Parinoush Saniee, Iranian writer in exile: "The road in my country is hard and it will take much longer"

Sociologist and psychologist, as well as a successful novelist, Parinoush Saniee (Tehran, 73 years old) walked the streets of the Iranian capital with the protesters when the protests started a few weeks ago.

She has lived in the United States for five years, but was spending a month in her country when the death of the young Mahsa Amini —three days after being arrested by the morality police on September 13 for not wearing the veil properly— took the women to the streets.

They put themselves "in the front line" to demand freedom and demonstrate against the authorities.

“The men by now had somehow given up, they were giving up.

The regime that emerged from the 1979 Revolution has been very harsh with all social groups,

but their pressure on women has been even greater and now they are the ones who raise the flag of the fight”, explains Saniee at the Casa de Asia in Madrid, accompanied by a Farsi translator, on Tuesday.

She wears a green silk blouse, she wears heeled suede ankle boots, she is expressive and elegant, without a hint of fatigue, after two days attending the press: on Thursday she publishes her novel in Spanish

(Alliance).

More information

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How do you interpret what is happening in your country?

“The new generation is more rebellious and brave.

The population in general, and women in particular, has been enduring the regime for 43 years.

In the houses you live in absolute freedom, nothing to do with what happens on the street.

They dress how they want and relate how they want within their homes, but in the street a woman cannot talk to any man who is not from her family because the morality police will admonish her.

Many others and I encouraged our daughters to meet other young people in the houses.

Women in Iran have lived in that duplicity, as if they embodied two characters.

But now the young women, who did not know the days before the Revolution, want to take the life they have in their homes to the streets”.

Saniee's daughter also lives on the West Coast of the US, and many of her old friends.

"There I hardly need to speak English, I am surrounded by Farsi," she commented with a broad smile.

What bound her to Iran no longer exists, she assures her.

“If my mother were still alive, she wouldn't consider living outside of her;

my husband also passed away and friends are scattered.

Iran is a place full of memories, but loneliness in your own country is harder than being lonely outside”, she reflects.

In the houses you live in absolute freedom, nothing to do with what happens on the street

The tension of exile, the gap that separates a family divided since 1979, is the central point of his new novel, the third of his works of fiction, which comes after the publication of

and

(both in Salamander).

In a village on the coast of Turkey, a family separated for 30 years by the Revolution in Iran gathers for the first time around the matriarch to spend 10 days.

There all the misunderstandings, grudges and misunderstandings that have been cooking for decades, and from which no one is saved, emerge;

neither the grandmother nor her grandchildren grown in and out of her nor, of course, her adult children.

“Social issues, their problems and solutions are topics I have been studying all my life,” says Saniee.

Protest demonstration for the death of Mahsa Amini, on September 21 in Tehran.EFE

The novel

, her greatest international success and also in Iran, where it has been banned at certain times, was the result of the many studies that she had within her reach as a sociologist and psychologist.

“I thought about writing an academic article, but I wanted to reach more people, so I put it in a novel, I had thousands of examples of girls between the ages of 13 and 17 who were forced to marry and drop out of school,” she recalled.

"And so it has remained in all my books: the characters are invented, but the realities that surround them are as they are."

Those who leave and those who stay

deals with a multi-generational story and the trauma that goes through all the members of the clan.

“One of the greatest damages of the Revolution is the breakdown of families.

Any type of prolonged separation over time generates this type of lack of communication and problems, from living in different time zones to ending up losing common words.

Things are different today, but 20 years ago it was very difficult to communicate with Iran from the outside.”

Iran is for me a place full of memories, but loneliness in your own country is harder than being lonely abroad

The 1979 Revolution surprised Saniee in the US, where she was studying, but on that occasion she decided to return to Iran and go out to protest in the streets with the university students.

"What is happening today reminds me of what we lived through then, but the protests are now much more violent, they are shooting directly at the population," she said.

“In my generation we thought of going abroad to study and train, spending time abroad, but we did not contemplate settling abroad until 1979″.

The publication of her books abroad was what finally prompted her to leave Iran and establish her residence abroad, so that she could sign contracts and open a bank account.

He has not heard Ayatollah Khamenei's fiery speech on Monday, blaming Israel and the US for the protests, but he is not at all surprised.

“It was not difficult for me to imagine what he was going to say, because anything is always a conspiracy from outside, they never recognize the problems.

There are eight million Iranians in exile who are fighting for our country and we do not see that supposed enemy, ”he settled.

"I am hopeful and wish that this will come to a good end, but the road is hard and it will take much longer."

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