Tehran at twilight, by Salar Abdoh

 

I picked up this book to read a few days before the recent hostilities between Israel, Iran, and the U.S., but it's a stark reminder of the difference between the Iran we see on the news and the day-to-day life of real human beings. In this book, Iranian-American Reza Malek is asked by a friend to return to Tehran to help him with an unnamed task. Once he gets there, he realizes that he's being used in a larger scheme to help the friend disappear so that he can get away from the terrorist group that he's been helping. In return, he gives Reza information that will help him locate Reza's mother who was thought to have emigrated to Australia decades prior. The action in the book takes place over the course of a year and a half. Reza is helping to sell off his friend's family holdings, lost originally in the 1979 revolution but which he still has a claim to, so that he can get his mother a visa to leave Iran and return to the U.S. with him. Author Salar Abdoh packs a lot into this short 236 page novel. In addition to his family drama, Reza also helps his mother and her friend Anna, a Polish Jewish refugee who has been in Iran since the second world war. Apparently, many Jewish refugees fled to Iran first before making their way to the new state of Israel, but some stayed behind. I had read Abdoh's more recent book about 18 months ago, A Nearby Country Called Love, which I really liked a lot. I'm looking forward to reading more by him.