Marjan Kamali’s novels are suffused with a sharing in the suffering of others and a drive to relieve that suffering, a compassion which often leads to action, as is the case in The Lion Women of Tehran. The story reveals the decades-long struggle for women’s rights in Iran and also in the United States. The main characters embody the struggle of immigrants, the break-up of families, and the transcendence of love and forgiveness. This riveting, vital novel transcends boundaries and speaks to international readers.
LEE: The novel ranges from the 1950s to the 1980s with an epilogue to 2022. You track the shifting roles for young women during these decades and the dreams of both Homa and Ellie also shift. How did Homa’s stint in prison and dropping out of her elite school and university influence her future? And how did Ellie’s shifts from an elite school to a poor one and back to an elite one affect her view of being a woman? In other words, how did their socioeconomic and political status directly impact their opportunities as women?
MARJAN: I very much wanted to explore the emotional complexity of friendships we form when we are young and how those friendships ebb and flow throughout the different stages of our lives. I deliberately made Ellie and Homa born in 1943 so that I could show how the rights for women in Iran increased in the 1940s and 1950s, how women got the right to vote and better marriage and child custody laws in the 1960s and how it felt like women would progress and “own the world” as Homa says in the 1970s, only for all of that to change after the revolution of 1979.
Homa’s stint in prison and having to drop out of school demonstrates just how little control we sometimes have over the trajectory of our lives. In addition to geopolitical obstacles, there are deeply personal and painful episodes that can veer even a lion woman like Homa off her track. Homa is faced with complete darkness for a while and at a time when there was no access to talk therapy, medication, or psychological resources to deal with trauma, she has to dig deep into herself to heal. Ultimately, she refuses to let her trauma define her and eventually is able to shape her future into not what she had originally expected but something still powerful and aligned with her truest values.
Ellie’s change of fortune as a child from living uptown in a wealthy neighborhood to having to move downtown to a poorer community after her father dies and then back to a posh area after her mother remarries affects her view of being a woman because she sees just how tied to a father or a husband the fortunes of women can depend. Ellie experiences firsthand the fleeting nature of wealth and status and yet experiences how instrumental they are to the perception of a woman’s worth in society. Through her friendship with Homa, Ellie understands how a woman can form a future for herself despite socioeconomic hardship and the ways determination and resilience can overcome misfortune.
LEE: What does being a Lion Woman connote to each of them as girls and as young women?
MARJAN: The phrase “lion women” is a direct translation from the Persian label “shir zan” which describes women who are fierce, brave, unstoppable, and audacious. As a girl, Homa aspires to be a lion woman. If she sees a wrong, she wants to right it and from a very young age, she works hard to improve her community. As a university student, Homa becomes a political activist who fights for justice and for women’s rights. Ellie is very different as a girl. She is riddled with self-doubt and jealousy and it doesn’t occur to her to be a lion woman until Homa introduces her to the concept. But Ellie becomes her own version of a lion woman as she grows up. It is not in her nature to fight or protest on the streets. But sometimes it takes an extraordinary amount of courage to live an ordinary life. Ellie wants to be a wife and a mother, and she must persevere in her own way as life hands her its gifts and losses.
LEE: How do their mothers influence their views of themselves as supporters of women’s rights?
MARJAN: Ellie’s mother is a narcissist and has a hard time seeing events and people through any manner but how it affects her personally. She imbues in Ellie a strong sense of superstition and teaches her to worry about the evil eye: the concept that if you are seen as too happy, competent, or successful, other people’s jealousy can harm you. This creates deep insecurity in Ellie because she constantly hears her mother’s voice in her head and feels like others might be out to get her. It creates self-doubt which can get in the way of boldness and bravery. Homa, however, has the gift that no amount of money can buy: the gift of good parents. Homa’s mother loves her unconditionally, believes in her, supports her, and celebrates her achievements unequivocally and is there for her during her darkest days. This makes a huge difference in Homa’s view of herself. One could say it paves the way for her to be a lion woman.
