From Isfahan to Ménilmontant: The Journey of Ali Erfan

Trans­lated from French

The Ori­ent, with its mys­ter­ies and tor­ments, has al­ways nour­ished the West­ern imag­i­na­tion. But what do we re­ally know about con­tem­po­rary Per­sia, about this land of po­etry that be­came the the­ater of a rev­o­lu­tion that dis­rupted the world or­der? It is a win­dow onto this Iran, steeped in con­tra­dic­tions, that the work of Ali Er­fan opens for us—writer and film­maker¹Filmmaker: An episode il­lus­trates the di­rect threats that weighed on the artist and pre­cip­i­tated his ex­ile. When his sec­ond film was screened in Iran, the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, present in the room, de­clared at the end: “The only white wall on which the blood of the im­pure has not yet been shed is the cin­ema screen. If we ex­e­cute this traitor and this screen be­comes red, all film­mak­ers will un­der­stand that one can­not play with the in­ter­ests of the Mus­lim peo­ple.” born in Is­fa­han in 1946, and forced into ex­ile in France since 1981. His work, writ­ten in a French lan­guage he has made his own, is a poignant tes­ti­mony of rare fi­nesse about the tragedy of a peo­ple and the con­di­tion of ex­ile.

Writing as Resistance

In his art of prob­ing souls tor­mented by tyranny and the ab­sur­dity of fa­nati­cism, many see in Ali Er­fan the wor­thy heir of the great Sadegh He­dayat²Sadegh He­dayat: Fa­ther of mod­ern Ira­nian let­ters, buried at Père-Lachaise, in Paris.. His writ­ing, of im­pla­ca­ble raw­ness, plunges us into a dark and op­pres­sive uni­verse, al­most Kafkaesque—that of a so­ci­ety de­liv­ered to the ter­ror es­tab­lished by the “hal­lu­ci­na­tory phi­los­o­phy of the imams”: whether it be the per­se­cuted women of Ma femme est une sainte (My Wife Is a Sain­t), the op­pressed artists of Le Dernier Poète du monde (The Last Poet of the World), or the cursed fig­ures of Les Damnées du par­adis (The Damned of Par­adis­e). The death that per­me­ates these sto­ries is not that of vi­o­lence alone, but of the to­tal­i­tar­ian State that en­gen­ders it, this ed­i­fice that, to erect it­self, needs a ce­ment of bod­ies. It is this same ce­ment that we find in Sans om­bre (With­out Shad­ow), a pow­er­ful tes­ti­mony about the Iran-I­raq War, this “ap­palling char­nel house,” com­pa­ra­ble to the trench bat­tles of the Great War, which drank the blood of hun­dreds of thou­sands of men:

“There were also vol­un­teers who, with the idea of dy­ing, ex­ca­vated the ground to make holes like graves, which they called ’bri­dal cham­ber for the lovers of God.’

But it mat­tered lit­tle what mean­ing each gave to his tem­po­rary dwelling; he had to dig his hole in the di­rec­tion of Mecca and not in re­la­tion to the en­emy who was fac­ing him.”

Er­fan, Ali. Sans om­bre (With­out Shad­ow), La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “Re­gards croisés,” 2017.

If Ali Er­fan does not have the joy of be­liev­ing, that is his de­fect, or rather his mis­for­tune. But this mis­for­tune stems from a very grave cause, I mean the crimes he has seen com­mit­ted in the name of a re­li­gion whose pre­cepts have been dis­torted and di­verted from their true mean­ing, faith be­com­ing mad­ness:

“He opened one of the thick files with­out haste, re­moved a sheet, ex­am­ined it, and sud­denly cried out:

—Lock this woman in a burlap sack, and throw stones at her un­til she dies like a dog. […]

And he con­tin­ued, re­peat­ing the same ges­ture, toss­ing aside the writ­ing of one who had trav­eled to God, seiz­ing an­other […]. He sud­denly stood up, stand­ing on the table, and cried like a mad­man:

—Let the fa­ther stran­gle his son with his own hands…”

Er­fan, Ali. Le Dernier Poète du monde (The Last Poet of the World), trans. from Per­sian by the au­thor and Michèle Cristo­fari, La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “L’Aube poche,” 1990.

