The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi

Abstract

eager to break the silence. I always kept it to myself, and it was as if I had built a wall around myself. But at last the wall collapses .” And the painful memories surface: of mass killings, including women and children; beheadings; finding the shallow graves of thousands of fallen young soldiers ; officers without a conscience sending their men into war-crime scenarios; seeing best buddies die; leaving behind lovers and their children when a political settlement was finally reached and they returned home. But what happened in the jungles of Indonesia came home with them, and they would never be the same. More than five thousand did not come home. Speerstra visits those stories, too, of bereaved parents whose grief never went away, or of fiancées who waited in vain. And though there is an inevitable similarity running through these stories, no two are the same. Speerstra’s storytelling powers are fully exercised here by varying the narrative techniques and by letting each subject tell his story in his own unique way. Characteristically, the author allows the stories their emotional dimension. In many of these stories, he listens to the heartbeat of a lost generation; in recording them, he makes sure that the war and its cost are no longer forgotten. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Goli Taraghi. The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons. Sara Khalili, tr. New York. W. W. Norton. 2015 (©2013). isbn 9780393063332 Goli Taraghi, a renowned Iranian female author, now in her seventies, has lived in Iran, the US, and France and has written and published both before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and after. Her latest collection, published in English, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons, includes ten short stories that cover various moments and eras in the span of her life, taking place in Tehran, Paris, and other cities in between and beyond. These stories seem to be mainly based on either Taraghi’s own life or on other women she has met throughout her life and journeys. Some of her themes include three generations of women, a thief, a ballet class, neighborhood young loves, a coup d’état, grandmothers, the intertwined lives of maids, nannies, and their employers. Of the stories in the collection, only three are primarily about male characters; interestingly , they are entitled “In Another Place,” “The Great Lady of My Soul,” and “The Other One,” and even these are, in one way or another, stories with a female center. Taraghi writes of the world around her, allowing her to indulge herself and her readers in the well-represented familiar world but limiting her ability to take her readers beyond her immediate surroundings , beyond her social class and lifestyle. Her stories are strongest when she delves into (re)creating a world with its events and characters, and when she stays within the bounds of simple storytelling, rather than trying to use intricate plot devices that might be more harmful than helpful to the story. On another note, the stories are not the strongest with regard to rhythm and pacing, tone and voice, as these do not change much from one story to another, from one context to another. Goli Taraghi is a storyteller who reminds you of a grandmother who gathers her grandkids around her at night and tells stories of a life, a life wished for and gone by, struggled for and let go of, remembered and recounted. Her stories are simple and accessible, yet they revive peoples who are not simple and accessible. Her stories are happy, hopeful, and humane while simultaneously sad, dark, and heartbreaking. Without any forced gestures, they invite you to sit, listen, imagine, and think about these lives. It is for these very reasons that Sheniz Janmohamed Firesmoke TSAR This collection of poems from Sheniz Janmohamed spans three poetic forms in its quest to uncover both truths about the soul and the life cycle of fire. Using images of nature and combining them with references to history and the tenets of her cultural heritage to evoke beautiful examinations into life, Janmohamed’s writing is wonderfully complex in its simplicity. C Fong Hsiung Picture Bride TSAR This novel about a Chinese Indian girl forced...