 In 1978, my family and I left Iran with two suitcases. There had been trouble in Tehran for a while, but that year the trouble just got worse. And we weren't sure how long the trouble would last, but my parents thought it would be better to wait out the chaos and the violence that was happening and return when things got calmer. There wasn't any time to pack, much less to plan. Like a lot of Iranians, we had no idea when we'd be coming back. We flew to America with those two suitcases. The next year there was a revolution in Iran. And we unpacked those two suitcases and then we just cast them off. Never went back to Iran. But some things survived that exodus. Among the few things that survived was a book of poems by a woman named Furuq Farooq Sa'ad. She's known as Furuq to Iranians. Growing up I'd come across this book every once in a while, and I can still see this isn't the actual book, but it was a lot like this one. Again, I can still in my mind I see this woman with bobbed hair and the coal-lined eyes. And I remember thinking, who is this and why had she followed us all the way to America? Why had this woman come with us to America? That image, its glamour, its mystery, its modernity rooted itself in my imagination. But it wasn't until I went to college and I started reading her poems for the first time that my obsession really began with Furuq. No sooner had I read her poem The Sin than I was possessed by her voice. It was so natural and so authentic and so immediate. I was also bowled over by how audacious she was. The Sin is a poem about sexual desire written from a woman's point of view. I remember thinking, had Iranian women really sounded like this at one time? This February, actually just a couple weeks ago, marks the 51st anniversary since Furuq died. She died on February the 14th of 1967. During her life she was the most notorious woman in the country of Iran, and in the intervening years she has become one of the most powerful voices for feminism, for social justice, and for human rights. She had burst onto the scene with this poem The Sin, the same one that I read in college. It was written in this traditional form, Qua Trains and Rhyming Couplets. So on the face of it it just seemed like a conventional love poem. But if you looked closer at it, it dispensed with the usual metaphors for sex and used instead a really direct treatment of the subject. So no flowers or vast gardens or whatever other metaphors that were being used. She talked about desire in a very direct way. So this was totally unheard of. This is a time when most people in the country thought women shouldn't say much of anything, much less say that. For some Furuq symbolized the exhilarating possibilities of her times. But for most people she embodied the corrosion of traditional values under Western influences. There's a word for this West toxification is how it's often translated. So Iran being infected by the West and in particular America. Predictably enough she sparked a lot of debate and thundering about the sanctity of marriage and the corrosion of national honor and oh my gosh the blighted futures of children if women were to proceed in this vein. Nevertheless she persisted. You might recognize that line. It's so true of Furuq despite this atmosphere that wanted to silence her she persisted and she continued to write all of her life until she died. For her the poet's responsibility was to give voice to reality, to her own intimate reality but also the reality of her society. In one of her later poems she writes, I must say something, I must say something. In the shivering moment at daybreak when space blends with something strange like the portents of puberty I want to surrender to some revolt. I want to stream from that vast cloud. I want to say no, no, no. Her poems still feel really urgent today. They ask questions like how do we look at women who exercise power by voicing their experience or trying to? How can a writer resist cultural and political repression? How can a writer or an artist or a citizen bear witness to injustice? For Furuq poetry was a refuge. It was a place where she could flee the strictures of her society where she could hold the various parts of herself up to a different light a place where she could take measure of her world. It was also a place where she could scream. In 51 years since her death those screams of hers they pierce every boundary between our world and hers, between Iran and America. So my song of a captive bird is a novel inspired by Furuq's work and her life. It traces the extraordinary ascent of this woman from a 15-year-old bride to one of the most distinguished voices in world literature. It's quite an amazing trajectory. She had a very dramatic life. I chose to write this as fiction and perhaps we can talk about why later in the question and answer. But the song of a captive bird is a novelization of Furuq's life. So I'll read to you briefly from the book and then like I say I'm really happy to answer any questions you might have about it. June of that year 1963 was a month of martyrs and bloody days. The fires, the murders, the riots, the marches all seemed part of some progression. Every death was telling some part of our story which was Iran's story but nobody could tell how the story would end. We were driven by forces we couldn't understand. Moving toward a destination we couldn't see. Those were bitter and black days full of prophecy and dread and every face seemed disfigured by grief, confusion, rage. I remember those days and the months that followed. The secret police and government informers were everywhere, their numbers ever increasing. When you heard they were 8,000 strong, 20,000, 60,000 you thought impossible. How could the estimates vary so wildly? But that was the point. Not knowing how many there were, we imagined they were everywhere. They could be anyone, everyone. In prison cells and dark basements, in warehouses and along stretches of barren roads there were bodies that would never be claimed or tended or buried. We would never witness their tortures, their deaths, nor read or hear of them. But they were there in our silence and in our fear. One afternoon as I was making my way