Journey from the Land of No

A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran

Roya Hakakian

Having read it

★★★★☆

At times a bit tricky to understand but, on completion, you’re left with a much broader, honest and human appreciation of what people (especially the young author Roya and her family) experienced in Iran and its 1979 revolution, and aftermath, from reading this memoir.

Its simple perspective is one of significance and that can help us all.

A good passage

Sometimes Father expressed his irritation by reminding us that a telephone was to be used only in emergencies: ‘Otherwise why would Alexander Graham Bell bother to call his assistant just to say, “Watson, come here. I want you,” and hang up? One line is all that should be exchanged on the phone. “Hi. We are healthy. Good-bye.”’

A second good passage

But when Grandmother craned her neck and elbowed Aunt Zarrin, who elbowed Mother, who elbowed Cousin Farah, I put down the book and moved nearer to them. Because I was too young to be elbowed, I fashioned a personal reconnaissance I thought of as human osmosis: learning the untold by breathing in its vicinity. Years later, I realized that the proper term for the technique was journalism.

A third good passage

And I am the lucky one, escaped only to tell thee. What more it took is a story I must leave for another time.