Marjan Kamali’s novel, The Lion Women of Tehran (2024), was a story of two very different girls fighting to stay together when the world around them wanted them apart. The novel chronicled their turbulent friendship against the evolving struggle for women’s rights in Iran. Its publication came only two months after the arrest of Ahoo Daryaei, a woman who stripped in public in Tehran as a form of protest. It has also been two years since the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman who died in prison after being arrested for wearing her hijab ‘improperly.’ The strongest aspect of Lion Women was its pulsing urgency, thrumming through the decades of Iranian history that it spanned. At every moment, the constant threat of persecution of Iranian women loomed over the heads of the characters: a threat present then and present now.
Spanning the 1950s to the 2020s, Kamali captured the growth of two women against the upheaval for women’s rights in Iran across a lifetime. Ellie, whom we first met at the age of seven, grew up in a frigid household. Her mother’s brand of affection was constant rebukes, which led Ellie to develop an occasionally irritating sense of self-pity. Despite this, she experienced a relatively privileged upbringing in uptown Tehran. She felt stifled by her mother and yearned for a stable life with a loving husband, though her characterisation occasionally felt trite and superficial because of her desires for material comfort. Kamali didn’t praise or condemn Ellie for wanting a decadent lifestyle, but intentionally introduced other female characters with vastly different lifestyles and ambitions to create a more nuanced narrative.
Ellie’s best friend Homa, instead subverted the conservative norm in every way. At school, in social interactions, in her desire to go to university, in her refusal to marry. And, above all, in her involvement in communist organisations, and later in women’s rights organisations. Homa’s family was noticeably more affectionate than Ellie’s, with a strong emphasis on food as a way of bringing people together. There were always armfuls of plates flowing out the door, and Homa’s mother constantly asked if there was anything they wanted. Ellie craved affection and shied away from activism, whereas Homa had a loving family but was much more exposed to political insecurity. But Homa was a pillar of strength in her fights for communism and for women’s rights, pursuing a ‘greater good’ when Ellie was mainly interested in securing a husband and safety. She seemed noble and resolute but sometimes her greatest weakness was in being so trusting of others, even Ellie. Both of them displayed a naivete that was understandable for girls of their age and yet still frustrating when the city they lived in was so dangerous for women.
After the Iranian revolution, Ellie and her partner Mehrdad immigrated to New York. Their life felt distant and fantastical compared to Homa’s, much like a fairytale. They were consistently on the same page, and Mehrdad encouraged Ellie’s education and career so much that it hardly felt realistic. Their life felt like part of another book, a mirror into the class divisions in Iranian society and the small differences that signify a life of privilege, opportunity and satisfaction with struggle, persecution and poverty. The disparity of the two womens’ lives sometimes felt like a romance novel had been grafted onto a perilous story of defiance: they grew up streets apart and lived worlds apart.
While Ellie often seemed naive and complacent, her reasons for leaving Tehran were understandable. Her life in New York seemed remarkably compatible with her character, because there she could pretend that there was no conflict in her life, and become even more absorbed in the minutiae of upper-class life alongside people who often didn’t know where Iran was on a map.
More compellingly, Ellie was a forgivable character because Homa forgave her. The narrative felt like it belonged to Homa more than to Ellie, because Homa was Ellie’s antithesis. Homa never surrendered to authorities and never considered leaving Iran for safety. Her ferocity and love was so moving that when she accepted Ellie’s flaws, it made Ellie seem redeemable in her eyes and then in ours. Their bond was so strong that those who read it could not help but weep.
Lion Women was beautiful because it didn’t shy away from the brutalities of a violent theocracy and corrupt prison system, nor did it praise one woman’s choice over another’s. There weren’t any significant moments where Kamali’s writing style seems dull, or slow-paced: she relied on her characters, but they felt so genuine as to be tangible. Ellie and Homa’s ability to maintain a lifelong bond despite all the conflict and distance between them was deeply moving, and so important when Iranian women today are still being persecuted. When there is injustice, there will always be people to fight it.
The Lion Women of Tehran was published on 4th December, 2024.
