Books

November 17, 2009

Angella Nazarian Seeks Her Place in the World

by Dora Levy Mossanen

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Angella M. Nazarian’s “Life as a Visitor” (Assouline Publishing) is a memoir/travelogue/compilation of touching poems plus beautiful photographs captured during the author’s travels to more than 50 countries. Nazarian is an honest and candid writer who raises hope that dreams can be achieved even if one is uprooted from one’s homeland and even if the glass souvenirs she so desired in her childhood in Iran were out of reach in a cabinet, “locked and the key put away.” But not for long. An avid photographer and traveler, Nazarian managed to discover her own key while visiting foreign lands, where she collected her own souvenirs and came to believe that, “a similar theme or experience has a way of collapsing the distance between past and present, here and there.”

At the age of 11, after the Islamic Revolution tossed Iran into turmoil, Nazarian was sent to safety in America, presumably for a short visit. That was not to be. “The temporary furniture would stay with us for months — until we realized this was not to be a short visit.” She celebrated her 16th birthday before her parents managed to flee Iran, with much hardship, to join their children in America. “It felt as if home, as I knew it, was shifting under my feet.” 

Much in this book will resonate with Iranian American expatriates, in particular those who once believed in the omnipotence of the Pahlavi regime and remained behind until Tehran airport was shut down. “Calm down,” the author’s father tells his wife. “Do you know how many times Iran has been on the brink of revolution? I’ve been through this before…. In a couple of weeks all will be settled.”

The irony of juxtaposing the thrilling first-time encounters of an 11-year-old in America — the plethora of merchandise displayed in Gelson’s supermarket, the magical rides in Disneyland, Universal Studios and SeaWorld, and the convenience of grabbing a hamburger in McDonald’s — with the horrors taking place back home in Iran is not lost on Nazarian. “We spent our days as carefree tourists in the paradise of America. But every evening we were dragged back to our reality,” as the family gathered around the television to learn the latest news about Iran.

Later, on a visit to Tanzania and Kenya, she witnesses firsthand the “drama associated with making a migration, the exhaustion and the inherent risks and dangers of traveling in an unknown territory…. It is often in trip, during unguarded moments when I am in movement from one place to another, that I make these connections.”

Nazarian’s story is peppered with candid reflections and heartfelt philosophies of life: “Wildebeests or people, sometimes we are more similar than we think, all of us on an endless stream of transitions, in constant change.” Isn’t that true? Or “I admit it. I’ve become a self-improvement junkie,” a rather universal trait among Iranian American women, I believe, who aspire to become overachievers. “Underneath this success,” Nazarian reflects, “there remains a deep and often unrecognized sense of insecurity ... we can never truly relax and feel like we have arrived ... the immigrant mentality ... a low-grade affliction.”

Her vivid prose is such that one yearns to hop on the first flight to the Galapagos Islands to traipse about with courting blue-footed boobies, red-throated frigate birds or sea lions, all “drunk with lack of inhibition, yearning and birdsong.”

One of the strengths of this book rests in Nazarian’s seamless transitions from accounts of her journey to America and her coming of age as a young woman, to her adventures as a world traveler, and back and forth into her intimate and accessible poetry. In one of her poems, “Ruins,” Nazarian smoothly weaves her personal memories in and out of the ruins of Rome, Machu Picchu, the Andes and Cambodia. In another poem, “Legacy,” the passing of her father is cause for grief, but never despair: “Words unsaid carve out their own landscape.”

This is not solely a stunning coffee-table book to adorn a home, but one that demands to be read and enjoyed.

Dora Levy Mossanen is the best-selling author of the historical novels “Harem” and “Courtesan.”

A version of this article appeared in print.

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