´I Am Writing You from Tehran´

 

...not me, of course, but Delphine Minoui, French-Iranian journalist who spent ten years in Iran reporting for various, mostly French-speaking international media. Je vous écris de Téhéran/I am writing you from Tehran is a memoir written as a series of letters Minoui is sending to her late grandfather, a patriot who did not accept any compromise either with the Shah or the mullahs. 

Busy covering different kind of assignments, while trying to escape the obsessive surveillance system and the offers of collaboration with the many intelligence units of the regime, there is a part of herself which reveals during those times. A part which she is struggling to not leave behind, spiritually at least, while she is leaving Iran, at least for now. 

In a curious emphatic way which reminded me of a similar book about Iran by Tara Kangarlou, Minoui is interesting in going beyond the sensational appearances often portrayed in the international media covering this part of the world. The most important characters of her memorialistic writings are women - women refusing to give up, women victims of men, women going to prison but still not giving up of their countries. There are not famous women - although I would have expected at least few noticeable brave women I admire - but maybe/hopefully they will really take the lead one day in Iran. But Minoui wants to know and understand more and thus she dares to explore the mind of the religious establishment as well, including one of its fierce enforcers, the basiji. She goes to Qom, the centre of religious elites, or meets with the nephew of the disgraced ayatollah Montazeri or with Hossein Khomeini, the nephew of the ayatollah with the same name.

Books like Minoui´s - that I had the chance to read in the original French language - allow to see and understand the nuances and the many differences but also to extend the borders of imagination trying to figure out how things could change in the future and in what direction. It is a testimony, one of the many that may help at a certain moment to figure out the big puzzle of a mysterious world.

Rating: 4 stars