Q&A with Mahbod Seraji, author of Rooftops of Tehran

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The Penguin employee book club read  Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji and submitted these questions to the author. The resulting Q&A is here:

Is this book published in other countries, or will it be in the future?

Yes, as of today, Rooftops is being translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Hebrew, Persian, Korean and Icelandic. We're expecting offers from other countries as well.

What is the layout of an alley in Tehran? Is it similar to the cul-de-sac of suburban America?

I tried to bury the layout of the alley in different chapters, e.g. The Width of the Alley, My Friends, My Family and My Alley. It would have been odd for a 17-year-old narrator to describe the alley in much detail in a single chapter. Here's what we learn throughout:

• The alley is about 10 meters wide (33 feet).
• The alley is always swarming with boys playing soccer, women congregating as the east, west and central gossip committees, and young girls moving from house to house.  
• The alley runs east to west (as the masked Angel walks west to the bakery every day).
• Homes are built connected to each other (like townhomes in America) with northern or southern exposures.
• No house is taller than three stories (since Pasha lives in the tallest in the neighborhood, a perfect place for star gazing).
• There are small sidewalks on each side (as Ahmed ponders whether to include them in his measurements - the 33 feet).
• There are trees outside most homes (as the kids rest in their shadows after soccer games - or parents water them late in the afternoons as the smell of wet dust fills the air). 
• Occasionally a car or two go through the alley as we hear the sound of broken mufflers, or when Ahmed stops them to measure the width of the alley.

Was American pop culture a regular or even daily part of your life or Pasha's life? In one place he reflects on the TV show I DREAM OF JEANNIE, and in another place he mentions that what he knows of America comes from watching TV shows. Do you think he watched other TV shows as well?

As far as other shows, I think Pasha mentions I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and the Six Million Dollar Man. Those were extremely popular shows in Iran in the 1970's along with The Days of Our Lives and Payton Place. 

But the pop culture question is more difficult to answer. American culture, known as the Western Influence, was revered by some and loathed by others who believed we were being exploited by the western countries for economic reasons. In other words, by importing their culture to Iran, American/Western companies were able to sell their products to us, e.g., movies, blue jeans, hair gels, cigarettes, big cars. Jalal Al-Ahmed, a writer I mention in Rooftops, said in his most famous book called Gharbzadegi (translated as Westoxification) that the western culture will cause the decline and the eventual demise of traditional Iranian industries, but he saw that not just as an economic victory but ultimately as an existential triumph of the west over the east. Now, please realize that Al-Ahmed was not a hard-headed irrational extremist. He actually taught as a distinguished fellow at Harvard for a year and was recognized as one of the greatest and most promising intellectuals of his era.

The movie theater Pasha, his friends, and Ahmed's grandmother attend shows mostly Persian films. Were other films from other nationalities also shown in Tehran?

Most of the movie theaters that screened foreign films were located in the northern part of Tehran where the affluent and wealthy lived. Foreign films were extremely popular with the upper class but not necessarily with people from Pasha's neighborhood.  American cinema was of course the most popular and actors like John Wayne, Doris Day, Lucile Ball, Charlton Heston, Charles Bronson, Gregory Peck, Jerry Lewis, Eva Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Susan Hayward, Natalie wood and of course Charlie Chaplin were household names. There were others, but I won't name them in the interest of time. The Indian movies also enjoyed a huge share of the market with the movie Sangam, with Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar, and Vyjayantimala, being the best known Indian film of all time. 

Iran used to be called Persia. Are the words "Iranian" and "Persian" synonymous, or does one denote a broader meaning, and how so?

This is a very complex topic. Iran used to be called Pars, since the reign of Cyrus the great over twenty five hundred years ago. The ancient Greeks called Iran Persis, which is where the word Persian came from. Iran was called Persia until 1935, when the Shah's father (Reza Pahlavi) changed the name of the country to Iran (meaning the land of Aryans). The nation of Iran, however, is comprised of many ethnicities, the Parsis, the Turks, the Baluches, the Lors, just to name a few. So calling Iran, Persian, some argue, excludes people of other ethnicities, but at the same time, not everyone living in Iran is of the Aryan race! There are other issues which I won't get into here. You can find heated debates online regarding this highly complex and emotional subject.  

Is SAVAK an acronym?

Yes, SAVAK was the acronym for Sazman a(e)ttleaat Va Amniat Keshvar - The Information and Security Organization of the Land (literal translation). However, SAVAK eventually became a household name across the globe for the atrocities its CIA-trained agents committed against people who opposed the Shah. The organization was established after the overthrow of Mosaddegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. 

Will there be another book that will follow Pasha in America?

I really would like to write a sequel to Rooftops. I get a few emails every day from the readers who ask for it.