‘Memory is an inevitable site of struggle’

MV: In the dark days that have befallen Iran, many have turned to your work for solace and hope. They look to your words to make sense of the pervading darkness. My question is: why? Why do they come to you? We do not share the same history or culture; we do not speak the same language. The names, the places, the events to which you refer in your works are unfamiliar to most Iranians. And yet we read you as if you were one of us—writing for us and about us. Why do you think your work resonates so deeply in Iran?

First it was Death and the Maiden. Then Widows. Most recently, Exorcising Terror has captivated Iranian readers—perhaps because it allowed them to imagine a similar fate for their own Pinochet: to dream that one early morning the phone might ring, just as it did in your room at Berkeley. Is this kind of impact the reason you write? Or is it an unintended consequence of what is, at heart, a far more personal journey?

AD: First, it is very moving to hear that my work has been so well received in Iran. The solitude that every writer inhabits contains the hope that there will be readers, the need for  communion, and when the novels and plays and essays deal, like mine tend to do, with political situations of repression and resistance, it becomes even more important to confirm that, in effect, there are others, brothers and sisters, who are taking my words into their hearts, giving me a home inside them and changing, even if just a little bit, their lives. And this is even more of a joy when it turns out to be true in a country that, as you say, appears to be so far from my immediate surroundings. I could answer that any story that is true in one place is also true in another. We need not be Russian to share the dreams of an Anna Karenina. And I need not know Farsi to be enamoured of Rumi and Hafez or enchanted by Kiarostami, Panahi or Makhmalbaf. They make me think in ways that many of my own Chilean compatriots do not. I can see myself when I read a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad or in Goli Taraghi’s stories. Nevertheless, it is possible that, in my own case, there are reasons why my work “travels’ well. As a perennial wanderer, I have been obsessed with finding common ground with people from other lands, labouring incessantly on a language that tries to break down barriers of incomprehension and smuggles itself across national borders.

I think Exorcising Terror did just that: crossed borders and brought hope to many readers in Iran after the brutal suppression of the protests in January 2019. But what if this ‘hope’ is yet another messianic belief in a desirable outcome? For the reality is that no one in Iran can see a way out of the dark. You could still say ‘this cannot and will not last’. But wouldn’t that be an article of faith, detached from the inconvenience of earthly facts? 

I cannot pretend to have a complete answer. Even if hope is an illusion, we must hold onto it, share its light, however scant and brief, because otherwise we will never change the world, we will give injustice the last word. This much is certain: despair and indifference lead nowhere.

Another thing that’s certain is that all dictators die eventually. But very few face justice. Can there be reconciliation without seeing the culprit facing his crimes? A few months ago, I watched Chileans dancing to the sound of Pinochet Constitution falling, probably the last standing remnant of their dark past. It made me wonder if the injuries had healed, if Chileans had moved on. Could you tell me if they have – indeed, if you have – and how?

The work is never done. One must celebrate each victory (in our case, the end of Pinochet’s fraudulent 1980 Constitution) while understanding that we need to confront the conditions that led to dictatorship, oppression, censorship, cruelty, and – above all – confront the fear that allows such miserable forms of inhumanity to flourish.

In Exorcising Terror you write, “even if I knew that there were so many others to blame, that these crimes could only have been committed with thousands of others helping and millions standing by indifferently, it was Pinochet, always Pinochet.” I can imagine millions in Iran sharing this sentiment. They certainly did in 1979 about the Shah. But there is always a danger, is there not, that we overlook the structures and tumble, inescapably, from darkness into the dark? I use the word ‘darkness’, but I’m aware it can be misleading. It obscures the reality by omitting the human element: the callousness, the efficiency, the design. Surely, the ‘helping thousands’ have to face their crimes too? Or is it inevitable that they’re spared – being too many? Would that be a sound decision, practically and morally?

Because I am against the death penalty, I had struggled with the question of what to do with the perpetrators of evil and their innumerable accomplices. I cannot elaborate here at length on how, over my lifetime, I have tried to solve this dilemma. My play, Purgatorio, which I think has never been staged in Iran, asks that question as a sort of sequel to Death and the Maiden, exploring how to atone for terrible crimes. And in The Compensation Bureau, a sci-fi novella about to be published, I create a whole universe devoted to these problems. But despite all my efforts over the years, I cannot say I have a simple answer to offer. It is, as you mentioned, a moral question but also a political one, the answer to which has to be contingent on the historical context. One thing I can say, though, is that one should be very careful not to confuse justice with revenge. In human minds the two have become closely – and perversely – related. But they are not the same thing.

Getting back to your work, how could one turn hopelessness to beauty as you do with your work? How can one build a lasting monument on – and from– suffering and injustice? Could we say that central to many of your works is ‘pain’, ‘trauma’, ‘fear’ and the struggle to overcome their paralyzing effect? If so, could we describe your writing as your struggle? For you cannot not have been traumatized by the images you put to words.

I did not choose the pain and sorrow that have marked my life, nor to live under dictatorship. I can choose – and did – to make those experiences significant by shaping them into words so that by the very act of communicating we defeat the trauma and, most of all, defeat solitude and oblivion, those twin brothers of death.

Oblivion reminds me of another concept central to your work: memory – which seems to be closely related to pain and trauma? Could there be relief while you remember?

Memory is the bedrock of our identity, and therefore an inevitable site of struggle. But beware of being captured by the past, imprisoned there. Memory, personal and collective, needs to be a road to the future. 

My last question is on another major theme not just in your works, but in your life: exile –and home. You chose to live in Chile instead of your birthplace, Argentina. But when you returned from exile, it was home no more. Or maybe it was, but not the only one. How would you define home? What does it take to make exile home?

I have written about this extensively in my two memoirs – Heading South, Looking North and Feeding on Dreams – and I cannot summarize here what it took many years and hundreds of pages to understand. But I have come to embrace my hybrid, bilingual, pluricultural existence, perhaps because I have been fortunate to find a home in my literature and stability and permanence in Angélica, my wife for over fifty-five years. The word for home in Spanish is “hogar” which comes from the same origin as “fuego”, the fire. So, my home is where my heart is on fire with love – a phrase that, perhaps, may resonate with readers of poetry written in Farsi.