Prisoner of Tehran in Sinhala
**********
Original title: Prisoner of Tehran
Translated title: Tehranaye Sirakariya
Author: Marina Nemat
Translator: Daya D Fonseka
Pages: 328
Publisher: Sarasavi Publishers
**********
Marina Nemat is the author of a memoir about growing up in Iran,
serving time in Evin Prison for speaking out against the Iranian
government, escaping a death sentence and finally fleeing Iran for a new
life in Canada.
Both of her grandmothers had immigrated to Iran from Russia to escape
the Russian Revolution, and Nemat was brought up as a Russian (Eastern
Orthodox Christian) in Tehran. Her father worked as a dance teacher, her
mother as a hairdresser. She was a high school student when the
secularizing monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by
Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution. As a student Marina opposed the
oppressive policies of the new Islamic government, attended
demonstrations and wrote anti-revolutionary articles in a student
newspaper.
On January 15, 1982, at age 16 she was arrested and imprisoned for
her views against the revolution. She was tortured in the notorious Evin
Prison well known for atrocities against political inmates, and
sentenced to death.
However, she survived because a prison guard named Ali Moosavi
rescued her. He used his connections to obtain commutation of her
sentence to life imprisonment from which he apparently planned to obtain
her release. However, after five months of imprisonment, it became clear
that Moosavi had developed an attachment to Nemat and intended to force
her to marry him.
Nemat then secretly married Andre Nemat, her teenage love and an
electrical engineer. They married in a Christian church. They escaped to
Canada in 1991 and have two sons. Her book Prisoner of Tehran was
published in 2007 by Penguin and is being translated into several
languages.
Ali, the man who rapes and subjugates her, also saves her life
several times—he is assassinated by his own subordinates. His family
embraces Nemat with more affection and acceptance than her own, even
fighting for her release after his death. Nemat returns home to feel a
stranger.
Daya D Fonseka has done justice to the original work by translating
it into lucid readable Sinhala – he should be given a warm applause.
- Francis Keenawinna
|
