journal's creative writing award for prose. This story is the day in the life of two young college women — one of them is the narrator — and they seem to be very close. How does their friendship help you structure the story and convey its main ideas?
It was important to me to show female friendship, because more often than not, in patriarchal structures, women are pitted against one another. ... Also, I wanted to show that there are different ways of navigating an oppressive system. So, what we refer to as resistance is not always loud or very visible.
Speaking of resistance: One recurring theme in this story is small acts of defiance, such as girls going to places where they can't be seen by the morality police and smoking out of view. In another scene, the narrator buys sanitary napkins for a woman who has four granddaughters after a shopkeeper refuses to sell her more than his limit. As a reader, I felt a real gut punch from these scenes. Why do such small acts have such a powerful impact?
It depends how you look at it, because here you have two women, they're young and, for the most part, they do what young people do. One of them wants to dye her hair pink. The other is thinking about a guy that she has flirted (with) for so long.
When you're young, you do these kinds of things. You cover up for each other, you get into trouble, you do things that you're not supposed to do. But then, here we have this restrictive context, right? And to those who are not familiar with what everyday, mundane life means in Iran, this looks like rebellion. It looks like resistance, but to the people who are living it, it's just life.
You’re probably best known for your poetry, which has earned you multiple international awards. And I want to note that Where is the Mouth of that Word, your most recent work, is actually an anthology of selected poems from your previous books: Me, I and Myself and Gypsy Bullets, which were published in 2003 and 2010, respectively, as well as a poetry chap book, Without Metaphors, from 2017. I mention this because, from the titles of those previous collections alone, one can already sense your penchant for word play. How did you cultivate this skill?
I first and foremost am influenced by the poetry embedded in everyday language, more specifically in the Persian language, because the Persian language has a metaphorical richness. So, what that means is, a word or a phrase packs more than one meaning, and there are layers of meaning embedded in just one word. And often, when you read the classical masters of Persian poetry, there are multiple readings of just one verse. There's also a high tolerance for ambiguity in the Persian language.
You left many loved ones in Iran. How do you cope with the distance and loss of being here, being in exile?
Whenever I hear the word distance, I think about this question, “From where? What is your center? What is at your core that a point seems near or far to you?” ... Yes, it's incredibly difficult to be away from my loved ones and to be away from my family and to be away from Iran, because that's one of my lifelines. ... But I would say, at the moment, while I am immersed in this new space, and I'm absorbing all the experiences that I have here and all the encounters that I have, at the same time, I live in a literary Iran, in a cultural Iran, in a mythical Iran, which is not unique to my position. I think that is something that many Iranian writers and artists who are away from their homeland do.
Parts of your story, “The Ice Seller of Hell” read to me like a love letter to Tehran. Is this what you're talking about, your way of strengthening that connection, or honoring your “lifeline,” as you described it, to Iran?
In a way you could say that, but I didn't start writing the story thinking about all these elements. This is perhaps an aftereffect, after I was able to exit the text and read it with my readerly eyes. ... Here you have the café, which is designed for intellectual flirtations. And then, on the other hand, you have women who are policed for their outfits and what they wear. I wanted to show that there is not one hegemonic reading of this lived experience — it contains multitudes. And in a sense, maybe you could say that it's a love letter to a city. But, part of being in love is maybe the disappointments as well. So, it's excitement, but it's also the bitter moments which gain significance after you leave.
March 20 is the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, which also figures into the story. What's the significance of this holiday in Iran?
Iran is a country of geographic and climatic diversity, and so there are four distinct seasons. And this is why the arrival of Nowruz at the end of winter is so special, because that's what Nowruz means: It means new day, new dawn, a new beginning. The story of Nowruz is, in many ways, the story of the Iranian identity, Iran's history, and the enduring bond that Iranians have with nature. One of the most fascinating aspects of Nowruz is that it arrives at the exact moment of the spring equinox. So, this moment is scientifically calculated every year, and it's when the day and the night are even, and the earth completes its orbit around the sun. ... Another remarkable aspect of Nowruz is that, regardless of your political affiliations and religious beliefs, Iranians take this tradition with themselves anywhere they go. Some scholars say that it's 5,000 years old. Others say that it's 7,000. Regardless of the exact origins, they all agree that this is an ancient tradition that celebrates the universal themes of rejuvenation, hope, and the rhythms of nature.
Can you give us an idea of how you will celebrate?
Last year, I had my Nowruz spread, or the Haft-seen spread, and I think that was the first time that I actually had a spread anywhere. ... It's comprised of seven items that begin with the letter “seen” in Persian, or “S” in English, and there are other items like mirrors and lamps and painted eggs. But there's also another addition, and that is the presence of a book. So ,there are two ways to go about this: People who have religious beliefs, they place the Quran, and those who don't, they place a collection of poetry — usually Hafez’s poems. And more often than not, you see the Quran and the poetry collection of Hafez side-by-side on the spread. I think that is a juxtaposition that speaks to maybe a reconciliation between religious faith and poetic wisdom.
