My Life as a Traitor

Posted on 24 March 2017 by Zarah Ghahramani

At the age of twenty, an Iranian student named Zarah Ghahramani was swept off the streets of Tehran and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side in conditions of legendary brutality Her crime, she asserts, was in wanting to slide back her headscarf to feel the sun on a few inches of her hair That modest desire led her to a political activism fueled by the fearless idealism of the young Her parents begged her to be prudent, but even they could not have imagined the horrors she faced in prison She underwent psychological and physical torture, hanging on to sanity by scratching messages to fellow prisoners on the latrine door She fought despair by recalling her idyllic childhood in a sprawling and affectionate family that prized tolerance and freedom of thought After a show trial, Ghahramani was driven deep into the desert outside Tehran, uncertain if she was to be executed or freed There she was abandoned to begin the long walk back to reclaim herself In prose of astonishing dignity and force, Ghahramani recounts the ways in which power seduces and deforms A richly textured memoir that celebrates a triumph of the individual over the state, My Life as a Traitor is an affecting addition to the literature of struggle and dissent Zarah Ghahramani was born in Tehran in 1981 After her release from prison, she moved to Australia My Life as a Traitor is her first book Robert Hillman is a journalist and novelist who has traveled widely in the Middle East A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the YearAt the age of twenty, an Iranian student named Zarah Ghahramani was taken from the streets of Tehran to the notoriously brutal Evin Prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side A desire for freedom as modest as sliding back her headscarf to feel the sun on her hair had compelled her to join a group of university students covertly organizing peaceful campus protests Ghahramani was fueled by youthful idealism, and though her parents encouraged her to be prudent, she underestimated the severity of the penalties imposed by the fundamentalist regime running her country She underwent psychological and physical torture, hanging on to sanity by scratching messages to fellow prisoners on the latrine door She fought despair by recalling her idyllic childhood in a sprawling and affectionate family that prized tolerance and freedom of thought After a show trial, Ghahramani was driven deep into the desert outside Tehran, uncertain if she was to be executed or freed There she was abandoned to begin the long walk back to rebuild herself in a world in which she had no trust in her country s goverment and where she would continue to challenge fundamentalist injustice as she sought to reclaim her own liberty A testimony of surviving senseless persecution, imprisonment, torture, and the loss of years of one s youth with one s spirits intact With deep insights into the meaning of suffering and the futility of hate and thoughts of revenge, the young author, just out of her teens, withstands all psychological and physical abuse and comes out, despite the loss of her faith in authority figures and her country, wise and mature Her defiance served her well Read with this in mind, the book is truly an inspiration Erika Loeffler Friedl, author of Women of Deh Koh Lives in an Iranian Village A celebration of human courage under duress and a savage indictment of the oppressive regime of Iran It shocks, angers, saddens, and inspires Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns My Life as a Traitor is an important and revealing book about a culture and a country that figures hugely in modern geopolitics It is the inner journey of one young woman, of her fear, pride, courage, and ultimate survival in Tehran s brutal Evin Prison But it is also a coming of age story that haunts and provokes beautifully written and disturbingly unforgettable It will stand beside Solzhenitysn and Primo Levi as a book that shows exactly how human beings survive in the face of true evil Janine di Giovanni, author of Madness Visible A Memoir of War A must read for anyone interested in understanding the complex nation that is Iran Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America My Life as a Traitor is both shocking and inspiring a graphic portrayal of the horrors that are unleashed when the idealism of youth challenges the dogmatism of zealots Zarah Ghahramani has written a very human story of bravery and fear in the face of violence her story is one of longing for beauty and freedom Zarah s memoir of her time in Iran s infamous Evin prison is unforgettable in its portrayal of brutality, but it sings with a young woman s love of life and liberty Louise Brown, author of The Dancing Girls of Lahore Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan s Ancient Pleasure District The second year Iranian college student in 2001 knew that making that speech meant trouble, but she had no real expectation of being kidnapped in the heart of Tehran and hustled off to the notorious Evin Prison Eventually, the 20 year old Ghahramani is sentenced to 30 days and a few days and several beatings later is dumped in a vacant countryside to make her way home Scenes from a happy family life crippled by the Iran Iraq war and a spirited adolescence cut short by a repressive regime alternate with the prison experiences in this multilayered account Ghahramani, daughter of a Muslim father and Zoroastrian mother, both Kurdish, dips with brevity and grace into personal family history and public political history Graphic and powerful as her treatment of torturous imprisonment is, Ghahramani retains an irrepressible lightness, perhaps born of knowing that a sense of justice can always benefit from a complementary sense of the ridiculous Her painfully acquired knowledge of how easy it is to reduce a human being to the level of animal does not keep her from wondering if I ll ever be pretty again Nothing, however, dilutes the bare bones prison experience Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal beyond a mere record Publishers Weekly Best Read [ My Life as a Traitor ] By [ Zarah Ghahramani ] – kino-fada.fr Not quite what I was expecting from this memoir The book summary leads you to believe that it s going to be a horrific kind of story, which it is but not quite to the degree that you re initially led to believe compared to similar style memoirs The story is about how Zarah Ghahramani was taken from the streets of Tehran by the police and interrogated for speaking out against the regime, participating in student rallies and other ...Courtesy of The Literary Snob May Contain Minor Spoilers From the beginning, I wanted to hate this book Essentially promoted as a young girl is tortured by Iranian zealots, I suspected nothingthan page after page of anti Iranian propaganda I hear enough