back to my car from a bookstore near Tehran University where I'd spent most of the morning I noticed that a large number of students had gathered near the university gates. Between the protesters and the onlookers there were perhaps 300 people in the crowd. There were scattered protests around town then, watched by phalanxes of heavily armed security forces. But a gathering this large was unusual enough to make me stop and stare. Our oil is ours, the students chanted, death to the dictator, democracy for Iran. I pushed past the onlookers and managed to read the demands inscribed on their posters, political reform, greater civil rights, freedom of expression. I shouldered my way through the crowd and crossed the street. My bag was heavy with books and I stopped at a corner to switch it to my other arm while I fumbled inside for my keys. When I looked back up I saw that several cars had stopped along the university gates. A dozen men were clambering onto the sidewalk and running toward the protesters, their guns drawn. With the first shot my heart gave a kick. Later everyone reported screams, but I remember there was a long silence before the chaos started. For a moment I stood there, transfixed by fear, and then I felt myself snap and tingle with life. I tore into an alleyway, my bag thumping against my thigh as I ran. I was nearly to my car when the earth cracked and threw me to the ground and the world went quiet. When I opened my eyes the air was thick with smoke. From somewhere behind me I heard the sudden rattle of machine gun fire followed by panicked shouting. I had to get back to my car somehow I had to find it. I sprang to my feet and started running again. I'd lost my bag by then but I'd managed to hold onto my keys. When finally I found the street where I'd parked I hurled myself into the car and sat gripping the steering wheel desperate to catch my breath. My wrist was bleeding but the sensation was far from me like something I'd left behind in the streets. I peered over the dashboard for signs of life. Nothing. A minute passed and then I heard shouting in the hard pop of a pistol. I glanced in the rear of a mirror and I saw them, dozens of men running into the street, the scream of sirens at their backs. I started the engine nose the car forward but then there was a hammering against the hood of my car and I slammed on the brakes. Three men stood in the street blocking my way. The one in the middle had a wide, wet circle of blood on his chest and the two others had each grabbed him under the arms and were half carrying, half dragging him toward my car. They looked young, no older than 20 I guessed. One of them had the beginnings of a beard and another wore glasses with thick black frames. Please miss the one with glasses shouted rapping against the hood of my car. If I had a moment of doubt it was then sitting inside my car and staring at the three men from behind the windshield. Who were they and how could I trust them? I might have chosen just then to do something very different from what I actually did but I couldn't see this moment for what it would mean later for me or for those men. Instead I shook myself loose from the days that had stolen over me and pulled the back door open by the latch. They crammed into the car the back seat a confusion of arms and legs and except for their labored breathing in the low constant moan from the one who'd been shot they were silent. My hands were shaking, my knuckles bone white as I gripped the steering wheel. Already the air in the car was thick with the tang of sweat. The radio struck a platoon an airy love song. I slammed the button off. An afternoon in Tehran a bright sun in a blue sky street cars, ice cream menders, plain trees, a busy city busy with other stories. I swung left then right again into a main thoroughfare I had no idea where I should go my only instinct was to keep driving and it took me a while to work out where I was. It was a relief to fall into traffic to find myself surrounded by so many other cars and people and after a few minutes my grip on the wheel loosened just slightly and I forced myself to breathe. At Avenue Pahlavi a car swerved in front of mine coming to a stop at a crooked angle. One door slammed then two more three figures emerged uniformed their faces in shadow their batons raised and ready. In prison there were things I tried not to think about but couldn't. Like the three men as they were dragged from my car and into the street how they were beaten even the one who couldn't stand the one with the circle of blood on his chest their bloodied faces their torn clothes their broken bones their fear like Leila in the lake her screams her hands in the cell a metal caught a base in a stool the stones were damp and stank of urine and rot and there was a high concrete wall with a square window no wider than an outstretched hand I looked down at my clothes my blouse was splotched with blood and the blood had dried to a burnt brown later much later I'd say to the prison walls that it wasn't true what they said about her it's not true over and over a key rattled against the lock interrupting my mad sing song and that guard was young maybe 20 he stopped in front of me and my gaze traveled from his boots up the length of his uniform to his chiseled jaw and then finally to his eyes I remember thinking what does he want from me a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor a woman who talks to walls who holds her hands up to the sky as if in prayer what could he want from me you're that woman he said coarsely I watched his grip tighten on his baton the poetess I winced an inched away toward the wall he lifted the corner of my dress with the baton I ran it very slowly from my ankle up to my thigh my father is Colonel Faroq Söd I started to tell him but before I could finish I was kicked low and very hard in the stomach and it knocked the breath out of me that kick in the room went black when I came to I saw I was alone in the cell there was a searing pain where the guard's jack boot had struck my stomach I couldn't pull myself up from the ground my whole body hurt not as badly as it would tomorrow after that but badly enough that all I could do