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INTRODUCTION

It is a few years after the Iranian revolution, a period of violent upheaval, the emergence of radical Islam, the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, and bloody covert wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The lives of three remarkable people, each of whom is deeply caught in this historical moment, cross paths in Against Gravity and reveal the many ways history can shape us, destroy us, or prepare us for happiness.

Divided into three sections narrated by the three main characters, Against Gravity tells the intertwining stories of Madison, a young man who, after his father’s sudden death, spirals downward into a life of aimless wandering, drug addiction, madness, and AIDS; Roya, an Iranian woman forced into exile after the revolution of 1979 whose husband has been killed in the Iran-Iraq war and who herself was imprisoned and tortured; and Ric, a social worker and former Marxist activist who devotes himself to helping others while his own family life falls apart.

These characters look back over the course of their lives to try to understand how they have come to be where they are and how they have come to know—and to love and hate—each other. Madison is in the advanced stages of AIDS when Roya moves in next door. He feverishly imagines her becoming his lover, who will nurse him through his final illness. But when Roya rejects his clumsy marriage proposal and offer to pay for graduate school, he vows to kill her. Having escaped prison and endured life as a refugee, Roya is hardly ready to care for a dying stranger. She is struggling to survive in America where, despite being highly educated and cultured, she must work menial jobs to pay her rent and care for her troubled daughter. She puts her plans for graduate study and a memoir of her time in prison and exile on hold. But when she falls in love with Ric Cardinal, the counselor Madison had recommended for her daughter, her life takes on a new focus and direction. The only problem is that Madison now has even more reason to want to kill her, or Ric, or perhaps both of them.

But Against Gravity is far more than a novel about a troubled love triangle and the pain that can lead to murder or suicide. It is a novel that brilliantly embodies the ways in which large historical forces play out in the personal lives of individuals. It maps the hidden territory where world history and personal history intersect. And in the end it shows us just how inseparable—and sometimes insurmountable—these two forces are.

ABOUT FARNOOSH MOSHIRI

Farnoosh Moshiri was born in Iran, fled the country in 1983, and immigrated to the United States four years later. Currently an associate professor of English at Syracuse University, Moshiri is the author of three previous books, including The Bathhouse.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

What inspired you to write about this particular group of characters, each of them deeply wounded in one way or another?

My own life and the life of the people I’ve known. Like any writer I imagined a hypothetical situation: What if these three people met? How would they affect each other’s lives? Would these wounds heal or reopen? Would any kind of disaster happen?

Why did you decide to use three narrators to tell the story of Against Gravity?

Because their voices invaded me. I developed each character clearly in my mind and each had a distinct voice. They’d speak their words in my head as I drove to work. I’d write what they said on pieces of paper or record it while driving. This novel didn’t want to be written in third-person narrative. It wouldn’t work that way.

Why did you choose the quotes from Rumi, Whitman, and Rilke as the epigraph for Against Gravity? Why is Roya so drawn to Rumi and Whitman?

Rumi is, of course, an important part of my culture. I grew up hearing the verses everywhere. My father would recite for us; my uncle, who was a poet, would read Rumi in family gatherings. These are not easy verses; they have deep philosophical meaning. But as a child I’d enjoy the language and the rhythm (which, of course, are lost in translation), until later that I grasped the meaning.

I became familiar with Walt Whitman when I was a graduate student. I became fascinated with this man as a human being and as a poet. I found amazing similarities between his poems (the philosophy—his Transcendentalism) and Rumi’s Sufism. As you can see, the lines that I’ve chosen from both poets could be arranged in one single poem. The two poets become one. And why did I choose them as epigraph? They speak of freedom and lightness, of breaking down the doors and crossing boundaries, which the survivors of my novel do.

Rilke speaks of the heaviness of life. I have an immense love for Rilke’s poetry and I think this short line contradicts the whole theory of lightness that the two older poets suggest. But Rilke is right too. Isn’t life the heaviest thing?

To what extent is Roya’s story your own story?

