Moon Daughter by Zohreh Ghahremani
Requirements: AZW3 reader, 444.8 kb
Overview: Rana is certain that her third child will be a boy. She has two daughters, yet a husband who demands a son. When she gives birth to another girl, the impact on her marriage is immediate. In 1970’s Iran, living within a culture where marital rights and gender roles are maintained with tradition and fervor, Rana is pushed to make the hardest decision of her life, and begins to set in motion a chain of events that will ripple through the next generation.
The Moon Daughter is a global mother-daughter story told in two parts and spans over 25 years. The novel uses the lens of one troubled family to examine pressing and timely women’s issues, in particular male dominance and bigamy in Iran and what Middle Eastern women continue to face.
The story begins when RANA, the wife of Major FARHAD MORADI in Shiraz, has just given birth to their third daughter. Already bad news for a woman whose husband desperately wants sons, the situation is made worse as the infant has a malformed limb. When Moradi leaves Rana’s bedside and rushes to another woman, Rana feels the chill of the longest night of the year and is inspired to name her newborn after it, YALDA.
While daughters MARJAN and VIDA (ages 8 and 5) are unaware of what their mother is going through, DAYEH – Rana’s old nanny – provides comfort. However, she can do little to protect her from the neighborhood gossip brought home by the maid, BANOO. Even a visit from Rana’s parents Dr. & MRS. AMELI from Tehran does little to cheer her. Major Moradi takes a second wife PARISSA, who is expecting a baby, but miscarries.
When Moradi refuses to divorce Rana, her father plans her escape to the US. The plan faces a huge setback when Marjan dies. Her grief pushes the couple further apart. Moradi hasn’t even bothered to register the baby’s birth. Rana decides to go through with her trip abroad and to seek treatment for her baby. Dr. Ameli and Dr. FARD make the needed appointments and the lawyer ESKANDARI arranges for paperwork under Rana’s maiden name. Moradi becomes suspicious and holds Vida back. Too heartbroken to fight, Rana leaves Iran with Yalda, whom she now views as a flawed part of her own existence.
Part Two is narrated by Yalda 25 years later. It begins before her graduation from law school when a call from Tehran shatters her world. Vida wants her mother to attend her wedding. Yalda realizes that the identity she holds is a lie, that she has a father and a family in Iran.
Finally, mother and daughter agree to attend Vida’s wedding. Iran still considers Rana married to Major Moradi, but what the retired officer doesn’t know is that the daughter he never wanted, is a lawyer headed back for revenge. Yalda is determined to gain her mother’s freedom.
Yalda realizes this Iran bears no resemblance to what Rana has described and nothing is what she had expected. Dr. Ameli has died and Rana’s mother has lost her memory and even Moradi is too worn down. However, for Rana it’s a different experience. It is her homecoming. The process of her divorce reveals the injustice against women clearly. In the end, divorced and free, Rana decides to stay in Iran. She has been uprooted for too long, and it is time for her to remain where she learned the meaning of love and spend her life in her natural habitat.
Genre: Historical Fiction > Culture, Iran
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