was lie with my eyes to the ceiling clutching my sides they kept me separated from the other prisoners in the women's section of the jail but I heard their voices their voices the shuffling of their bodies their cries their whispers I shorted all against my despair that night memories passed through my mind in the space between one hour and the next so quickly yet each was rich vivid and complete clear scenes and conversations surfaced without the slightest omission or abbreviation mostly they were very early memories of my mother's garden of our big old garden in Amirie as it was before it was destroyed I saw it so clearly the lovely tiled fountain the high walls draped in honeysuckle and jasmine the many trees under which my sister and I had once played when we were girls in the morning there were voices and the bead of boots against stone tiles my father before me with the glint of a tear in his eyes poetry could tell every story I had believed that once the day my father came for me in prison and took me back to my old house in Amirie I slept for three hours woke up and started to write it wasn't a poem but a letter addressed to every country that was not my country and it was Leila's story Raheem's story the story of the prisoner, the three protesters and every other story that I couldn't tell in a poem because a poem was a world and it took time to understand a world and now there wasn't any more time so I'll stop right there that's from a moment deeper into the book but I'm really happy to take your questions about any of what I've told you about the process of writing the book and the story itself really happy to answer yeah well, when Furuk died in 1967 there were so many parts of the story she took with her and her family was very very quiet, reluctant to speak about her many of her papers disappeared so there wasn't that much actually known about her she was mythic, she was iconic but there were huge tracks of her life that were unaccounted for and so as a biographer, that wouldn't do I'd have to go and search of those parts of the story and by temperament I'm not a biographer I like to make things up so I actually what would have been a biographer's worst nightmare, all these gaps and fissures in the story are a novelist's dream all those spaces where there was nothing to do but guess or imagine were the spaces where I could make the story my own so I chose to write a novel instead of a work of nonfiction and it's in a sense it's a compromise, there are parts of the story that follow her true story and then on that I've grafted this other story that's fictional it's entirely of my own making yeah, thank you she said it's a wonderful book if you didn't hear that yeah other questions, other questions to ask we've got time to fill yes so I think the question is there's a certain rhythm or musicality to my prose and I think this is something that people told me with my first book and I wouldn't have come up with this myself but there was there were people who told me your rhythms are the rhythms of Persian it's like the rhythms of that language which was my first language could be felt pressing up against my English and so I wasn't consciously aware of it but it's funny because when I write about America I don't think I have that rhythm but when I go in my imagination to Iran and I'm thinking in Persian I think I pick up that rhythm again so some of it I think has to do with the fact that Persian is so deeply imprinted on me it's my first language though it's no longer my strongest language it's still deeply imprinted on me the rest of it is work the rest of it is sitting I read my work aloud a lot you know it's kind of a peculiar madness I mean maybe sometimes when I'm stuck in the story I don't know what to do I'll just pick what I have up and I'll start to read it to myself and I think that's where I can really fine tune some of the rhythm make sure it's purposeful and it's creating the right effect that I want for a particular scene so that's more the craft of it that comes in over the editing process that's where it comes from other questions yeah, Miguel yeah, yeah so originally I had started out you have to imagine, Furu is so iconic it's almost hard to find a corollary in America most people say she's like the Sylvia Plath but I don't think even Sylvia Plath occupies the place that Furu had in Iran in her time and since then so this is frightening too because you're taking someone who's so beloved so mythic, so iconic and you're not writing even nonfiction you're making up a fiction and to do it in the first person is really galling to some people I think so I started out in the third person because I think I was tentative, I was a little scared of it and it read like a biography it just wasn't alive and I couldn't really get into her consciousness the only way to get there was to jump over into the first so I jumped into the first and at first I thought I'll just try this because as many creative writing teachers will tell you whether it feels right or it doesn't so it felt right it felt right, I was trying it out and at this point I stopped thinking that anyone was ever going to read anything I was writing so now I'm just writing for myself because had I been thinking about what people would be thinking about what I was doing I think the project would have ended right there and so I switched over into first I tried to pretend no one would ever read this while secretly of course holding the hope that everyone would and so I felt it was right and now that I think about it also part of that decision was that Furukh wrote in the first person many many of her poems were written in the first person and that was part of her innovation and her revolution was that for the first time you had these poems that didn't couch the feelings or the truth in some kind of graphic persona it was a woman speaking her truth in the first person and it was a tremendous innovation so it felt of a piece with some of her intentions as an artist it felt like it was picking up some of those same energies it was picking up on that bold first person that announces itself in so many of her poems it felt right yeah thank you yeah so the question was