Review of the novel Daughter of Smoke and Fire by Ava Home
WRITTEN BY: Hana Vranac
That's why in reality, in which someone's name always bleeds on television, in which murderers walk freely, in which people still kill on the basis of name and language, this novel faithfully warns us that homelands are the birthplace of death .
The East, it seems, is closer to us than ever. And the worst of it. Tragic events have awakened the collective consciousness of our own ignorance about the events there. How many more names are there that bleed, but we don't see them on CNN? They are buried in mass graves in Iran and all non-Persian parts of the countries whose territories are encompassed by the imaginary border of the non-existent state of Kurdistan. Within these borders, the dichotomies of law and bare life, Islam and modern ideologies, patriarchy and feminism, state violence and the violence of revolutionary organizations reign. The story of them is told by the multi-award-winning Kurdish writer, journalist and activist in exile, Ava Homa, in her first novel, Daughters of Smoke and Fire , initially written in English.
It is a story about the Kurds in Iran, under the terror of the legacy of Khomeini's Islamic State. The author introduces us to the family house Saman, whose transgenerational destiny is narrated linearly, covering two decades of life, by Leila, who dreams of entering film school. However, education turns out to be a luxury, especially for women. Although the point of view is hers, the main character, the link of all the events and characters of the novel becomes her highly educated brother Chia, with whom she has been closely connected since childhood due to the lack of parental attention. Chia is an idealist - influenced by his depressed father, an anti-government revolutionary, ex-prisoner and martyr - who inherits his father's fate through activism and disappears in Tehran. Leila launches a campaign to save her brother, releasing his records to the world. But she herself is in danger.
Space is the basic meaning instance of the text. The prison in which Leila's brother is imprisoned as a political dissident becomes the deepest end of the spiral of concentric circles of space, which reflects its atmosphere on other spaces in the novel: on a state ruled by the Morality Police, where unmarried girls without hymens are beaten, where it is more legal to kill than to own a cassette of a Western pop-culture film or a book signed by the author. It is reflected in the family home, where the hair is shaved when one gets her first period out of shame, where serving a man is more important than preparing for the university entrance exam, and where the father gives up his own daughter. But the author, portraying the characters in their deepest intimacy, promotes the idea that the ideology of the Kurds is essentially not repressive, because the Kurtkin women are one of the first members of parliament, artists, and writers. That house becomes a prison because the identities of its residents are, unconsciously and by force of circumstances, immersed in the cultural mentality of the State. Therefore, prison becomes that very identity that is afraid of its own body, that does not have the right to a native language, that has to cover its hair because of those who kill in the name of God. All parts of the novel send the message that in Iran the only thing worse than being a Kurd is being a Kurdish woman.
They even raped young women whom they sentenced to death because they believed that virgins would go to heaven and that those who opposed the state should go to hell. They didn't call it rape. They called it marriage to make it somewhat acceptable religiously.
The novel constantly invokes Virginia Woolf's text in which the starting point of leaving patriarchy is having one's own space. Leila initially does not find it even when she is alone, because her excess of responsibility towards others and towards society, stemming from the socio-political context, remains present even in moments of individuality. But even though the novel is a poignant story about a family and the struggle for self, its structure is not sustained by pessimism. It becomes clear to the reader that one's own room can be found in one's own microcosm, necessary for the revolution and the realization that being human is not necessarily a sin and that the fight does not have to be fought with a pen or a gun.
That's why in reality, in which someone's name always bleeds on television, in which murderers walk freely, in which people still kill on the basis of name and language, this novel faithfully warns us that homelands are the birthplace of death .