Leilas Secret – Kooshyar Karimi

I say ‘believe’ because I hope that here too I will be forgiven for telling his story from the inside, so to speak. Hamid was raised to be obedient to his parents and to the state, and he is, or he has been up until now. He has never acted in any way that couldn’t have been predicted. At times he has felt something like pride in being so predictable.

He has made do without political convictions, without dreams, without any vision of a larger world. But lately something has changed. Discontent, once a complete stranger to him, has taken up residence in his imagination and begun to bicker with his thoughts, has begun to contradict him, and has fashioned a message that it whispers to him all day long, all night long: There must be more to life than this.

It has made him realise, as he didn’t before, that he is sick to death of the routine of his marriage. His wife was chosen for him, and he went along with his parents’ wishes. Yet if he had his time over again, he would be as complaisant as he was the first time around, he knows it. He might yearn for the adventure of a real romance but it will have to fall in his lap, because he is too timid to go out and seek it.

There are millions of Iranian husbands just like Hamid, tyrannised by their own imaginations. And it’s not only their wives they are tired of; life itself is an ordeal to them. They are male Emma Bovarys, aware every day of that whisper: There must be more to life than this. Until recently, Hamid has accepted the sedation of the familiar. His modest home, modest wife, modest child, modest store and modest car make of him a modest man. There are no quarrels, no arguments, no desires he can’t overcome.

His remedy for discontent is to remind himself that he is better off than many other husbands. His wife is not a harridan; his son is unusually obedient, almost reclusive; his work is not an insufferable burden – he should count his blessings. And he does. Oh, but that longing, that longing!

If the chance came along, timid as he is, he might just find the wherewithal to seize it. Or not. He doesn’t know. He entertains dangerous fantasies. He imagines dousing his store in petrol and striking a match. He pictures himself taking a heavy wrench to his car, smashing and denting and crushing it, destroying it completely.

Kooshyar Karimi was born in Tehran and now lives in Sydney. He is the author of several books on Iranian, Chinese and Assyrian myths and history, one of which was banned from publication by the Iranian government. His memoir I Confess: Revelations in Exile was published in Australia in 2012. He is also an award-winning translator of Gore Vidal, Kahlil Gibran and Adrian Berry, among others. OceanofPDF.com Also by Kooshyar Karimi I Confess: Revelations in Exile OceanofPDF.com To my wife, Misha Karimi, who has the spring of Tasmania in her eyes, the innocence of Leila in her heart, and the warmth of home in her voice OceanofPDF.com Author’s Note This is the true story of some of the many women, and of one woman in particular, who under the laws of Iran have faced execution for becoming pregnant or losing their virginity outside marriage.

While the events described in this book occurred in the late 1990s, nothing has changed in respect of these laws, and Iranian women continue to suffer at the hands of extremists. According to many historians, Iran is the oldest intact civilisation in the world. The Persian Empire, as Iran was known, endured wars with the Greek and Roman empires, had the world’s longest continuous royal dynasty, and in 550 BC became the first realm to issue a declaration of human rights.

But in 1979 this ancient cradle of civilisation underwent a fundamentalist Islamic revolution that re-established seventh-century Islamic rules in its constitution, turning the country into a nest of fanaticism and intolerance. Today Iran is one of the largest jailers of journalists of any country, and it still executes minors, stones women to death for adultery, and hangs men for homosexuality. Sadly, the story of Leila echoes that of millions of women in Asia and Africa.

Every year in the Islamic world, more than twenty thousand women are murdered in so-called honour killings. I have written this book in the hope that one day we will start tolerating and stop tormenting; in the belief that if we learn to forgive, freedom will come.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: e5261ee7f27edc07
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,430,962 bytes (1.365 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 267
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 445.68 minutes
• Total Words: 89,135
• Total Characters: 472,959
• Average Words per Page: 333.84
• Average Characters per Page: 1771.38

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