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October 19, 2001
The Iranian

Synopsis for, Falling Rocks, a novel recently completed by Layla Dowlatshahi. Also see excerpt.

Shada and Pretty Shada are cousins, close in age, and in circumstances. They are two young women who must escape their native Iran in the late 80's with their Aunt Farah, and seek sanctuary in Hamburg, Germany. As Muslim refugees, their lives are difficult, surviving in a place and time when racist and religious discrimination only add to their cultural alienation. Shada's internal struggle to assimilate into her new culture and her desire for freedom are mirrored by that of the Muslim community around her. The war in Iran and rising tensions in the Middle East and Europe are the daily backdrop of the novel.

1987: On a cold winter night, Farah Mehdi escapes from the tiny village of Arak with her daughter, Pretty Shada and niece Shada Mohadi. Following closely on their trail is the Passdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Police, who accuse the women of Socialist crimes against the state. Fearing capture, the women walk for many days through the Zagros Mountains which provides them safe passage to Turkey and to their final destination: Europe. The novel begins with the women having arrived and settled into Hamburg, Germany. The German government provides Kali Farah and her family with political asylum and gives them a two-room apartment in a heim, or refugee camp, in the Muslim ghetto of Ruesdandt, which was originally a holding center for the transport of Jews to the concentration camps. The family struggles along with other Muslims to make ends meet. Most often, bread is their only food. Kali Farah finds work in the neighborhood kiosk and joins the ICC (Islamic Citizens Committee).

Shada and Pretty Shada attend the local high school, but are forced to follow sharia'h laws enforced by Kali Farah, including wearing hejab. Most importantly, they are made to attend the prayer sessions at the Ruesdandt Mosque across the street. One morning, the neighborhood muezzin, Aga Hussein, has a heart attack and dies. The neighborhood is in an uproar. Who will lead the others in prayer and who will now run the ICC, the Islamic Citizens Committee? In Hamburg, the lives of the two cousins, whose closeness as children is now threatened by their refugee status in the West and the pressures of family and religion to keep to Muslim traditions despite contact with other Iranian young women who no longer adhere to them.

Political and community tensions begin to rise between the members of the ICC whose individual members, Iranians and Pakistanis, both vie for control. While Pretty Shada keeps her faith in God and in her community, Shada slowly begins to rebel against her Kali Farah and her strict rules. Shada sees the freedom allowed German girls and wants that for herself. She meets and befriends Fereshteh, an Iranian girl who has abandoned the world of Islam and lives the life of a typical German teenager with her father, Aga Majid, a Marxist, next door in the SPC (Socialist People's Commune). Fereshteh and the men of the SPC encourage Shada to abandon her traditional ways and embrace German culture, language and ideals. They show Shada a world of sexual freedom, a world free from guilt and restrictions and instead filled only with pleasure. Shada soon becomes integrated into this new homoerotic world and finds herself losing faith in her community and its beliefs. Unlike her cousin Pretty Shada, who is worshipped by the other Muslim refugees for her fair skin and docile manner, Shada is dark and feels that that she has never belonged to Iranian culture or its people. Consequently, she turns away from her family, relishing the new found freedoms suddenly open to her.

She dresses differently, sneaks out to discos and begins to experiment sexually. She stops going to the mosque for prayers and instead, spends her free time at the SPC, improving her German and her close friendship with Fereshteh. The rift between herself and her Muslim community becomes wider. After Aga Hussein's death, the ICC, now under the leadership of Khanum Nomani, a former Iranian socialite, decide to use audiotapes to broadcast the azan, or call to prayer. However, the tapes are too loud, which disrupts the relative peace in nearby German neighborhoods. The Germans, already frustrated and tired of the various disturbances caused by their Muslim neighbors, complain to city officials who send letters to the ICC requesting they stop using the audiotapes. As tempers reach a fever pitch, the neighborhood of Ruesdandt comes under attack from young German hooligans who vandalize the mosque and various other businesses in an effort to frighten the Muslims into leaving Hamburg. Soon afterwards, the ICC disintegrates as the Muslim men of the Shule Heim refuse to belong to an organization that is controlled by a woman.

The once tight-knit community begins to break apart -- Pakistanis move out of the neighborhood and start their own ICC, a Yugoslavian woman and her children are expelled for pandering their food boxes for money, and another woman, Leila Amir is scorned for becoming a prostitute. Amidst this chaos, Shada realizes that she can never fully separate herself from her Muslim community and her domineering Aunt who will do anything to keep her traditional. Shada decides that the only way to gain her freedom is to destroy the one thing that binds the Muslim Community together: The Mosque. Between chapters, at various intervals, there are old fables reminiscent of Persian Folklore, which are depictions of the main theme in the novel: betrayal. These tales reveal the fabric out of which the contemporary characters have been created.

As the plot unravels, so do the connections between history and the present time-the role of women, the ideals of beauty, of purity, and devoutness, as well as faith, loyalty and justice. Falling Rocks then, is a story of a community that turns against itself, but much more, it follows Shada's process of becoming a person in a new land, of abandoning her culture, country and family in search of her self, and perhaps finding it all once more.

Comment for The Iranian letters section Comment for the writer Layla Dowlatshahi