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Understanding Iran through its past: A review and
interview with Meghan Nuttall Sayres
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2013-03-31 13:34:53
In her award-winning novel from 2006, Anahita’s Woven Riddle, Meghan Nuttall Sayres introduced a teenage girl from turn-
of-the-20th-century Iran who was determined to pursue her own life course rather than the marriage to a tribal leader that her
father had arranged for her. Sayres drew from Persian folklore, Sufi poetry, and her own experience as a tapestry weaver to
write the story of a weaver who uses her talents to outsmart her father and his advisors.
Last month, the small California-based multicultural publisher Nortia Press brought out a beautiful reprint edition of
Anahita’s Woven Riddle along with its long-awaited sequel, Night Letter. The new novel stands on its own as a taut tale of
adventure and suspense. Anahita is on her way to her wedding when two men kidnap her. She quickly figures out that the
men have different reasons for seizing her, but she must find a way to use that knowledge against them before she is sold
into slavery, married off to a greedy ruler, or killed. The men’s separate goals, as well as foul weather, drive the threesome
far off course, and the reader is treated to vivid descriptions of the landscape and village life of Central Asia a century ago.
The description is well integrated into the narrative and propels the story forward. Readers feel the terror of being caught in
an avalanche or passing through a village where everyone, even the small children, are so intimidated by local warlords that
they do not speak, and the captured Anahita has to figure things out by their non-verbal language.
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The design of both books is outstanding, drawn from classic tapestries and motifs, and points to the creativity and innovative
form and content that one often finds with non-corporate publishers. In its juxtaposition of Anahita’s first-person narrative
and an omniscient third-person narrator who reveals the behind-the-scenes intrigues to rescue the kidnapped teenager, Night
Letter raises the tension and keeps the reader guessing as to who is friend and who is foe.
I had the good fortune to catch the author for an email interview, in between her book tour and the deadline for an anthology
of Central Asian literature that she is also editing for Nortia Press.
LML: How did you research the historical events depicted in the story? Did you travel to the places where the novel
is set?
MNS: I made two trips to Iran and one to Uzbekistan before completing Night Letter. My guide in Uzbekistan was an
historian, a well of information. I also read novels by Russian authors set in Bukhara as well as consulted Uzbek and
American scholars. But there is no substitute for impressions gained from on the ground experiences. Walking beneath the
mighty walls of The Ark fortress in Bukhara and climbing hundreds of steps within a centuries old minaret in Esfahan (in
pitch darkness) leaves imprints on all of ones' senses and faculties that provide rich details for a novelist to utilize when
working on description, plotting and how setting influences character.
LML: Anahita is a strong female character, one in control of her own fate. How typical was her experience among
Muslim girls and women at that time?
MNS: I think we often tend to look at women in the past as having been meek, male dominated and powerless, but I think it
was they who actually paved the way for whatever rights we women enjoy today (or would like to believe we hold solidly
today).
LML: How has the role of women changed between the turn of the 20th century and today?
MNS: This is a sweeping topic but I will attempt to address a slice of it through my limited understanding. With respect to
Uzbekistan, before the Soviets brought institutionalized education in the region, groups of intellectuals and reformists called
Jadid, had started schools for girls and boys to some success. So, in this respect, education has remained steady for the past
century or so.
In Iran, the Qajar dynasty sanctioned European-style schools for men, and a missionary school in Tehran in 1890 for
women. As early as 1900 there were schools in the cities for women. Mohammad Reza Shah provided for women's suffrage
and began a rural teaching corps to villages and to nomads in tents in the 1940's. The Islamic Republic extended public
education for women and men through university level. Today, Iranian women make up about 60 percent or more of
university students. They work in every sector of society as doctors, lawyers, parliamentarians, and Iran has even had a
women vice president. One of my Iranian friends is the CEO of her own company which deals with European businesses.
She remarked that when she attends board meetings in Europe, she is usually the only woman among the men CEO's at the
table.
LML: We have become accustomed to looking at Islam and its followers in geopolitical terms, but your novel
explores the literary and cultural dimensions of Islam in Iran and elsewhere in Central Asia. How can the images,
themes, and values expressed in literary works shed light on the geopolitical issues that dominate the news today?
MNS: I think literary works can bring a more humane and alternative perspective about the people we in the West having
been waging war upon in the Middle East.
I am of a mind that in order to solve today's problems it is wise to ask, What brought us to our present circumstances?
Looking back can shed light on the fact that the geopolitical boundaries in the Middle East, often established by ruling
powers over colonies, were constructed without thought to the clan and tribal alliances that had been established in the
region since the beginning of civilization. These clan alliances are also inextricably related to watersheds (most easily
exemplified in nomadic cultures) and in turn are relevant to our current climate change issues.
Fiction can flesh out subtleties of art, architecture, food, character, religion and traditions in ways that mere facts about
current or historical events, people, and places cannot. Fiction can uncover and point to other truths---the ones left out of the
facts. Fiction would seem more engaging, too, especially for young readers. Perhaps if more historical fiction books about
the Middle East are published and made accessible to the classroom, students today who will be our future leaders, would
have an expanded frame of reference with which to work toward possible solutions to the issues we will face tomorrow in
this global cultural watershed in which we live.