Of Exile and Memory

Ex­ile is a wound that never quite clos­es. In Adieu Ménil­montant (Farewell Ménil­montan­t), Ali Er­fan leaves his na­tive Per­sia for a time to speak to us of France, his land of refuge. The novel is a trib­ute to the rue de Ménil­montant, that cos­mopoli­tan quar­ter of Paris where he lived and worked as a pho­tog­ra­pher. It is a ten­der and some­times cruel chron­i­cle of the life of the “lost souls of the world,” those pari­ahs of life who, like him, have washed up in this refuge. How­ev­er, even in France, Iran is never far away. The smells, the sounds, the faces, ev­ery­thing re­calls the lost Ori­ent. A mem­ory that, to fight against obliv­ion, se­lects from the past the most salient fea­tures.

Each time he un­der­takes to write, Ali Er­fan seeks the time of his early youth. He tastes the ec­stasy of rec­ol­lec­tion, the plea­sure of find­ing lost and for­got­ten things in his na­tive lan­guage. And, as this re­cov­ered mem­ory does not faith­fully re­count what hap­pened, it is the true writer; and Ali Er­fan is its first read­er:

“Now, I know its lan­guage [French]. But I don’t want to speak. […] Madame says: ’My dear, say: jas­mine.’ I don’t want to. I want to pro­nounce the name of the flower that was in our house. What was it called? Why don’t I re­mem­ber? That large flower that grew in the cor­ner of the court­yard. That climbed, that turned. It climbed over the door of our house, and it fell into the street. […] What was it called? It smelled good. Madame says again: ’Say, my dear.’ I cry, I cry…”

Er­fan, Ali. Le Dernier Poète du monde (The Last Poet of the World), trans. from Per­sian by the au­thor and Michèle Cristo­fari, La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “L’Aube poche,” 1990.

The work of Ali Er­fan, at once sin­gu­lar and uni­ver­sal, plunges us into an op­pres­sive Ori­ent, where the leaden cloak of a ten­tac­u­lar theoc­racy weighs heavy. Cer­tain­ly, one might fear that the writer of ex­ile serves, de­spite him­self, only to feed the clichés of “West­ern Is­lam­o­pho­bia” — a the­sis at the heart of “Is Ex­ile Lit­er­a­ture a Mi­nor Lit­er­a­ture?” by Hes­sam Noghre­hchi. But who­ever saw only this side of things would miss the es­sen­tial point; for Per­sian cul­ture has al­ways made sep­a­ra­tion and ex­ile the source of its purest song. Such is the les­son of Rûmî’s flute, whose sub­lime mu­sic is born from its stem torn from its na­tive reed bed: “Lis­ten to the reed flute tell a sto­ry; it laments the sep­a­ra­tion: ’S­ince I was cut from the reed bed, my com­plaint makes man and woman groan’”. The voice of Ali Er­fan, like that of this flute, is thus born not despite the crack, but in­deed through it, trans­mut­ing the bru­tal­ity of re­al­ity into a poignant melody.

To Go Further

About Adieu Ménilmontant (Farewell Ménilmontant)

Quotations

“[…] I love this street. It is the jugu­lar vein of a neigh­bor­hood that re­mains the refuge of all the lost souls of the world. For gen­er­a­tions, pari­ahs of life have washed up in this place, like me, fa­mil­iar with these sur­round­ings and yet more for­eign than ev­er.

Let’s not com­pli­cate things! Hav­ing grad­u­ally lost all nos­tal­gia for my coun­try and not de­sir­ing, more­over, to be­long to this city, I feel from nowhere. I feel free!”

