I'm Writing You from Tehran
Page 26
I will never forget the great team at the French embassy in Tehran. Ambassadors François Nicoullaud and Bernard Poletti, with whom I share the desire for a better understanding of Iran, were always available and incredibly open-minded.
Since my early days in Iran, in 1997, I was fortunate to be able to count on the help of Marc Crépin and Gérald Roux, from Radio France, the first editors to encourage me to go to Iran and to assign me dispatches. A big thank-you to the team of L’Humanité for publishing my first pieces. I am obviously immensely indebted to Le Figaro, for whom I started to freelance in 2001, and for whom I ended up working as a full-time correspondent in 2009. I always counted on the professionalism and support of my respective editors in chief: Pierre Rousselin, Luc de Barochez, Philippe Gélie, and Arnaud de La Grange.
I am immensely indebted to Farhad Khosrokhavar, director of studies at L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, and Fariba Adelkhah, research director at Sciences Po–Centre de Recherches Internationales, the first people to introduce me to the complexity of Iranian politics. Thank you also to Bernard Hourcade, research director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and Azadeh Kian, professor of sociology at Université Paris Diderot (Paris 7), whose keen knowledge of contemporary Iran was very useful in helping me better understand the country.
I also, of course, want to thank my family, and especially Mamani. Despite our difficult beginnings, she has been an exceptional grandmother, a woman whom I greatly admire and whose personal story was rich with lessons. I am also very grateful to my father, who, though belatedly, was a precious aid in awakening memories of Babai, my grandfather.
But it’s for my husband, Borzou, that I reserve my most sincere gratitude. He has always been solid as a rock, handling all my qualms with exceptional composure. His patience and encouragement were an incredible aid to me.
Finally, I ask those who will feel flayed in the pages of this book to forgive me. For some, this history will perhaps seem apocryphal. It’s a small piece of my story, steeped in a painful reality. But without pain, there is no story.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Delphine Minoui, a recipient of the Albert Londres Prize for her reporting on Iraq and Iran, is a Middle East correspondent for Le Figaro. Born in Paris in 1974 to a French mother and an Iranian father, she now lives in Istanbul. You can sign up for email updates here.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Emma Ramadan lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is a co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, an NEA fellowship, and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. Her previous translations include the genderless novel Sphinx, by Anne Garréta. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Éditions du Seuil
Translation copyright © 2019 by Emma Ramadan
All rights reserved
Originally published in French in 2015 by Éditions du Seuil, France, as Je vous écris de Téhéran
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2019
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71657-8
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