Synopsis

From the publisher

"We stormed every classroom, inscribed our slogans on the blackboard . . . Never had mayhem brought more peace. All our lives we had been taught the virtues of behaving, and now we were discovering the importance of misbehaving. Too much fear had tainted our days. Too many afternoons had passed in silence, listening to a fanatic’s diatribes. We were rebelling because we were not evil, we had not sinned, and we knew nothing of the apocalypse. . . . This was 1979, the year that showed us we could make our own destinies. We were rebelling because rebelling was all we could do to quell the rage in our teenage veins. Together as girls we found the courage we had been told was not in us."

In Journey from the Land of No Roya Hakakian recalls her childhood and adolescence in prerevolutionary Iran with candor and verve. The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about one deeply intelligent and perceptive girl’s attempt to find an authentic voice of her own at a time of cultural closing and repression. Remarkably, she manages to re-create a time and place dominated by religious fanaticism, violence, and fear with an open heart and often with great humor.

Hakakian was twelve years old in 1979 when the revolution swept through Tehran. The daughter of an esteemed poet, she grew up in a household that hummed with intellectual life. Family gatherings were punctuated by witty, satirical exchanges and spontaneous recitations of poetry. But the Hakakians were also part of the very small Jewish population in Iran who witnessed the iron fist of the Islamic fundamentalists increasingly tightening its grip. It is with the innocent confusionof youth that Roya describes her discovery of a swastika—“a plus sign gone awry, a dark reptile with four hungry claws”—painted on the wall near her home. As a schoolgirl she watched as friends accused of reading blasphemous books were escorted from class by Islamic Society guards, never to return. Only much later did Roya learn that she was spared a similar fate because her teacher admired her writing.

Hakakian relates in the most poignant, and at times painful, ways what life was like for women after the country fell into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who had declared an insidious war against them, but we see it all through the eyes of a strong, youthful optimist who somehow came up in the world believing that she was different, knowing she was special. At her loneliest, Roya discovers the consolations of writing while sitting on the rooftop of her house late at night. There, "pen in hand, I led my own chorus of words, with a melody of my own making." And she discovers the craft that would ultimately enable her to find her own voice and become her own person.

A wonderfully evocative story, Journey from the Land of No reveals an Iran most readers have not encountered and marks the debut of a stunning new talent.

From The Critics

Publishers Weekly

Political upheavals like the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism may be analyzed endlessly by scholars, but eyewitness accounts like Hakakian's help us understand what it was like to experience such a revolution firsthand. The documentary filmmaker and poet was born to a prominent Tehran Jewish family in 1966, two years after the Shah had exiled Islamic fundamentalist leader Ayatollah Khomeini. As Jews in a largely Muslim world, the family knew how to live respectfully with their neighbors. With powerful illustrations, Hakakian relates how, in 1979, when the Shah fled and Khomeini returned triumphant, she joined the cheering crowds. Khomeini's revolution seemed liberating, but before long, the grip of the Islamic extremists tightened. Women were put under strict surveillance; books and speech were censored. Anti-Jewish graffiti appeared. As the targeting became more visible-being made to use separate toilets and drinking fountains, being required to identify their businesses as non-Muslim-many Jews emigrated. After Hakakian describes the teacher who risked her job to give her high marks on a "subversive" paper or grips readers with the tale of how she and her teen buddies barely evaded the morality police, readers just want her to leave, too, which her family did, in 1984. Hakakian's story-so reminiscent of the experiences of Jews in Nazi Germany-is haunting. Maps. Agent, Flip Brophy. (Aug.) Forecast: An author tour, regional NPR campaign and Hakakian's media connections will help sales, but the real kicker will be Hakakian's appearance at Jewish book fairs this fall. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Hakakian recounts her past as a girl growing up in the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East-Tehran-during the takeover of the Ayatollah Khomeini. She paints pictures of a changing Iran, from a land that was immersed in the poetry of life and discovery to one that spoke of militaristic prayer and repression, where Jewish people were once again subject to anti-Semitism and where women were stripped of many of their rights. Hakakian's story is that of an individual changing from innocent child into disillusioned, rebellious teenager. As revolutionary fever overtook her country, she was swept up in, and then engulfed by it. Hakakian's poetic prose is lovely, lyrical, and wry, full of metaphor as well as humor and pain. Teens who are interested in history, poetry, different cultures, or biography should enjoy her memoir.-Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Poet and former 60 Minutes producer Hakakian debuts with a effulgent memoir of her girlhood in the shadow of the Iranian revolution. Combining a moving recollection of lost innocence with vivid political reportage, the author describes the universal joy expressed when the Shah fled and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile. But the new regime soon became as authoritarian as its predecessor. Within a year polygamy was no longer restricted, the marriage age for girls was lowered to nine, sports were segregated, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic. The Hakakians, members of the second-largest community of Jews in the Middle East after Israel, had seen their oldest son flee to America in 1975 because he opposed the Shah. They initially welcomed the new government. Adolescent Roya and her Jewish classmates talked, wrote, and dreamed of saving the world. But their dreams soon soured. Roya, like all other women, had to cover herself in public; she and her fellow students were frisked at the school gate each morning by "Members of the Islamic Society," an arm of the new secret police installed in the schools; and when Roya earned the best grade for an essay, the teacher tore up her work because its topic, the destructive nature of war, would have caused trouble for the young author. Hakakian vividly evokes the rhythms of family meals and celebrations in a land she considered her home, which made it all the more painful when Jews began to be singled out as non-Muslims in the 1980s, and Jewish doctors and nurses were rejected as "unclean." Hakakian left Iran with her mother in 1984, and her father joined them in the US the next year. Before they left, her father burned all their booksand Roya's writings, deeming them unsafe to keep. A somber reminder from an accomplished writer of the unexpected consequences and costs of revolutions.
Agent: Flip Brophy/Sterling Lord Literistic