Ghazaleh Alizadeh was in search of love

The Association of Iranian Women: Given the recurrence of the theme of search for love in Ghazaleh Alizadeh’s short stories, one may say that Alizadeh herself was, in a loveless world, in search of love.

Couples in Alizadeh’s short stories always endure an unbearable pain, a pain that leads them to loneliness and isolation. Alizadeh has not offered us a one-sided view in her stories. She has painted negative and positive pictures of both women and men even though, due to women’s invisibility in history, their portraits in her stories seem more visible to us.

These are the views expressed by Leila Rahbar, in a seminar on the works of this Iranian woman writer, held by the Iranian Sociological Association on Tuesday 13 Jan. 2006, which attracted a large and eager audience.

The first speaker, Leila Rahbar presented her research in three parts. In the first part, she talked about representation of women and women writers in contemporary Iranian literature – women who have challenged traditional perceptions and roles.

Rahbar referred to the specificities of women’s literature and said: ‘ In Iran, due to the segregation between men and women, the masculine and feminine languages are quite different. Women’s language is stark and direct, but labyrinthine and complex. It is an oral language transferred from grandmothers to mothers and daughters. In contemporary Iranian literature, there have been women, like Simin Daneshvar and Simin Behbahani, who have written about their husbands, fathers and lovers, while until very recently no man was prepared to utter his wife’s name in public, let alone writing a book about his mother, sister, daughter or wife’.

Listening to Alizadeh’s life story, the audience seemed captivated, especially when Alizadeh’s sufferings and hardships were recounted.

Ghazaleh Alizadeh was born in 1325 (1948) in Tehran. After graduating in Political Science in Tehran, she continued her academic studies in Philosophy and Cinema at Sorbonne University in Paris.

Following two unsuccessful suicide attempts, and while suffering from cancer for the last three years of her life, she hanged herself from a tree in Javaher-dasht, a village in north Iran, in May 1996.

Some are of the opinion that the reasons for Alizadeh’s suicide were her personal problems, illness, disappointment with her literary career and the indifference of an unappreciative audience. In a suicide note she left behind, Alizadeh said no one should be held responsible for her death. Some believe that, by destroying herself, Alizadeh wanted to destroy the source and cause of all her unhappiness.

Leila Rahbar considers Alizadeh amongst the first generation of Iranian women writers. According to Rahbar: “Edrissis’ House is Alizadeh’s most outstanding work. Alizadeh’s first work is After Summer and her last work is The Intersection. Her short story Island’ was awarded the best price, the Golden Pen, by the literary magazine Gardoun.

In her critique of Edrissis’ House, Rahbar, who is a student of women’s studies, maintained that this story represents the private, social and political position of women in a male-dominated society, a society in which most of us have been raised and know and continues until today.

Rahbar concluded that today’s woman is no longer the limited and enslaved woman. Today’s woman wants to participate in the public domain and to bring about change. She wants change, and where she fails she does not get disappointed and tries again.

The next speaker, Nayereh Tavakoli, spoke about her friendship with Alizadeh. She talked about Alizadeh’s turbulent life and influences on her work.

Alizadeh’s divorce from her husband, her adoption of a child who had survived Boeen-Zahra earthquake, and her experiences of living in France, all influenced her work. Tavakoli believes that Alizadeh always sought to create an earthly and beautiful woman who dies an unusual and premature death. This is why Alizadeh joined the characters of her fiction after being diagnosed with cancer.

Tavakoli criticised Mirabedini’s view of Alizadeh’s female characters (Mirabedini is the author of One Hundred Years of Short Story Writing in Iran), and said: ‘ Contrary to Mirabedini, who sees Alizadeh’s female characters as dreamers, I believe it is not the women, but the men in Alizadeh’s works who are dreamers, men like Vahab in Edrissis’ House or Behzad in Island’.

Tavakoli concluded her talk with a feminist critique of After Summer.

The last speaker of the seminar, Dr Husseini, spoke about the role of love in Alizadeh’s work, and emphasized that Alizadeh was aware of current political affairs. Many of her protagonists are political, such Mehdi in Island who finds himself at the end and finds peace while chanting slogans

amongst the demonstrators.

One of the characteristic features of Alizadeh’s work is an equal attention to men and women. Dr Husseini supported this statement by quoting Alizadeh that ‘two pieces of a bean are like twins, and they should find one another’.

This researcher, after analyzing 13 couples in Alizadeh’s stories, has reached the conclusion that Alizadeh’s couples are often in search of their other half – or the half they have lost – as if this is an impossible dream for Alizadeh.

Another salient feature of women’s literature is the instinctive identification of the author with the character she creates. The writer views literature as a mirror whereby she can reflect all dark and bright aspects of her emotional and social life.

Given the recurrence of the theme of search for love in Ghazaleh Alizadeh’s short stories, one may say that Alizadeh herself was, in a loveless world, in search of love. Couples in Alizadeh’s short stories always endure an unbearable pain, a pain that leads them to loneliness and isolation.

Finally, Husseini referred to the role of love and the position of women in Alizadeh’s stories.