DISCUSION DE RESULTADOS

Originally from Tehran, Hakakian suffered from overwhelming feelings of dislocation prior to leaving Iran, unlike other memoirists who experienced states of dissonance either during expulsion or while trying to resettle in new contexts overseas.169 _{Throughout her memoir,}

Hakakian represents herself as a patriot and her personal relationship with Iran as one between lovers.170 _{Hakakian remained in Tehran throughout the Islamic Revolution of}

1979 and witnessed not only the turbulent lead up to it, but also the repression that followed.171 _{Hakakian was originally an optimistic pro-revolutionary, but after witnessing}

even greater repression rather than the post-revolutionary liberation she dreamed of, she felt a deep sense of loss and betrayal. Tehran was ultimately rendered unrecognisable to her because of the rapid transformations brought about by the revolution, but also the rise of intense anti-Semitism.172

In the midst of the Iraq-Iran War, because of the intensity of change combined with her emotions, throughout 1984 Hakakian relates that she suffered from nightmares every single night.173 _{This period was deeply troubling for all Iranians who were not only experiencing}

the fourth year of war with Iraq but also the repression of a new authoritarian regime trying to consolidate power.174 _{Overwhelmed, Hakakian hit a breaking point:}

My mind . . . had begun its own rebellion. It refused thinking. All thoughts, all memories gathered to forge a single feeling: Fury!175

In this psychological state, rationality has no place – Hakakian’s mind and memories were marshalled for any sense of hope, independence of thought, and the reclamation of her independent identity.176 _{The internal world of imagination and dream became Hakakian’s}

only outlet as she was prevented from action in the ‘real world’ owing to the dangers of

168 _{Telushkin, Jewish Literacy, 274-275, 278-280, 286-287, 358-360, 418-419.}

169 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No; Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit; Rossant, Apricots on the}

Nile; Jawary, Baghdad, I Remember.

170 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No.} 171 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No.} 172 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 90-234.} 173 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 198-199.} 174 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 199.} 175 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 195.} 176 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 196-230.}

196 openly opposing Iran’s regime. In daily life, attempting to counter the regime’s repressive imagery, in no less violent terms she privately entertained a visual overlay of her own:

His Holiness’s gaze [Ayatollah Khomeini] was upon us everywhere. His rosy- cheeked portraits were painted larger than life on all signboards. And my imagination encountered each rendition like a guillotine, severing, then filling every unpleasant void with the imam’s disembodied parts. I felt no guilt. In the boiling pots on our stove, his head stewed. From the empty hooks in butcher shops, his carcass dangled. Ribs anyone? . . . My murderous fantasy had become so overpowering that I began to ponder it: Did I have the heart to kill anyway. Oh, him I could kill! . . . Murdering him was the only solution, given the magnitude of my desperation, given the magnitude of the city’s desperation.177

Here, reality has collapsed. Hakakin’s use of imagery is filled with brutality, cannibalism, and bodily horror. The categories of life and death, human and animal, are blended and inseparable. This passage can be read an attempt by Hakakian (either subconsciously or consciously) to counter the regime’s authoritarian imagery by privately entertaining a visual overlay of her own.178 _{In the face of the regime’s claim, through constant propaganda}

exposure, to power over all visual, mental, and physical space, Hakakian creates for herself a private means of personal resistance.179

Hakakian writes that her living nightmare was equally echoed in sleep during dream – “at least once a night” she dreamt of assassinating Ayatollah Khomeini, often repeatedly, only to do so again and again the next night.180 _{The representation of the single dream she}

shares reads like the script to a spy-action film with Hakakian as the tragic yet empowered hero, for instance:

I watched the liquid rising in the syringe: 100cc, 200cc, 300cc, 400cc. That had to be enough . . . With every drop of cyanide I injected into him, his complexion darkened like a bruise breaking outward onto the surface of his skin. Tsss! The sizzling sound of his flesh shrinking in venomous fire entwined with the sound of the heater hissing. He was looking me in the eye now, and I, certain these were his last moments, stared boldly back at him . . . Two guards, cocking their Kalashnikovs, screamed, “Ist!” And I head Pop! Pop! Pop! . . . I lifted my head, gave them a last triumphant look, and died.181

177 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 199. Original emphasis.} 178 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 199.}

179 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 199.}

180 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 196-199. Hakakian always kills the Ayatollah using a lethal injection –}

in this particular dream while reciting passages of the Koran for his pleasure.

