Beginning in 1953 and closing in the wake of the Iranian revolution, Nazanine Hozar’s epic novel is named after its heroine. Aria is a defiant, spirited child who’s set to embark upon an odyssey across Iran’s social and religious divides, one whose defining forces illuminate the nation’s rich, complex past as well as the tensions that will fuel its violent future transformation. Even so, it’s the story’s backdrop, Tehran, that is the book’s standout character.
A city of two halves with its impoverished south and affluent north, Tehran is home to Baha’is, Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews, as well as Muslims of varying degrees of devoutness. International influences vie with tradition, and while women avert their eyes from the male gaze in the south, in the north they walk with their heads held high and their shoulders back, preferring miniskirts to the veil. Tehran’s architecture of ancient courtyards, alleyways and maze-like bazaars guards its secrets even from the fabled Alborz mountains that rise up above it.
This is a metropolis that might well have swallowed Aria up as a newborn were it not for a kindly army driver. Behrouz Bakhtiar is walking home through moonlit snow one night when he finds a baby, just a few days old, abandoned beneath a mulberry tree. “I’ll name you Aria, after all the world’s pains and all the world’s loves,” he pledges. For many in this powerful novel – women especially – the pains dominate.
Aria’s early years are spent with Behrouz’s abusive wife, Zahra, but when she’s seven, she’s taken in by a wealthy childless woman named Fereshteh, who sends her to school. Fereshteh also makes her visit Mehri, a poor woman, to give her daughters weekly reading lessons. Along with this trio of deeply flawed mother figures, Aria’s life intersects with those who will become communists, senior revolutionary guards and human rights lawyers.
A pleasingly restless narrative of shifting viewpoints, it always finds its way back to Aria. A lot is thrown at her, but she’s a sturdy enough character to withstand not just abusive parenting but also Hozar’s use of her as a kind of conduit for the city’s increasingly volatile divides. Throughout, she remains a living presence.
Recurring images – the fire at the centre of ancient Zoroastrian worship, for instance – are used to potent effect, and there are some indelible scenes: among them, the opening pages in which Aria’s birth mother abandons her and the moment when, as a student, she stands beside a friend whose father is paid blood money by the Shah, helping him throw the family’s ill-gotten jewels and silks into their Olympic-size swimming pool.
Arias, Behrouz says, are “little tales, cries in the night. If you sing an aria, the world will know all about you.” Hozar, who was born in Tehran 10 months before the revolution and left for Canada when she was still a child, has crafted just such a cry in the night. Inevitably, given the course that Iran’s history has taken, its ending is swathed in darkness. But the naming of another child, this one Red, to evoke “love, rage, heart, blood”, suggests a pinprick of hope by way of resilience. It’s an impressive debut, not easily forgotten.
• Aria by Nazanine Hozar is published by Viking (£14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