Roya has borrowed some of my life story and the locations I’ve lived in, but as a character she has a different psychology. When I experienced exile and lived in refugee camps, I was already a published writer and much older than Roya. I didn’t have Roya’s insecurities about writing. I’d been a feminist and a political activist in Iran and my views of the world were clear. Roya was never involved in politics but she had been jailed and tortured. I was involved but I had been able to escape. So Roya is not even my alter-ego, she is my creation, as Ric and Madison are. I’ve lent some of my life experiences to the male characters too. For example, I taught for eight years at a juvenile detention facility; Ric borrows this from me.

How does being an Iranian woman in America at this particular historical moment affect your writing and your view of the world?

It makes me bitter and cynical (more than I’ve ever been in my life). It definitely affects my writing. I keep writing about negative aspects of immigration, about displacement, uprootedness, the unhealable wound of exile. If I had remained in Iran (if I survived) I would’ve been a different writer; I would’ve written about different subjects.

My essential view of the world was shaped when I was very young. I grew up in a family of secular humanist intellectuals with a strong sense of social justice. These fundamental qualities drove me to political activity in my younger years and changed my life. If I had to live my life again, I’d pursue the same goals. I’d struggle for freedom and justice, even if that would bring about enormous pain.

Here, at this particular moment in America, what I feel is despair. Why is the ancient civilization of the Middle East (that has been the source of so much of the cultural and scientific achievements of the West) under such brutal attack? Who has created (or awoken) the ghoul of religious fundamentalism? Who has announced a “crusade” that could very well lead to the destruction of the world? I know the answers. And knowing them makes me despair.

How do you feel about the history of American involvement in Iran and the current situation there and in the Middle East generally?

The history of American involvement in Iran goes back to the CIA-directed coup d’etat of 1953 (under the code name of TP-AJAX—which became the blueprint for a succession of CIA plots to destabilize governments during the Cold War), the arrest of the elected Prime Minister Mossadeq (who wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil), and restoration of the Shah’s regime. I urge Americans to read the history of other countries (at least those under U.S. attack). By watching the selected daily news clips on TV, we only see distorted images that do not convey anything but pathological anger toward the West. Why did the Iranian Revolution happen? What if Prime Minister Mossadeq had not been removed by America and Iran had become a secular democracy in the 1950s? Would Ayatollah Khomeini have had a chance to take power? Why did the Shah exile Khomeini and anger him and his followers? Where is the source of all this?

My analysis of other American involvement in the Middle East is similar to my analysis of Iran’s recent history. These are the questions that I ask: Who empowered Saddam? Who empowered Bin Ladin? Who financed, trained, and armed the Taliban fighters in Pakistan? Why did the September 11 incident happen? Would it still have happened if the Islamic fundamentalist ideology of the Bin Ladin type had not been encouraged by the United States in the 1980s?

How do your ideas for novels and stories come to you? Do you start with the characters and see where they take you, or do you have a fairly clear picture of the trajectory of the story when you begin?

I’m usually haunted by characters and they take me through the plot. But I never begin writing before I have a clear image of the whole universe of the novel. I must know the main map, the major incidents, and even the ending (although it may change later) to be able to begin. If I begin prematurely, the project might fail.

In your acknowledgments you thank your original publisher at Black Heron Press for supporting you when not many publishers were interested in serious literature from Iran. Why do you think you encountered this resistance or lack of interest in the United States?

In the mid-nineties, when I began marketing my first novel, At the Wall of the Almighty, the book market was not interested in literature from the Middle East. I received numerous rejection letters, almost all repeating the same refrain. They admired the novel, but didn’t want to take a chance on it. I could understand. Why would American readers want to read a work of fiction about people, places, and incidents that didn’t have anything to do with their own lives? What did it mean to them if an Iranian revolutionary was tortured because of his ideology? The situation is somewhat different now. The U.S. government has invaded Iraq. Iran has a new name now—it’s part of the “axis of evil.” People want to know where these mysterious places are and how these exotic and dangerous people live. Now that the East has been invaded there is a market for its literature. But unfortunately “Orientalism” (I’m referring to the term the late Edward Said used) is the source of most of the curiosity.

