Although author Gina Nahai hasn’t set foot on Iranian soil since 1977, she still carries a sense of the place with her in everything she does. And her writing is no exception.
The author of four novels, Nahai was one of the first in modern times to chronicle the experience of Iranian Jews. Two of her books, Cry of the Peacock and Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, focus on the early history of Jews in Iran, while her most recent, Caspian Rain, is a more contemporary account of one Jewish family, told from the perspective of 12-year-old girl.
Nahai is also a professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California as well as a frequent contributor to The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and The Huffington Post.
Nahai was the guest speaker at a Sept. 21 Hadassah luncheon at the Seattle Yacht Club. While in town, she took some time to chat with JTNews about her writing, her life in Los Angeles and a community of Jews that has only recently emerged into the public eye.
JTNews: How did you get into writing?
Nahai: I was in law school and I didn’t want to be a lawyer, so I started writing. Then I enrolled in a master’s writing program at USC. Then one thing led to another and the book that I was working on in school became my first novel. So things worked out. I never took the great big step saying “this will be the course of my life,” but that’s what it became.
JT: The majority of your books focus on Iranian Jews. What’s your connection to Iran?
My family moved here [from Iran] when I was 16. We came before the revolution, so we weren’t escaping anything; things were good there. But my parents never wanted to live in Iran permanently. So we just came out and we were kind of commuting back and forth for a while. I was going to school here. Then the revolution happened and we stayed.
JT: Which of your books is the most personal for you?
That would be Caspian Rain. It takes place during the period that I actually grew up in Iran and it’s drawn from my own observations and memories rather than other people’s memories or accounts, which was the case with the other books. The issues in the book are the issues that people face now in Iran and that the Jewish community abroad still deals with. Things haven’t changed that much. So I live right in the middle of it still. In that sense it’s very personal, even though it’s not my own story.
JT: Your first few books are set pretty far in the past. What sort of research did you have to do to create an accurate picture of Iran at that time?
With the first two, there was a lot of research — years and years of research, because there was nothing written about Iranian Jews when I started writing Cry of the Peacock. It was the first time anybody wrote about Iranian Jews. There was a book written in Farsi that was out of print that had been published in Iran years and years before the revolution, but that was the only history of Iranian Jews anywhere and that wasn’t available. So with Cry of the Peacock, I actually spent years doing oral history interviews and researching the country and trying to piece together the history of the Jews. When it first came out, people didn’t even know there was such a thing as Iranian Jews — certainly not in this country.
JT: Do you have a sense of what Iran is like for Jews who still live there?
There are a lot of Iranian Jews who live in Iran. There are 50,000 at least. About 20,000 stayed after the revolution and since then, there have been a few generations of people. For the most part they are doing fine. They’re allowed to practice their religion. Now they do have to watch out for a lot of things. For example, they have to go out of their way to emphasize that they are not Zionists and that they don’t support the State of Israel. But a lot of that is something people have been used to for years — that’s just the way they’ve always done it. Those who have stayed, stayed because they want to, not because they weren’t allowed to leave.
JT: Do you have plans to go back anytime soon?
I haven’t been back since 1977. But, yeah, I would like to. I don’t know when. Not as long as this regime is in power.
JT: What’s the Iranian Jewish community like in L.A.?
L.A.‘s Jewish community is very active, but the Iranian community within the Jewish community is also very active. You could go to fundraisers five nights a week, mostly for Israel, some for local causes. But yeah, people are doing things all the time. Also, now there is a whole new generation of Iranian Jews who are in their 20s who have been born and raised here who have come together and they’re also very active in causes, mostly having to do with supporting Israel financially and doing public service and stuff. It’s amazing how focused people have stayed.