197 Hakakian’s writing is dramatic and vivid, including elements of realism along with abstract melodrama. The additional details of her subsequent and repeating nightmares, however, are left to the reader’s imagination.182

What is evident from Hakakian’s work is not only the intensity of her emotion but also the presence of trauma.183 _{Both perception and emotion are jointly encoded into memories at}

the point of experience.184 _{As Horowitz and Reidbord explain, “the experience of trauma is}

often followed by a tendency to repeat the memory” as the individual seeks to reach closure but is unable to immediately integrate their experience into personal and collective understanding.185 _{Intense emotion also acts to “empower the memory system” into high}

levels of activation and activity.186 _{Hakakian’s representation of her experience of repeated}

nightmares – like those of Goldin, discussed earlier in this chapter – is reflective of the mind seeking to process intensely emotive experiences while asleep, as well as trying to cope within the context in which her sleep is taking place.187 _{Hakakian shares that the exact}

nature of her fate within her repeated nightmare would vary depending on if Tehran was being bombed by Iraqi fighter-jets that night or not.188 _{She writes:}

On nights that the air raid sirens shrieked through the morning hours and the Iraqi missiles fell on the city, the imam did not die right away; his joints cracked and he writhed in agony to his last breath. On quiet nights, ecstatic crowds stormed the room, lifted me, a heroine, upon their shoulders, and carried me to the streets.189

Hakakian’s narrative constructs a very close and personal relationship between herself and Tehran – one that sees her psychology and wellbeing tied to that of the city and her compatriots.190 _{This is a symbolic dualism that is also present in the premise that Hakakian}

offers for her dreams:

Murdering him was the only solution, given the magnitude of my desperation, given the magnitude of the city’s desperation.191

182 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 196-198.} 183 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No.}

184 _{Leichtman, Ceci, and Orenstein, ‘The Influence of Affect on Memory’, 194.} 185 _{Horowitz & Reidbord, ‘Emotion, Memory, and Response to Trauma’, 343-345} 186 _{Mandler ‘Memory, Arousal, and Mood’, 189.}

187 _{Stickgold, ‘Sleep’; Goldin, Wedding Song, 189; Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 198. Goldin was asleep}

in the United States of America, but the guilt of leaving her family continued to haunt her.

188 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 198-199.} 189 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 198-199.} 190 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 199.} 191 _{Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No, 199.}

198 Here too there is repetition – repetition that not only serves for linguistic emphasis but that also seeks to bind personal thoughts and feelings with those of the collective.

Hakakian’s recurrent nightmares reflect different layers and levels of return. Her descent into violent fantasy and fury, enacted through both imagination and dream, can be read as a private and very personal attempt at rebellion and a desperate cry for freedom.192 _Played

out in the subversive safety of her mind and in the landscape of nightmare, Hakakian’s desire for Tehran to return to stability and peace transforms assassination and death into an imagined vehicle for life and liberation.193 _{The reflection of violence back onto her chosen}

target of the Ayatollah Khomeini (positioned as the cause of social suffering) is in itself a return and reflection of personal and social suffering back onto the perceived perpetrator.194 _{The recurrent return, night after night, of Hakakian’s mind to the scenario of}

repeated assassination, not only speaks of her own emotional trauma, but also of a longing for revenge and resolution. It is reflective of the insanity and violence of war and revolution not only on the body and mind of the individual, but also on society.195 _Her

dreams of assassination can be read as a vehicle for historical salvation and personal closure.196 _{That is, the restoration of Iran as it once was at the point prior to revolution –}

the Iran she passionately loved – in the ultimate temporal shift of counterrevolutionary fantasy played out in the liberation of her private imagination.197