Er­fan, Ali. Adieu Ménil­montant (Farewell Ménil­montan­t), La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “Re­gards croisés,” 2005.

Downloads

Sound Recordings

• Ali Er­fan about Adieu Ménil­montant (Farewell Ménil­montan­t). (France Télévi­sion­s).

About La 602^e nuit (The 602nd Night)

Quotations

“I straight­ened up to open the cur­tain. A mix­ture of cold, lu­nar clar­ity and warm light dif­fused by the street lamps poured into the room. She was dressed in black from head to toe, even to the gloves. She had put so much ex­ag­ger­a­tion into it that her face seemed quite for­eign to me, framed by the scarf. But as soon as she had re­moved it, I dis­cov­ered her long hair, wav­ing more than ever down to her waist. And I rec­og­nized her. She also held a bou­quet of flow­ers in her hand. I smiled:

—You see me con­fused.

—Don’t joke, it’s not for you.”

Er­fan, Ali. La 602^e nuit (The 602nd Night), trans. from Per­sian by Anita Niknam and Jean-Luc More­au, La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “Re­gards croisés,” 2000.

About La Route des infidèles (The Road of the Infidels)

Quotations

“For an hour, I had lost Os­tâd in the crowd. I was try­ing to lis­ten to the pil­grims’ con­ver­sa­tions un­der the dome. But I heard noth­ing but vague and con­fused sounds. I was get­ting lost, more and more. In a cor­ner, an old man was say­ing his prayer. He was of per­fect no­bil­i­ty. From afar, it seemed to me that he was cut off from the world and that he had eter­nity be­fore him. He at­tracted me. As soon as I was near him, against the wall, I saw that his lips were mov­ing.”

Er­fan, Ali. La Route des in­fidèles (The Road of the In­fi­del­s), La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “Re­gards croisés,” 1991.

About Le Dernier Poète du monde (The Last Poet of the World)

Quotations

“My tale will be swift like the an­gel of death when he ap­pears through the win­dow or through the crack un­der the door, seizes the soul of the worst of tyrants and dis­ap­pears im­me­di­ately by the same path, car­ry­ing away the soul of a po­et.”

Er­fan, Ali. Le Dernier Poète du monde (The Last Poet of the World), trans. from Per­sian by the au­thor and Michèle Cristo­fari, La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “L’Aube poche,” 1990.

About Les Damnées du paradis (The Damned of Paradise)

Quotations

“I did not write this sto­ry. I re­ceived it by mail. On the en­velope, some­one had stuck a la­bel and typed in small char­ac­ters my name and my ad­dress in the twen­ti­eth ar­rondisse­ment of Paris. I opened the pack­age and dis­cov­ered sheets black­ened with bad hand­writ­ing, by a hasty hand. They were dirty and of dis­parate size. Each could have be­longed to a dif­fer­ent cen­tu­ry. One of them seemed torn from the river, so soaked was it. Some­one had dried it and, on the stains, had re­con­structed cer­tain words dis­solved by the wa­ter, which could still be guessed. At first ex­am­i­na­tion, ob­vi­ous­ly, I did not no­tice this de­tail, just as I did not think that tears rather than river wa­ter could have washed away the lines to the point of mak­ing them in­vis­i­ble.”

Er­fan, Ali. Les Damnées du par­adis (The Damned of Par­adis­e), trans. from Per­sian by the au­thor and Michèle Cristo­fari, La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, 1996 (reis­sued 2017).

About Ma femme est une sainte (My Wife Is a Saint)

Quotations

“I don’t re­mem­ber when and where I read this story³This story is that of the found­ing of the city of Zobei­de, taken from the book In­vis­i­ble Cities by Italo Calvi­no.; but I am aware that my dreams of the past, I had con­structed them af­ter read­ing this short sto­ry.

The story told that men, liv­ing in re­gions dis­tant from one an­oth­er, had sud­denly be­gun to have the same dream: a moon­light ap­peared at night, in a de­sert­ed, un­known city. A naked woman ran through the al­leys, she had long hair, one only saw her from be­hind. Each dreamer pur­sued her through the city, but sud­den­ly, the woman dis­ap­peared around the cor­ner of a street, and the dreamer could no longer reach her…”

Er­fan, Ali. Ma femme est une sainte (My Wife Is a Sain­t), La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “Re­gards croisés,” 2002.

About Sans ombre (Without Shadow)

Quotations

“Hun­dreds of young peo­ple were tram­pling in the court­yard. As one ap­proached the re­cruiters’ of­fices, there was grow­ing ag­i­ta­tion. In the cor­ri­dor, sev­eral groups were ar­gu­ing loud­ly. It was chaos: no one to in­form or guide the new vol­un­teers, not even the bearded men with arm­bands who ran in all di­rec­tions. Hun­dreds of stu­dents clogged the cor­ri­dor; they pushed […], joked, ap­plaud­ed, but few were those who protest­ed. One did­n’t have the im­pres­sion that they were leav­ing for the front, but rather for a pic­nic by the Caspian Sea. The war was far away, death was ab­sent.”

Er­fan, Ali. Sans om­bre (With­out Shad­ow), La Tour-d’Aigues: Édi­tions de l’Aube, coll. “Re­gards croisés,” 2017.

Bibliography

• Danesh­var, Es­faind­yar. La Lit­téra­ture tran­scul­turelle fran­co-per­sane: Une évo­lu­tion lit­téraire depuis les an­nées 80 (Fran­co-Per­sian Tran­scul­tural Lit­er­a­ture: A Lit­er­ary Evo­lu­tion Since the 1980s), Lei­den: Brill, coll. “Fran­copoly­phonies,” 2018.
• Ki­ef­fer, Anne. “Le cinéma de la révo­lu­tion is­lamique” (The Cin­ema of the Is­lamic Rev­o­lu­tion), Je­une Cinéma, no. 134, April 1981, p. 28-30.
• Lin­don, Math­ieu. “L’En­fer par­a­disi­aque d’Ali Er­fan” (The Par­a­disi­a­cal Hell of Ali Er­fan), Libération, No­vem­ber 14, 1996. (Jour­nal Libération).
• Lin­don, Math­ieu. “Nous avons tous tué He­day­at” (We Have All Killed He­day­at) [In­ter­view with Ali Er­fan], Libération, Oc­to­ber 3, 1996. (Jour­nal Libération).
• Mar­t­in, Patrice and Drevet, Christophe (ed­s.). La Langue française vue d’ailleurs: 100 en­tre­tiens (The French Lan­guage Seen from Else­where: 100 In­ter­views), Casablan­ca: Tarik Édi­tions, 2001.
• Noghre­hchi, Hes­sam. “La lit­téra­ture d’exil es­t-elle une lit­téra­ture mineure?” (Is Ex­ile Lit­er­a­ture a Mi­nor Lit­er­a­ture?), Fo­lia lit­ter­aria ro­man­ica, no. 9, 2014, p. 87-95. (Hy­per ar­ti­cles en ligne (HAL)).
• Ter­radil­los, Jean-Luc. “Exil chez les mod­er­nes” (Ex­ile Among the Mod­erns) [In­ter­view with Ali Er­fan], L’Ac­tu­al­ité Poitou-Char­entes, no. 18, 1992, p. 40-41. (L’Ac­tu­al­ité Poitou-Char­entes).
• Ter­radil­los, Jean-Luc. “Le temps de l’écri­t­ure est un ex­il” (The Time of Writ­ing Is an Ex­ile) [In­ter­view with Ali Er­fan], L’Ac­tu­al­ité Poitou-Char­entes, no. 53, 2001, p. 94-95. (L’Ac­tu­al­ité Poitou-Char­entes).