LEE: A good portion of the novel is taken up with their girlhoods. Why did you decide to focus as much on them as girls and teens as on their lives as adults?
MARJAN: I think that girlhood is fleeting both on the page in adult novels and in real life. There is a sureness and sassiness that most girls possess naturally which sadly tends to evaporate with the onset of adolescence. I wanted to capture girlhood in all its innocence and complexities: the playing of hopscotch, the first playdate, the meeting of a friend’s family in their home, struggling over homework, dealing with teachers, managing the drama of the classroom. Like Russian nesting dolls, at any given time we are all the ages we have ever been. For a reader to experience some of childhood episodes of a character increases their understanding of that soul.
LEE: It can be challenging to blend politics into a novel so that its inclusion does not seem didactic, yet you seem to seamlessly make the politics count. Is this blending possible primarily because of Homa’s active political work? Yet Ellie must take a stand even though she often tries to avoid doing so. Why is that?
MARJAN: When I was writing my first novel, I learned that balancing politics and character/story in a novel is no small feat! Back then, I was determined to showthe politics and almost teach the reader about the history. But as I wrote I learned that my job is to be a storyteller first and foremost. I am not a historian nor a scholar so for me the characters always come first, and the politics is a backdrop. To have Homa be a political activist certainly helped bring more politics into this novel but at the end of the day, the central core of the book is still the friendship between these two women. In countries like Iran (and I would argue in all countries actually!), to claim to be apolitical is in and of itself a political privilege: it means one can choose to not be as concerned with the machinations that rule so many people’s futures. Ellie tries to avoid taking a political stand but she sees through her friendship with Homa and through the realities of the direction her country ends up taking how being apolitical is not a long-term option if one wants to preserve the rights for which so many have fought.
LEE: The points of view shift from primarily Ellie’s but also include Homa’s. Was it technically difficult to shift decades and also points of view and yet have a coherent story, and this story is coherent. In fact, it is compelling.
MARJAN: For most of the first draft, I told the story entirely from Ellie’s point of view. But I felt something was missing. On a long walk it hit me: of course, I needed to add Homa’s voice! Sometimes as writers we have a blind spot for the most obvious of answers until it lands in an Eureka moment. Originally, I had been hesitant to add Homa’s voice because Homa and Ellie are the same age living in the same city at the same time and I worried they might sound alike. But once I started writing Homa’s point of view, she took on a life of her own. She took over the page as only she would. As far as how to write the stories of these women over the course of decades, that was more instinctual. Their points of view when they are young are not necessarily told in the voice of a teenager, for example, but hopefully the subtle nuances in the narration over time match each age and stage of their lives.
LEE: The conclusion was compassionate while it also showed a family divided. Especially regarding the conclusion, what does this novel mean to you as a writer and feminist compared with The Stationery Shop or Together Tea?
MARJAN: All three of my novels so far take place in Iran and the U.S. and all three have female main characters who start off in Iran and then immigrate to America. The stories aren’t really related though— they stand alone. In The Lion Women of Tehran, I wanted to explore the idea of sacrifice. What does it mean to sacrifice for a friend? Or for a daughter? And in Homa’s sake, what does it mean to sacrifice comfort, safety, and security in order to fight for a country and for the women in it? These are not easy choices to make. But the truth is that activists (and especially feminists) the world over have had to make the difficult decision to continue their work even if it means surrendering being with their families. Without these brave souls to push back against autocrats at great personal cost, we would not have half the rights and privileges we take for granted. And so the beat goes on and characters like Homa give up so much that matters to them personally in order to protect and push for the greater good.
Lee Hope, is the author of the novel Horsefever, a finalist in the Midwest Book Awards. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship for Fiction. She has published stories in numerous literary journals such as Witness and The North American Review. She founded and directed a low-residency MFA program and has taught at various universities. She also teaches for Changing Lives Through Literature, which serves people on probation and parole.