whether I had told her family I haven't she is now nearly everyone in her family has passed away now they hadn't when I was still writing the book I think her mom was still alive at that time I never thought to contact them probably because you know it would have so intruded on my process this story I tell in here it's not the furul it's my furul it's not history it's a story and I think had I started interviewing people or asking permission then I think you would have had a different book certainly not this one and not the one I wanted to write to tell you the truth and as to whether they've read it not that I know of the books been out two weeks so you know it can't have made its way unfortunately Iran has no trade agreements with the US so I can't sell my book I can't sell the rights in Iran and also it's the kind of book there are a lot of touchy subjects in here and politically dangerous subjects so it's not the kind of book that it would not get past the censors so the only scenario I could imagine is if it went underground and was translated and I suppose I have some secret hope that it might because it feels like I feel that this story though I made it my own in some way its home is Iran and so it is it's a private hope of mine that it might be translated and find its way to Iranians out there when Iranians in America learn about the project they get really excited because they all know her and it's really you know I find they have a real emotional attachment so you can imagine then to bring the story to Iran where everyone has nearly everyone has a memory of her a favorite poem of hers you know people when I tell them Iranians about this project they'll just spontaneously start to recite verses of her poems Iranians love poetry of course and so it's a very special connection I have to an Iranian reader and it would be wonderful if it reached there I guess I hope that they will but I don't know when and if yes so the question is about Furuq son Furuq was married when she was 15 and had a child when she was quite young and divorced as was the custom and the law of the time she had no right to see her son once she divorced the family was also very Iranian families of that time where they were to my knowledge they raised the son to think that Furuq was a woman of ill repute that she had left him abandoned him and so I think that had really that certainly traumatized Furuq and it really traumatized the son as well so though I believe he's alive I don't think that they saw each other maybe they saw each other once or twice after she divorced but when she died he was still a young child and I don't think she had seen him in a long time it was probably the deepest loss of her life was the loss of her son the son did go on years later he has published a collection of Furuq's love letters to his father those exist and I think he wanted to I'm not sure I think he wanted to honor her memory but also his father's memory to show that that was a true and deep love even though she had left that marriage so that is a legacy that the son has left behind yeah definitely with this book it took four years to write it a lot of interruptions I have a child I take care of my mom I teach, I had moved across the country so there were a lot of intervals where I wasn't actively working on it and I think really it was that last of the four years it was the last year or so when I really buckled down and I began to treat it like a job so I'd go to that space that you're talking about on social media from 9 to 3 those are my hours and some days I managed to squeeze out 10 words and other days it might be I guess if I'm lucky 100 and so but that sitting down is really important so that I think what happens when I did that is because I'm just getting 10 or 100 words out at each session but I think what happens when you work daily and steadily in that way your subconscious works on it even when you're not sitting at the table at the desk so it was gestating overnight and I could then return to it the next day and get the next 10 or 100 words out of it something magical then happen which is that I was able to sell the book and then I had an editor who was waiting for the book and as anyone who's had a wonderful creative writing teacher or worked with an editor knows that is such a tremendous gift to a writer somebody waiting like this for what you have is transformative so once she came on board and she loved what was there she really helped assure the book toward its ending the last maybe 100 pages of the book hadn't been written at that point but I was able to write them more quickly because she was encouraging me and she was so passionate about my editor Andra Miller was really passionate about full story and she got it and she was waiting for me to give it to her so that was really wonderful and I think if I calculate I probably did half or more of the work in that last year as I was working with Andra that I did on my own when I was working without an editor so that was a really it was a really wonderful gift to have an editor who was so enthusiastic come on board so that's my process when I finished my when I finished this novel it's sort of like being in good shape you've been working out every day so I was in good shape and I didn't want to waste it I wanted to keep going so almost immediately there's a huge lag between when a book is finished and it comes out in my case it was nearly 16 months I finished this book 16 months ago and it's just come out so you can go mad and get busy writing something else and since I felt I had really gotten into good shape and I was in a certain I had certain momentum going I started right away I was writing I started right away and so the lesson in all this for me has been to even if it's not 9 to 3 if it's 9 to 10 or later in the evening to keep some connection alive every day to the project and that I think is for me really really important to not let long gaps of time fall I think if you're away a week it takes two weeks to get back into it if you're away a month two months and so it goes right so I try to work on when I'm working on a little bit every day anyone else okay thank you so much it was really a pleasure