In a poor neighborhood of Tehran, seven-year-old Sara is chased out of the house with her sister, Setayesh, by their father, who is having friends over to smoke opium. They go to the soccer field, where they are again rejected by the boys. Then, Sara watches helplessly as her big sister innocently frolics on a swing with her boyfriend, then is grabbed and abused by Uncle Moji, a local man who drags her into his house, from where she never returns.
Traumatized by what she witnessed, Sara is unable to speak, unable to reveal what she knows to her family and the police, who are desperately searching for the missing child. Mute and haunted by her memories, the little girl now welcomes into her body the soul of a 114-year-old woman, who tries to control her mind, and must now deal with a strange allergic reaction as soon as a man approaches her.
To get out of her slump, Sara throws herself body and soul into a life devoted to religion, which will give her back a certain form of agency and attract a large number of followers in the streets and on social networks, while she reinvents herself, now exiled in Montreal, as a modern prophet seeded in resentment and the anger of vengeance. “My oratory talent has become my power. In the pulpit, I am a degree higher than the others. […] This is how I pay my dues to Setayesh, to fight against freedom and joy in this oppressive world where happiness is a sin. This is my philosophy.”
With Prophetessher first novel, the Montreal writer of Iranian origin Baharan Baniahmadi furiously pushes the limits of imagination to analyze, from the experience of a single young girl, the impacts of the injustices committed against women in a society entangled in its religious customs.
In her writing as in her narrative conception, the writer adopts the nonconformist codes of surrealism to allow a meeting full of contrasts between tradition – both formal and cultural – and revolt, thus embracing through the construction of her story the psychological evolution of her protagonist.
So, paradoxically, nuance here manifests itself in exaggeration, logic in patience, and justice in bumpy detours, while Sara’s reactions often seem counterintuitive, even self-destructive, to the Western reader.
Although the story itself is fascinating, Prophetess stands out above all for the parallel readings it inspires for anyone who enjoys introspection. The story is full of reflections on the different ways in which mourning is expressed, on the ways of dealing with it, as well as on the insidious forms that inequalities take and the ways of maintaining them, often reverberating within communities themselves.
Behind the apparent simplicity of its language and some of its codes and metaphors, this first novel is bursting with lush intelligence and audacious creativity.