Marina Nemat

Marina Nemat (b. 22 April 1965 in Tehran) is the author of a memoir about growing up in Iran, serving time in Evin Prison for speaking out against the Iranian government, escaping a death sentence and finally fleeing Iran for a new life in Canada.

Life

Both of her grandmothers had immigrated to Iran from Russia to escape the Russian Revolution, and Nemat was brought up as a Russian (Eastern Orthodox Christian) in Tehran. Her father worked as a dance teacher, her mother as a hairdresser. She was a high school student when the secularizing monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. As a student Marina opposed the oppressive policies of the new Islamic government, attended demonstrations and wrote anti-revolutionary articles in a student newspaper. On January 15, 1982, at age 16 she was arrested and imprisoned for her views against the revolution. She was tortured in the notorious Evin Prison well known for atrocities against political inmates, and sentenced to death.

However, she survived because a prison guard named Ali Moosavi rescued her. He used his connections to obtain commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment from which he apparently planned to obtain her release. However, after five months of imprisonment, it became clear that Moosavi had developed an attachment to Nemat and intended to force her to marry him.

Under threats of persecution of her family, and to guarantee her continuing safety, she converted to Islam and married Moosavi. See references for a description of the events to follow, including an audio interview with Nemat herself on the BBC's acclaimed Woman's Hour programme first broadcast in 2007, in which she describes marriage to a man she nonetheless hated, and her experience of being raped by him after the forced marriage.

After 2 years 2 months and 12 days of imprisonment, Moosavi's family obtained her release so that she could come and live with him as his wife. He was later assassinated by a rival faction of prison guards.

Nemat then secretly married Andre Nemat, her teenage love and an electrical engineer. They married in a Christian church.^[1]

They escaped to Canada in 1991 and have two sons. Marina worked at the Aurora franchise of the Swiss Chalet restaurant chain, and wrote her life story in 78,000 words. She knew that many victims did not want to talk about their fate. In 2005 there was an article about her experiences in the magazine Sunday Star.

Books

Her book Prisoner of Tehran was published in 2007 by Penguin and is being translated into 13 languages. In 2010 she wrote another book, After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed. What led her to write her first book was "a screaming fit at my mother's funeral, like a psychotic episode, after my father told me that she had forgiven me before her death, but he didn't say for what" as she realized that her father was referring to the mothers's grudge against her for the suffering her arrest and imprisonment had caused the family. "Even though my family didn't want to know what had happened to me, I was going to write it all down." The beauty of writing, she adds, "is that when you write, you are not judged: It's only you and that piece of paper, and you can say whatever you want."

Controversy

Monireh Baradaran has claimed that Prisoner of Tehran is a "book of distortions and fiction". In a petition that she wrote to the publisher, Penguin Group together with other 24 ex-prisoners she writes:

"We consider the publication of this book of distortions and fiction, an insult to ourselves and the thousands of political prisoners that were executed in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. We consider it our duty to document those horrific events and we strive to do so. (...) The execution scene Ms. Nemat describes is so impossible that it can only be a fiction of the writer's imagination." ^[2]

Monireh Baradaran who has served in the prison for 9 years writes in a different essay:

"Marina Nemat's depiction of her execution scene seems so fabricated that I can't help but ask myself whether this scene has been stolen from a trivial motion picture. (...) I might not be eligible to make a judgment about the accuracy of Nemat's account of her life before she went to prison or while she was in prison. But the book is so filled with inaccurate information and peculiar tales that the reader loses trust in the narrator right from the very start. My criticism of the book, however, is not merely because of its false, bizarre storyline; it is rather because of Nemat's unrealistic description of prison life. Evin prison is a historic fact. You can't write tall tales about it based on your personal taste or interest."^{[3] [4]}

(No explanation is given by the editor as to who Monireh Baradaran is and what her relationship is to the Iranian regime. She may be a plant meant to discredit dissidents for all we know. No wikipedia entry exists for this "Monireh Baradaran"

There have been protests against the letter written by Monereh Baradaran and 24 others by other ex-political prisoners from Iran, including Nasrin Parvaz, who was a prisoner for 8 years . Nasrin Parvaz, who is a writer and has written her own memoir of Evin, has written a ten-page letter in defense of Marina Nemat. In it, Nasrin Parvaz writes (translated from Persian):

"These days if you check some internet sites, you will find hate letters against Marina Nemat and her new book 'Prisoner of Tehran.' Marina was 16 when she was arrested and tortured, and today, she has dared to write of what happened to her, and, suddenly, she is the subject of organized attacks by some individuals and groups. There is a decree against her to silence the victims of the Regime (the Islamic Republic of Iran). (...) People like Marina are not allowed to write in Iran, and, outside the country, these sects intimidate and attack them to cover up the truth. I have to mention that these attacks are limited to the internet." ^[5]

In February 2009, Shahrnoush Parsipour, who is a famous Iranian writer and who was in prison in Iran for close to 5 years, wrote a review of Prisoner of Tehran, and in it she stated (translated from Persian): "Prisoner of Tehran, written by Marina Nemat, probably deserves the most attention and deliberation between all the other books written about the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran ... by writing a book that is free from exaggeration, the writer (Marina Nemat) has been successful in conveying the terrifying and medieval conditions of the Islamic Republic's prisons ... I recommend this book to everyone..." (http://zamaaneh.com/parsipur/2009/02/post_234.html)

Awards

Marina Nemat was awarded the first Human Dignity Prize in December 2007. This prize is to be given annually by the European Parliament and the Cultural Association Europa 2004. The Human Dignity Prize "celebrates organizations and individuals working for a world free from intolerance and social injustice, a world where fundamental human rights are respected." ^[6] The Prize Committee said that Nemat was chosen "because of her strength of character despite her life experiences." ^[7]

Sources

• Shephard, Michelle (2007-04-22). "My home, my horror: An Aurora mother's book details her prison ordeal in Iran". Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/article/205888. Retrieved 2007-05-21. 
• "Pact with the devil". Sydney Morning Herald. 2007-05-19. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pact-with-the-devil/2007/05/18/1178995408904.html. Retrieved 2007-05-21. 

References

1. ^ Flight from Iran
2. ^ Petition letter to the Penguin Group
3. ^ amazon.com/review (Translated from Persian)
4. ^ Radio Zamaneh
5. ^ marina
6. ^ CNW Group | SLOPEN LITERARY AGENCY | Toronto author Marina Nemat awarded first "Human Dignity" prize by European Parliament; presentation in Milan, Italy, on December 15, 2007
7. ^ National Post, Saturday, December 8, 2007

External links

• Marina Nemat on The Hour
• Interview with Marina Nemat in Haaretz (the most prestigious leftist anti-settlement Middle-East newspaper published in Israel) by correspondent of the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw, Ina R. Friedman.

Persondata
Name	Nemat, Marina
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Date of birth	1965
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death