As an Iranian kid in America, my greatest nightmare was being kidnapped back to Iran. For those of us who had endured the “morality police”, gruelling escapes and long asylum battles, Iran was the hell at the border of our new American lives, and later, when I met other Iranian Americans my age, I found that I wasn’t alone.
I Will Greet the Sun Again, Khashayar J Khabushani’s tender and gut-wrenching debut novel, is a tightly constructed three-act drama exploring the long-term impact when three brothers are kidnapped to their father’s Iran. Set mostly in a sun-beaten, crumbling Los Angeles apartment complex, the story grabbed me from the start, not just for its vivid characters who never stop trying, or its meticulously realised settings, but for the winking way it speaks to Iranian Americans of the author’s generation, with Persian words sprinkled liberally throughout.
The kidnapping is a danger that looms from the first page, embodied by an abusive, narcissistic father whose failures in America threaten to destroy the family. Baba is one of the most deplorable characters I’ve read in years, expertly realised by an author unafraid to zoom in close. Calling himself “the best engineer in all of America”, Baba refuses to work, because he’s too proud to labour for someone else. He loses the family’s house, gambles away his hardworking wife’s earnings while preening to his sons. He buys a single burger for all three and tells them to “pay close attention and to remember what it looked like when a man was respected all across the globe”. Baba crushes his family so slowly they hardly notice it. And yet, his sons continue to love and admire him, and his worst acts are written precisely and unflinchingly, in all their awful detail, without sentiment or pity.
At nine, the narrator, K, is the youngest and gentlest of the brothers, who were born in LA but grow up fixated on reaffirming their Americanness. Stolen away to their father’s homeland, they are as pitiless and judgmental as any American children would be: “I miss our country … where we had shit to do other than pray and take naps in the middle of the day like we’re in fucking preschool.” And yet, a few months later when they are rescued back “home” to America and their mother, their first flex is naturally “We’re real Iranians now”. This struggle with identity is at the heart of the book, and subtly captured.
Having attended Columbia – or so he says – Baba reveres western canonical writers and makes the boys write out pages from books he considers great literature. K’s love of words is apparent early on and he promises that “when I’m older I’ll get to write how I want to write, stories that aren’t old or long or in English that’s hard to understand. I want to write using my own rules and not the way Baba says I’m supposed to, perfect and neat.”
Like most Iranians writing in English, I’ve thought a lot about what it means to write the Persian way or the American way, or my way. I worry about having imbibed western dogmas in American MFA programmes (Khabushani earned his from Columbia). But “my way” is no shield against criticism, of which I have only small ones.
The first act builds beautifully to the kidnapping; moving from dual culture struggles and everyday boyish triumphs, it is an honest and riveting dive into the nightmare. The second section in Iran releases the tension too quickly. A horrific and transformative scene unfolds, and we’re back in America. In the third section, after the brothers’ return from Iran, the pacing shifts and we sprint through their adolescent years and early adulthood with the trauma of what happened in Iran always one layer below the surface, a lifelong subtext to everything, though its deeper impact on K’s character and identity are left dramatically unrealised, which leads to a few essayistic wrap-ups near the end. Multiple issues are jammed into those final scenes: identity in a post-9/11 world, gang and military recruitments, heartbreak, sexual awakening, queerness in an Iranian family, all in just a few pages.
While the use of Persian words in an English text is part of a larger conversation about language, I’m wary of style at the expense of clarity and efficiency. Yes, there are words without English equivalent or that have crept into English (chai). Some words are just for us, his fellow Iranians: yavashaki (sneakily) or gooz (fart) are inside jokes. But do we need to give words like “yes” or “go” or “please” or “hungry” in two languages when the rest of the text assumes Farsi dialogue? What does it achieve other than to exotify the text?
These are small gripes about a book of astonishing accomplishment and bravery. To transport someone so convincingly into their own worst nightmare is a tall order, and Khabushani has done it with such a widely shared bogeyman. This book is a triumph, one that will help the next generation understand our specific American childhood – how it felt to grow up with broken immigrant parents and one foot still in Iran, sitting in front of a TV in a sad apartment complex, dreaming of the good life.
• Dina Nayeri is the author of two novels, as well as the nonfiction books Who Gets Believed and The Ungrateful Refugee.
• I Will Greet the Sun Again by Khashayar J Khabushani is published by Viking (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
