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On January 24, 2008, Levantine Cultural Center in partnership with LACMA's Art of the Middle East Department presented Crossroads of Culture: A Literary Journey from Tehran to Los Angeles in LACMA's Bing Auditorium. Curator Linda Komaroff, who specializes in Islamic art, introduced the evening. The program was coproduced by Jordan Elgrably and made possible in part by support from Kamran and Bijan Nahai, Shari Rezai and Angela Yadegar.

Gina Nahai , Bahar Soomekh and Nasrin Rahimieh backstage.

The evening centered on Gina Barkhordar Nahai's latest novel, Caspian Rain, which included an intriguing preamble that set the novel's context by Nasrin Rahimieh, who is Maseeh Chair and Director of the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California, Irvine. Rahimieh spoke of her own childhood experiences in Iran and at the Caspian Sea, and her relationships with diverse religious minorities, including Jews, Armenians and Baha'is. Following Nahai's presentation of her work, actress Bahar Soomekh ("Crash") performed dramatic readings from the book, and Rahimieh moderated a Q & A.

Although the focus was on Iranian Jewish culture, Gina Nahai noted afterward, "The audience was not a segregated one: There were nearly equal numbers of Iranians and Americans, of Jews, Muslims and Christians."

Gina and Bahar during the Q & A at LACMA.

Caspian Rain is Gina B. Nahai's fourth novel and is set in pre-revolutionary Iran. It tells us about a world we rarely glimpse in the images of contemporary Iran, evoking a time before the revolution when the Jewish population began to enjoy a measure of prosperity and gradually became integrated into the majority Muslim fabric of the Iranian society. In the decades before the 1979 revolution, under the reigning Pahlavi monarchs, Iranians of middle and upper classes accepted the programmatic changes first put in place by Reza Shah Pahlavi, the late Shah's father.

Enamored of what Ataturk had done in Turkey, Reza Shah followed in his footsteps, determined to propel Iran into a vision of modernity that required a secularization of the public arena and an overhauling of the image of the country-including the way men and women dressed. Among other changes beginning in the 1930s, the traditional head cover for women was banned, as were some Shi'ite public rituals. As the nation shed visible markers of being Muslim, the new direction convinced a generation of Iranians to equate religiosity with backwardness, and education and the sciences with progress and modernization.

Bahar Soomekh reads from Caspian Rain.

At that time Iran was keen to project an image of being on the path to what the late Shah called the Great Civilization, with one eye turned to the future and another to what was perceived as a glorious ancient empire that had vanished after the Islamic conquest of Iran. This past was invoked as an era of religious and ethnic tolerance—a time when despite the dominance of Zoroastrianism as the religion of the rulers, there was room for other religions to exist and flourish. Recapturing that spirit of diversity and tolerance was also part of the vision of the Iran of the pre-revolutionary era. It was a time when Iran celebrated its diversity of religions, and Zoroastrians, Muslims, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, and Bahai's were acknowledged as co-existing, if not always peacefully.

Nahai's characters embody the social and cultural values of the pre-revolutionary decades, as they struggle to conform to the dominant norms of the day. For instance, we see the more affluent members of Tehran's Jewish community look down their noses at the Jews of the ghetto. We see men and women of different religions and ethnic origins fight their way to the top of the economic and social ladder, only to come face to face with old fears and taboos. Women in particular appear to be caught between the old and the new, as they are expected to dress and act the part of the progressive, modern woman yet remain subservient to their husbands' and families' dictates.

Gina Bahar discusses her novel.

Nahai's comments about the creative process confirmed that her characters emerged from her memories of pre-revolutionary Iran. Following Bahar Soomekh's readings and Nahai's descriptions, moderator Nasrin Rahimieh asked Nahai and Soomekh questions to set the tone for the public Q & A period that followed. Rahimieh's questions revolved around the central theme of hope in opposition to that of loss and some of the marginal female characters of the novel whose resilience stood in sharp contrast to the seemingly defeated women of the middle and upper classes.

The questions posed by the audience took up the reality and representation of women's lives. While some questioners saw the novel's characters as deeply steeped in Jewish identity, others saw them as more universal. Audience members wanted to know from Nahai and Soomekh: Are you Iranians first? Jews first? Or are you Americans first and everything else second? Do you feel integrated enough in the larger community? Do you interact much with your American neighbors and with Iranian Muslims?

Nahai noted, "I don't know how I, or any other Iranian of my generation, can decide what we are. I think we're a lot of everything—Jewish, American, Iranian—and that we're used to this state of affairs, are rather comfortable with our mixed identities. But I do know that we don't interact nearly enough with either American Jews or Iranian Muslims, or with pretty much anyone from any other ethnic or religious background, and that this—our isolationism—has as much to do with how we view ourselves, as it has to do with how the world views us."

Bahar Soomekh declared that she felt very much American, first and foremost.

Indeed, both spoke about their being deeply attached to their American identity, but Nahai saw this as a function of having been a member of a minority. Interestingly, most diaspora Iranians residing in the United States grapple with the shifting natures of national affiliation in the wake of the revolution. It might well be that the Jewish Iranian community has a great deal more in common with Iranians of other faiths living in the same region, but has little occasion to confirm the similarities. As Nahai noted, Jewish Iranians do not often mingle with their Muslim counterparts; she went on to say that the demands of the immediate and extended families made it difficult to find time for broader interactions. [See a guide to Persian Jewish Los Angeles.]

This event should serve as a good beginning for further explorations of Iran's linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversities. Initiating dialogue across the apparent divides could offer a welcome and necessary antidote to the singularity of the dominant views and representations of Iran today.[See a map of Iran's linguistic communities.]

Novels by Gina B. Nahai: