The Last Dream of a Woman; From Iran and Afghanistan to London

"The Last Dream" is the title of the latest published novel by Rouhangiz Sharifian, recently released by Agah Publishing in Tehran. The author, who gained acclaim with her first novel "Who Would Believe Rostam" in 2003, has won several awards. The most significant feature of all four of Sharifian's published novels (Who Would Believe Rostam, Postcard, My God, My God, and The Last Dream) is the feminine perspective that attempts to explore the world from a woman's viewpoint. This 73-year-old author residing in London does not show a direct interest in feminism, unlike, for instance, Zoya Pirzad (who nurtures feminist sensibilities in her protagonist) or Goli Taraghi (with a nostalgic world that has a charming flavor). Although both feminism (with a female protagonist in all her works) and nostalgia (in the form of a significant past) are present in her works, Sharifian maintains a distance from both women and the past. This distancing sometimes benefits the work, as seen in "Who Would Believe Rostam," and at other times detracts from it, as in "My God, My God," where intellectual dialogues do not resonate. "The Last Dream" is somewhat in between: a mix of approaching a woman's world that, from the midpoint onward—consciously or unconsciously—engages in intellectual dialogues about the state of the world. The story follows a woman named Arzu who loses her 14-year-old son in a car accident in Tehran. Suddenly, she escapes from home without informing any family members. Traffickers unwittingly take her to Afghanistan, and after some time, she reaches Pakistan, eventually heading to London after four years; a place where her brother Ashur lives, but everything does not go as she expects. Apart from the initial introduction—which hints at the presence of a man named Theo in this woman's life—the novel begins when the woman arrives in front of her brother's house and waits for him. The early chapters consist of her dialogues with her angry brother and a preliminary acquaintance with a distant culture embodied in her brother's wife, Helena. These chapters have more precise feminine feelings and can easily engage the reader, especially since the method of gradually presenting information about this woman’s life—with a mysterious past that neither we nor her brother know about—is an effective way to move the reader forward. From the time of her acquaintance with Theo and the beginning of her life in a center for helping women, although the brightest days of this woman's life unfold, the novel encounters two problems: first, the author is forced—due to censorship—to forgo the inner feelings of love and sexuality of this woman, settling for vague sentences about this relationship; and second, which is a more significant issue, the repetition of their dialogues and the becoming clichéd of some parts. For example, sentences like: "The West has fallen away from human intimacy, replaced by technique and technology," are slogans that do not fit into the text. On the other hand, strangely, some sentences and information are repeated multiple times, even though they have been clearly discussed earlier (for instance, about Theo's place of residence on page 118, which we had read about before, or the story of the Nepalese woman, which is unnecessarily repeated on pages 123 and 124). It seems that this part of the novel needs substantial editing and the removal of many paragraphs and sentences. The final chapter returns to the first chapter, again beside the Berlin Wall. Everything comes back to its original place like a cycle: a woman who had lost her son now has a previously homeless boy beside her who could be, in a way, the same lost son. However, there is a deeper wound in her: the loss of someone who gave meaning to her life. Today, this woman is in search of a memory beside the Berlin Wall—a symbol of separating people from one another—that now stands as a wall 20 years thick between her and this beautiful memory.