Meet Zahra, the Iranian Shel Silverstein

Zahra Fakhraee is a 25-year-old writer based in Bushehr, and has developed a significant literary following through social media. Sometimes described as the Iranian female incarnation of Shel Silverstein, Fakhraee writes short stories based on everything from childhood experiences to grown-up longings, and she publishes them on her Facebook page, along with illustrations and pictures of the handmade puppets she also makes. Fakhraee’s stories, satirical and often shaded with sadness, seem to resonate with other young Iranians; her page has gathered more than 14,000 ‘likes’ and is briskly expanding its audience.

Fakhraee’s success online reflects how a young generation of Iranian writers has turned to social media as a publishing platform. Bespectacled, a collection of her stories and illustrations, was recently published in Iran. Below she talks about herself and her work.

I want to be a painter

I have been drawing my own face since I can remember. When I was a child the margins of my books were full of drawings of myself. I tried to draw myself in a way that I looked pretty and thin and cute.

When I was in second grade, my sister put a notebook full of questions in front of me. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked. I wrote without hesitation that I wanted to be a world-traveler. “No,” said my sister, when she saw my answer. “A job that makes money.” And I said “O.K., then I would become a painter.” I was thinking that if I did not have money to travel the world, I could draw myself travelling the world.

I grew up in the little town of Bandar Deyr in Bushehr province, where I still live today. In school there were a few children from big cities, from Tehran and Bushehr and other places. I was fascinated by them not just because they were good-looking and had money and spoke without accents, but also because they had accordions. I always wished that one day I could play the accordion for our school songs. One day one of the girls who also happened to be named Zahra —I have no idea where she is now—and who had an accordion invited me to her home. Her invitation made me very happy because I had never imagined that she would invite me, and I had a lovely time there. Her mother served us sweet drinks and treated us like grown-ups, like guests of consequence, like the mayor had come to our house and my mother was entertaining him.

That day she taught me the “Happy Birthday” song. When I got home I painted black and white accordion keys on a piece of cardboard, and from then on kept practicing “Happy Birthday” on my cardboard keyboard. I started music classes that summer and continued into my second year of middle school. When classes started my father bought me an accordion from Dubai. It was small but it allowed me to play at home the notes that the teacher had told us to practice. When I learned a few songs and played accordion at school for those songs. I felt that I had fulfilled my wish. I decided that instead of playing revolutionary music at morning line-ups. I better learn another art.

The Most Famous Child at Home

At first we were many, but there are fewer of us now. Five sisters and three brothers. Two sisters and one brother are married and another brother is usually not at home because of his job. The third brother, Ali, lives in Karaj. For a while I was in Karaj living with him. While I was there only my parents and two of my sisters had remained at home. Now I have returned and I am busy cleaning up one of the storerooms next to the yard. I have always wanted to have a place that is mine and only mine. Not that I have any problems with my sisters, none at all! But everybody has the right to have a little room to hide in.

My brother Ali was born in 1980 and I was born in 1989. I don’t like arithmetic so I don’t have the patience to calculate our age difference but know this: Ali has been one of the most influential people in my life. Before me, Ali was the art student in our home. He studied sculpture, and used to take me along to his drawling lessons at the art school. Perhaps he knew I liked painting, or perhaps he took me along so I would learn a few tidbits and paint better than others in school. Or maybe because he himself had started art rather late and he did not want me to ever feel I was expoed to art to late, should I develop an interest.

Ali had studied mathematics but suddenly decided to pursue arts. To make it short, without Ali I would never have been toward art at all. Now Ali makes his statues and I do my illustrations. Of course another brother of mine has studied journalism and is a photographer. And a sister has published two books on haiku and Japanese poetry. But so what? I am more famous than all of them. Why? Because one day in the Gohardasht street of Karaj a stranger approached me and told me that she knew me. My sister and brothers don’t have such memories. To be honest I have this illusion of being famous, otherwise my journalist brother is the most famous among us in our town. Many people here know my sister because besides translation she teaches and has many students. Altogether nobody knows me in our town, but online more people know me than know them.

The night I ran out of ideas.

In my first year at high school I came to know another student who also would have liked to attend an arts school, like me. Our town has no arts schools, so we had to go to Bushehr. My parents did not want to let me go, but since I am not a good daughter and never listen to anybody I departed for Bushehr with my friend and her father. I wanted to study graphics, and at that time you had to pass a hands-on test to study graphics. When I told my mother that I have received the highest score in the test she was surprised and relented a little bit about my going to Bushehr to study.

