Rabeah Ghaffari is the author of To Keep the Sun Alive: A Novel.From her Q&A with Alana Mohamed at The Rumpus:
The Rumpus: Why don’t we begin with you introducing yourself? Where are you from?Visit Rabeah Ghaffari's website.
Rabeah Ghaffari: I was born in Iran and I lived there until I was eight years old. My father, who worked at the festival of arts in Shiraz, was invited to the University of Michigan for a one-year artist residency. Before he left, his friend told him, “You should take your wife and daughter with you,” so we left and three months after we left the revolution began. And we didn’t go back. My father was given political asylum and we ended up staying. I’ve been in New York since 1981.
Rumpus: Did you ever leave New York?
Ghaffari: I went to USC for six months and turned around and came right back. I was there for just six months and I really didn’t… it was a culture shock. I came back to New York and I ended up going to NYU for a semester and then I dropped out. I never went to college, really. I went to the Esper studio, and I was in a little theater group with women and we used to do various shows around the city. I would go to auditions for, like, “Terrorist Wife Number One.” I was just really miserable about it.
In 2002, my father was directing Ta’zieh, which was coming to Lincoln Center, and so I suggested that we should make a documentary about that. I went back to Iran to shoot Ta’zieh with my father and it was sort of magical. That was the first time I had been back in twenty years. And when I went back my cousin, who I hadn’t seen since I was eight years old, she said to me, “Do you want to go back and see what’s left of the orchard?” My grandmother had an orchard we used to play in when we were kids. The novel—it’s not autobiographical, it’s fiction—but…
Rumpus: It sounded like a beautiful place, in the novel.
Ghaffari: It was edenic. Because it was enclosed, they would just let us loose. Sometimes we would eat so many fruits we’d get sick; we’d just be covered in juices.
When we went, there was nothing left. There was a piece of the adobe wall that was left. I remember my cousin and I were standing there and...[read on]
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