Leaving Iran by Farideh Goldin, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

In 1975, at the age of twenty-three, Farideh Goldin left Iran insearch of her imagined America. She sought an escape from thesuffocation she felt under the cultural rules of her country and thefuture her family had envisioned for her. While she settled uneasilyinto American life, the political unrest in Iran intensified and inFebruary of 1979, Farideh’s family was forced to flee Iran on thelast El-Al flights to Tel Aviv. They arrived in Israel as refugees, having left everything behind including the only home Farideh’sfather had ever known. Baba, as Farideh called her father, was a well-respected son of thechief rabbi and dayan of the Jews of Shiraz. During his last visit tothe United States in 2006, he handed Farideh his memoir that chronicledthe years of his life after exile: the confiscation of his passportwhile he attempted to return to Iran for his belongings, the resultingyears of loneliness as he struggled against a hostile bureaucracy toreturn to his wife and family in Israel, and the eventual loss of thepoultry farm that had supported his family. Farideh translated herfather’s memoir along with other documents she found in abriefcase after his death. Leaving Iran knits together herfather’s story of dislocation and loss with her own experience asan Iranian Jew in a newly adopted home. As an intimate portrait ofdisplacement and the construction of identity, as a story of familyloyalty and cultural memory, Leaving Iran is an importantaddition to a growing body of Iranian–American narratives. | Leaving Iran by Farideh Goldin, Paperback | Indigo Chapters