Graphics students have a course called illustration, where you are given a story or a poem to illustrate. But at the arts school I never work on any story that was mine, from my life or related to my life. After graduating from the arts school I draw illustrations for a book by [the poet] Ali Karami titled Dafu Lina which fortunately has not been printed because I am not at all happy about the illustrations.

After Karami’s book I decided to create my own world. I made a few drawings and posted them on Facebook. People liked what I had posted, so I continued. I also did illustrations for The Adventures of Madame by Soheyla Fakour.

I always loved to write. Once when I was in middle school our writing teacher told us to write about the worst thing that had happened in our lives. I wrote about the death of my cousin. When I read my composition both I myself and others in the class, including the teacher, cried. I don’t know whether they were crying because they pitied me for crying or they were crying because my writing had moved them. Anyhow the teacher kept my composition for herself and since then I have always wanted to write more.

Altogether I am an impressionable person. A lot of my writing originates from my childhood. A lot of times I write above my daily life, my thoughts, my yearnings and my boredoms and illustrate them. For example one night when I did not have any ideas for new illustrations, I drew myself bereft of ideas, drew the “ideas” inside a box and wrote that “my ideas have been stolen.”

You might think I have shown a lot of boldness to write about my life but it really has nothing to do with boldness. I really don’t have a subject to write about, so the only thing I can do is to be myself as much as I can and write about myself. Sometimes I wish I could use my power of imagination and bring into my illustration a person who does not exist.

An Iranian Shel Silverstein

Many people ask me if I have been inspired by Shel Silverstein or ask if I realise that I am Iran’s Shel Silverstein. At the beginning I loved it because I love Uncle Shelbie, but I think that my only similarity with him is that my illustrations are black and white. Otherwise Shel Silverstein was very creative and used his creativity. If you have seen the book Bespectacled you would see that I have not drawn anybody except myself, my boyfriend (who suddenly disappeared from my life and my new illustrations), my family and a few people I know closely. Silverstein’s books are very different from my work. He can create a story for a circle or for a square but I cannot. His books are full of characters, and he was in no way a limited person like me.

When they asked me if I was inspired by him, I went out and bought all his books and read them. I had only read The Missing Piece before, when I was a child. Whenever I fall in love I am reminded of that book, because of life being littered with so many broken relationships. Because I cannot find my missing piece and because I cannot find myself although from dawn to dusk I am either thinking about myself or writing about myself.

Quitting and Quitting

As a child I loved to go to school. In the mornings when I got to school the doors were still closed. I was not a particularly smart or hardworking student but I was fond of our school janitor and it was for his sake that I arrived before anybody else. But when I started college I quit all the time. When I went to Bushehr for arts school, I nearly quit many times, mainly because of financial difficulties and other various problems that I had largely created for myself. And each time Ali and my mom talked me out of it.

At the arts school I only liked workshop classes, as I loved drawing and illustration. I was very good at hands-on courses and very weak at those which required reading. I don’t know what happened that I decided to participate in the university entrance exam. First I was accepted at Kerman University in the field of traditional arts, but since we had to study technical drawing and geometry of design I quit. Since it was a state-run university I was excluded from entrance exams for a year.

I wanted to study writing but since the state university did not offer this course of study I chose drama which included fiction and play writing. I was accepted by Damghan University to study drama but after a few months I quit again. I mean I did not officially quit; I just turned around and went away. I am afraid to quit because I would once again be barred from the entrance exames for a year and after a year I might juts feel motivated again to participate in the exam. Now the words “quit” and “entrance exam” make me feel sick.

In any case the first semester of dramatic literature was nothing like I had imagined. I had thought that we would sit there and write stories. But most of the time we had to read, not the books which I liked, but classical literature. In general I don’t like the places where I don’t have a good time and are not like what I had imagined and I leave. I even left Karaj and returned home, even though I love my brother, simply because I was not having a good time there.

Now I am making puppets and my models are people around me. A few days ago I made a puppet modeled on my mother but it did not make her happy at all. “This is me?” she kept repeating. “This looks like a little monster. The nose is too large! Do I look this crooked? You left college to play with dolls? Go look for a better job. A job with a steady income. Look, your friend has become a teacher. Is it such a bad thing that she has a salary every month?”

I thinks my mother wants to talk about my quitting forever. But it is OK if my mother does not approve of how I live. The important thing is that I know that I have found my own way and I am the one who should enjoy it—which I am.