An intimate and honest chronicle of the everyday life of Iranian
women over the past century
"A lesson about the value of personal freedom and what happens to a
nation when its people are denied the right to direct their own
destiny. This is a book Americans should read." -Washington
Post
The fifteenth of thirty-six children, Sattareh Farman Farmaian was
born in Iran in 1921 to a wealthy and powerful shazdeh, or prince,
and spent a happy childhood in her father's Tehran harem. Inspired
and empowered by his ardent belief in education, she defied
tradition by traveling alone at the age of twenty-three to the
United States to study at the University of Southern California.
Ten years later, she returned to Tehran and founded the first
school of social work in Iran.
Intertwined with Sattareh's personal story is her unique
perspective on the Iranian political and social upheaval that have
rocked Iran throughout the twentieth century, from the 1953
American-backed coup that toppled democratic premier Mossadegh to
the brutal regime of the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini's fanatic and
anti-Western Islamic Republic. In 1979, after two decades of
tirelessly serving Iran's neediest, Sattareh was arrested as a
counterrevolutionary and branded an imperialist by Ayatollah
Khomeini's radical students.
Daughter of Persia is the remarkable story of a woman and
a nation in the grip of profound change.
The Remarkable story of the daughter of a once powerful and wealthy shazdeh, or prince, Farmaian tells a fascinating tale of growing up in the 1930s in a Persian harem compound in Tehran. Breaking with Muslim tradition, she became an independent woman and found herself arrested as a counterrevolutionary. A dramtic window on Iran''s journey through the twentieth century.
1. Among the important emotional threads running through
Daughter of Persia is Sattareh Farman Farmaian''s lasting
veneration for her distant but beloved father, to whom she refers
simply as Shazdeh, "the Prince." How did Shazdeh-or Satti's memory
of Shazdeh-influence her life and career? What other people struck
you as especially important to Satti in her adult life?
2. Did the depiction of Satti's childhood home change your
impressions of a "harem compound"? In what ways was Shazdeh''s
compound a microcosm of Persian life as the author claims existed
for thousands of years? Why did Persians feel that having a
protector was so critical to survival? Do you think the need for a
"protector" is a universal experience or particular to the Persian
culture?
3. The incident in which Satti''s mother refused to go to the
police after being cheated by a beggar was a crucial lesson for
Satti in the Persian axiom that one must "never trust anyone
outside the family." Are Americans generally taught to trust
those outside the family? Are there circumstances in American
culture in which it is considered unwise or even unethical to
depend on "family"? Do all Western cultures emphasize independence
from family?
4. How did Satti''s descriptions of individual Persian women
from childhood-her mother Khanom, her stepmothers Batul and
Fatimeh, Princess Ezzatdoleh, Neggar-Saltaneh (the wedding party
hostess), or Shazdeh''s strong-willed sister, Najmeh-Saltaneh, the
mother of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh-both support and contradict
Western stereotypes of traditional Moslem women?
5. If Shazdeh had lived a year or two longer, he would have
found Satti a husband. How do you think her life would have turned
out if she had been married off by her father? Might she still have
been able to fight for social reforms? Do you think she could still
have found happiness if she had had a conventional Persian
marriage?
6. Satti felt that a priceless lesson of her student years in
America, "the land at the end of the earth," was the freedom to
speak openly and criticize anyone, even teachers and the
government. She believed that if Iranians could learn to speak
freely, "we could solve our problems." For this reason, she decided
that one day she would return to Iran and teach Persians the value
of "constructive criticism." Do you see as much "constructive
criticism" in American public life today as Satti did then? Is it
possible to solve large-scale social problems without "constructive
criticism"?
7. Another of Satti''s observations as a student was that
"America was a wasteful nation." Satti felt that her American
friends threw away clothing and even food they did not want without
realizing the luxury in which they lived compared to countries like
Iran. Do you think "Americans are wasteful"? In what sense? Do you
think Satti should have been more sympathetic to her friends,
noting that Americans'' circumstances were different than
Iranians''?
8. What was your reaction to the 1953 overthrow of Dr. Mohammed
Mossadegh, Iran''s democratically-elected premier, by supporters of
Mohammed Reza Shah, the British intelligence service, and the
American CIA? Were you surprised to learn that, although it took
more than a quarter of a century for Americans who enjoy freedom of
the press to learn of their government''s involvement in the plot,
Iranians learned the truth within days? Do you think the
United States should never become involved in the overthrow of a
democratically-elected regime in a foreign country? Or do you think
it's politically naïve to believe we must never betray the
principles of democracy?
9. Satti''s "Bulldozers"-the young men and women she recruited
and trained to go into South Teheran to clean up its orphanages,
mental hospitals, workhouses, and prisons-had to deal with problems
that are generally less common in developed countries. How was the
social work Satti taught different from social work in the West,
and how was it similar? Do American social workers ever have to
deal with similar problems here, for instance, in times of natural
catastrophe?
10. Satti also taught her Bulldozers that "social worker" in
Persian translated into madadkar, "helping person," to
make the point that social workers cared not only about themselves
and their families but also about people with whom they had nothing
to do, or who might belong to a different religion or class, or be
unlike them in other ways. Do you think generally Americans
are taught to care about those in need, despite their being from a
different, race, religion, or class? Do you think the United States
has a strong government program, such as Satti was trying to build
in Iran, to take care of those less fortunate?
11. In introducing international family planning and birth
control to Iran, Satti emphasized that birth control enabled
couples to postpone having children until women had recovered from
previous childbearing and until families could afford to take care
of their children financially. To persuade traditional Persians
that family planning was in harmony with Islamic law, she enlisted
the support of a prominent ayatollah, who issued a favorable
ruling. Did you side with Satti or with her mother, Khanom, who
maintained a more conservative stand on birth control? In what ways
were Khanom's religious arguments similar to arguments made by
other religious faiths against birth control?
12. Satti criticized the Shah''s social and educational
policies, yet in retrospect she realized that she had not fully
understood what impact those policies were having on the students
of her own school. Why do you think she was blind to this at the
time?
13. By the last months of the Shah''s reign, many well-educated,
democratic, religiously tolerant Iranians including Satti were
convinced that the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a compassionate,
democratizing influence on Iran and not a religious fanatic. What
led them to feel this way about Khomeini and the changes he was
demanding?
14. Satti''s arrest by her own students was all the more
devastating because no one on her faculty or staff, besides Zabi,
attempted to prevent it. While she later learned that the students
were motivated by ignorance and a new-found--though
undeserved--sense of entitlement, she felt shattered by the
behavior of those who refused to get involved. Why do you think no
one stepped forward to help her? Have you ever witnessed or been
the target of a similar betrayal of loyalty at a critical moment?
How did you make sense of it?
15. . Social work has always taught that it is only by solving
society''s problems through slow, long-term changes in behavior,
legislation, and policy that permanent, positive social change
comes about. However, this approach means co-operating with the
existing system. After her release from detention, Satti wondered
in anguish whether she had supported oppression by keeping the
school apolitical and not actively speaking out against the
government''s human rights abuses. Do you think Satti's efforts
benefited or ultimately hurt Iran? What would you have done in
Satti''s position?
A dramatic look at Iran's journey through the 20th century. After earning an advanced degree in social work in the U.S., Farmaian returned to Iran, founded the Tehran School of Social Work, and waged a war on poverty and disease for 20 years. But when Ayatollah Khomeini came into power, she faced possible execution as a "counter-revolutionary". Photographs.
