Shaved head under her cap, a girl crosses the city in search of a dose. She swears like a carter, smokes cigarette after cigarette, enjoys the company of men as much as women. It looks like the summary of a book by Bret Easton Ellis or Virginie Despentes. This is actually the plot of “Teheran Trip”, the first volume of a trilogy by the Iranian Mahsa Mohebali, which appears in France. Its heroine, Shâdi, wanders in an earthquake-shattered Tehran, in search of a pellet of opium that could appease her lack. Miraculously passed through the cracks of censorship, the novel, hallucinated and nihilistic, was immensely successful when it was released in Iran in 2008, and won several literary prizes.
A year after its publication, another earthquake, political this time, shook Iran. Hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest against the re-election of ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Baptized the “green movement”, the uprising was violently suppressed. Judged a posteriori as a call for insurrection, “Teheran Trip” was banned and its author was sentenced to a ban on writing and giving interviews. For now, only her book speaks for her. Like all the literature that reaches us from Iran, his text opens a window on a country immured in the obscurantism of its leaders. A lead screed that could end up giving way. The 2009 earthquake is now experiencing intense aftershocks.
Sept 16
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