"There is no future. Think if people knew. You put so much time into planning for the future and then doesn't even exist.
Who would have thought."
So thinks fifty year-old Nahid, an Iranian mother living in Sweden. The doctor delivers the news she has stage 4 cancer with just six months to live, but what the hell does she know? A career nurse herself, Nahid knows you are not allowed to say that to a patient, no one has any idea how long anyone has left to live. Sisters and aunts console her, but her own daughter Aram is the only one Nahid wants. As attentive as Aram is, it will never be enough for Nahid, for as fierce and strong as she appears, she craves the undivided attention a daughter should give her mother. Why shouldn't Aram be in as much pain as Nahid? She is the one who is dying.
In Iran, her mother was married off at age 9 to a 27 year old man, not unusual at the time, and Nahid was disappointingly the sixth girl in a family with no sons. Nahid married Masood in her twenties and also had a large family without sons.
Revolutionary events brought her and Masood to Sweden. Rebellious at twenty, with a desire for equality and freedom, Masood and Nihad joined friends in a demonstration which turned violent. Marked and interrogated by the police, the best option to flee seemed illegal visas into a refugee camp. Things were no better for Nahid in Sweden, as Masood's anger was endless and she suffered regular beatings, often with Aram in his arms. The husbands of her sisters were also angry. Men holding rigid control over women lashing out in anger to maintain authority.
Her child is all that matters to her, but there is a strong mother daughter bond/rivalry at work. She raised Aram to be independent with a better life than hers, but resents her for it, and makes her want to pay for the freedom she didn't have herself. Why should she be spared the pain as everything has to keep disappearing?
"A tree is rooted to the ground, if you transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. I didn't realize that this was is how it would be."
This is book about the mother/daughter dynamic, and so, as powerful as the writing is, I felt a little outside of it, not being either of those. Nahid is painted with authentic colours, showing the pain and loss of the dying process, as well as the selfishness and resentment towards the world. There are no more treatments left, and she is alone with illness.
She knows she should want to protect Aram from this, yet what is a daughter but one born to share in her mother's pain?
This complex novel does have some memorable characters and excellent writing on exile and dislocation, both physically and emotionally. May not be my favourite, but I can see why it gets consistently high reviews, with many saying it is one of the best they have read.
2017 / Tradeback / 200 pages
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