about how evil every other political state is, I don t need .It didn t take long into this memoir, however, to realize that this author was not going to take this angle Yes, there was the occassional condemnation of the Iranian gov Courtesy of The Literary Snob May Contain Minor Spoilers From the beginning, I wanted to hate this book Essentially promoted as a young girl is tortured by Iranian zealots, I suspected nothingthan page after page of anti Iranian propaganda I hear enough about how evil every other political state is, I don t need .It didn t take long into this memoir, however, to realize that this author was not going to take this angle Yes, there was the occassional condemnation of the Iranian government, but it was dealt out equally with reminders that similar dictators exist throughout the world in every country So, I no longer disliked My Life As A Traitor for what it wasn t However, I did discover other reasons why this book was disappointing.My primary complaint regarding this book was the author hersel...This book left me feeling ashamed Ashamed of my American upbringing, of the liberties that I have, the freedoms that I take for granted every day of my life And yet, I was also left feeling extremely grateful I don t live in a land that s governed by fear, where women are treated as inferior, where ideas are dangerous and dreams are dismissed I m guaranteed my rights, I m allowed to create my world based on our laws.Zahara was only twenty when she was snatched off the streets outside her uni This book left me feeling ashamed Ashamed of my American upbringing, of the liberties that I have, the freedoms that I take for granted every day of my life And yet, I was also left feeling extremely grateful I don t live in a land that ...A harrowing and eye opening first hand account of the excruciating and hideous tortures inflicted on a 19 year old student in Iran arrested and jailed for speaking up for justice and freedom in her country.Zarah Ghahramani was born in 1981 and lived through the Iran Iraq War Her father was a civil servant in the government of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi ovethrown and replaced by the mad Mullahs , The Shah had had his faults and did not always operate Iran as a liberal democracy but was posit A harrowing and eye opening first hand account of the excruciating and hideous tortures inflicted on a 19 year old student in Iran arrested and jailed for speaking up for justice and freedom in her country.Zarah Ghahramani was born in 1981 and live...I enjoyed reading it It gives a good idea of what life is for Iran s uni students who fight for freedom of speech The level of repression and the way political prisoners are treated in prison is worse than in many other countries and it is important to be aware of this However, there are still many people all over the world, young and old, fighting for freedom and against discrimination, even in cou...Lately I ve had bad luck reading personal memoirs They tend to get stuck in my throat, and the gag factor has everything to do with truth telling Many contemporary memoirs carry the aroma of excessive embellishment if not outright fabrication My Life as a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani is not such a memoir I believed every word It works as a personal account of courage in the face of torture it works as an historical document of life in Iran under the Islamic regime.Ms Ghahramani was a politi Lately I ve had bad luck reading personal mem...Nazi like Torture in Iran It s depressing to be reminded that in this day and age there are still parts of the world that refuse to accept simple modern concepts like freedom of speech and equality of the sexes, all under the cloak of religious fundamentalism It s hard to believe that the cruel punishment described in this book, written in the first person, is actually true but it is The protagonist author relates her torture experiences in prison with simple, easy to read prose with the a Nazi like Torture in Iran It s depressing to be reminded that in this day and age there are still parts of the world that refuse to accept simple modern concepts like freedom of speech and equality of the sexes, all under the cloak of religious fundamentalism It s hard to believe that the cruel punishment described in this book, written in the first person, is actually true but it is The protagonist author relates her torture experiences in prison with simple, easy to read prose with the assistance of a co author Reading it, you are reminded of the Gestapo, and you suffer along with the pathetic university student Between descriptions of mental and physical horror, we are told of the history of Persia Iran with the overthrow of the Shah by the Ayatollas and institution of Sharia law The victim explains her feelings at various stages of her incarceration, while relating her philosophy and describing h...This was the second time I gave this a go Managed to read it all but how disappointing to be left with nothing at all No idea what happened to her.What I also noticed was this author s habit of constantly saying that all the bad things that happened in Iran also happened in England or America or any other country.Some things did indeed happen but hello we managed to change people s views For instance women are not treated as they are in Iran We do not have to cover ourselves because maybe me This was the second time I gave this a go Managed to read it all but how disappointing to be left with nothing at all No idea what happened to her.What I also noticed was this author s habit of constantly saying that all the bad things that happened in Iran also happened in England or America or any other country.Some things did indeed happen but hello we managed to change people s views For instance women are not treated as they are in Iran We do not have to cover ourselves because maybe men would be aroused seeing our hair.That she kept on doing that started to annoy me Also I thought it was very disjointed, jumping from this to there.Do not understand all the 5 star reviews at all ETA Okay I googled her and she apparently lives in Australia It would have been so interesting to hearabout what happened once she was set free, having been shaved bold and been beaten very badly How she coped and what she did to get better One of the co writers of this book helped her to escape to A...This book describes the author s abduction and incarceration in an Iranian prison, without due process The young girl is guilty of being an activist for social issues She describes various mental and physical means of torture used to get her to admit her guilt I did...Grade CInteresting but it skimmed over the surface with no real depth Also, it ended very abruptly and gave no details about the author s current life I was curious enough to do and internet search to satisfy my curiosity

English
24 March 2017

Zarah Ghahramani