Are there plans to translate Against Gravity into Farsi? How do you think Iranians would respond to your work?

There are no such plans and I lack the genius and energy of Nabokov to be able to translate my own works. I’m not really sure what Iranian book readers (in Iran) would think about the book. Most probably, the subject matter wouldn’t be as compelling to them as it may be to Iranian-Americans. People back home are dealing with different problems. Their issues and urgencies are of a different type.

What is your greatest ambition as a writer? What are you working on now?

My greatest ambition is to reach a literary level that invites serious readership. I wish myself sanity in this mad world and more time to think and write. I know that because of my lack of interest in the commercial market and “fame,” I’ll always need to work hard for my living, and this will contradict my writing plans, as has always been the case.

I’m working on a new novel. But it’s too soon to talk about it. I have two works ready for publication. One is a long novel that was written before Against Gravity and rejected by almost all the major publishing houses in the nineties (some with words of praise). This novel is set in Iran; that might have been the reason for the rejections. And I have a novella that takes place in Houston. I have been alternately revising these two books for the past few years.

What other Iranian writers would you recommend to American readers?

It’s fortunate that Sadeq Hedayat’s Blind Owl has been translated into English. He is the father of modern literature in Iran and our Poe and Kafka in one. He wrote between the 1920s and 1940s and committed suicide in Paris in 1951. I also recommend Shahrnoush Parsipour’s books. Some are translated into English. The anthology A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian-Americans contains new voices. I recommend this and similar anthologies.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Why has Farnoosh Moshiri chosen Against Gravity as her title? In what ways are the main characters weighed down? In what ways do they try to rise above the heaviness of their lives?
   

2. What effects does Moshiri create by using three narrators, telling these overlapping stories from three different points of view? How differently does each narrator view the same events?
   

3. Madison writes: “So the old bastard died and I died with him. Not because he died, but because of the way he died—so cheap, so ugly, so ungraceful” (p. 14). Why is his father’s death so devastating for Madison? How does it alter his life?
   

4. Why does Madison fall in love with Roya? What does he need from her? What drives him to want to kill her?
   

5. When she is forced to live in exile in India, Roya asks: “Who was punishing me? . . . Why did my country have mad leaders? Why had they taken my rights from me? Why couldn’t I live in my own land? Had superpowers caused this dark destiny for our nation? If yes, then why? Who had given them the right to interfere in my country’s affairs?” (p. 133). In what ways can Roya’s fate be seen as a result of superpowers meddling in the affairs of Iran?
   

6. Ric tells Roya, “We’re all refugees in a way. Many of us, many Americans live worse than refugees. This notion is wrong—this notion that we all prosper and we’ve all found that so-called American Dream” (p. 152). Which members of American society are forced to live in poverty, like refugees? How does America appear when seen through the eyes of an Iranian immigrant, an AIDS patient, and a social worker?
   

7. Roya observes that “In America, almost everything is a deal. Even when you’re receiving the kindness of your best friends you should never forget that one day you’ll have to pay this back” (p. 175). Why does Roya feel this way? Do you think this is an accurate view of how people behave in America?
   

8. Why does Bobby try to kill himself? What is your opinion of what befalls him at the end of the novel?
   

9. At the end of the novel, Ric encourages Roya to finish her memoir. “Use your imagination,” he tells her. “Who is interested in what really happened?” (p. 297). How are we to understand this final question? Aren’t memoirs supposed to say what “really happened?” Do you think that Roya’s memoir has become Moshiri’s novel?
   

10. Both Roya and Ric are physically tortured, and Madison suffers emotional devastation and the painful physical deterioration of AIDS. What is it that enables Ric and Roya to transcend their pasts and to create a life together?
    

11. The events of Against Gravity take place primarily in the 1980s, but in what ways does the novel mirror and illuminate our current situation? To what degree are the problems the novel dramatizes still with us?