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The Age of Orphans: A Novel de Laleh Khadivi
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The Age of Orphans: A Novel (edició 2010)

de Laleh Khadivi

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Told with an evocative richness of language that recalls Michael Ondaatje or Anita Desai, the story of Reza Khourdi is that of the 20th century everyman, cast out from the clan in the name of nation, progress and modernity who cannot help but leave behind a shadow that yearns for the impossible dreams of love, land and home. Before following his father into battle, he had been like any other Kurdish boy: in love with his Maman, fascinated by birds and the rugged Zagros mountains, dutiful to his stern and powerful Baba. But after he becomes orphaned in a massacre by the armies of Iran's new Shah, Reza Pahlavi I.; he is taken in by the very army that has killed his parents, re-named Reza Khourdi, and indoctrinated into the modern, seductive ways of the newly minted nation, careful to hide his Kurdish origins with every step. The Age of Orphans follows Reza on his meteoric rise in ranks, his marriage to a proud Tehrani woman and his eventual deployment, as Capitan, back to the Zagros Mountains and the ever-defiant Kurds. Here Reza is responsible for policing, and sometimes killing, his own people, and it is here that his carefully crafted persona begins to fissure and crack. The stunning debut of a gifted new voice in literary fiction, The Age of Orphans tells the story of a Kurdish boy forced to betray his people in service of the new Iranian nation, and its tragic consequences as he grows into manhood as a powerful military leader. Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan Iran in 1977. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution her family fled, first to Belgium and Puerto Rico, finally settling in Canada and the United States. She graduated from Reed College in 1998 and moved to New York where she began to direct documentary films for A&E, HBO and Showtime. The Age of Orphans is the first novel in a projected trilogy that will trace three generations of a Kurdish family as they make their way to the United States and undergo the profound transformations of the immigrant experience. Based loosely on the life of her own family, Laleh Khadivi conducted extensive interviews with her extended family to get at her haunting story of displacement, exile and loss.

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Membre:cougar_c
Títol:The Age of Orphans: A Novel
Autors:Laleh Khadivi
Informació:Bloomsbury USA (2010), Paperback, 304 pages
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The Age of Orphans de Laleh Khadivi

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La lettura spesso ci sorprende nel farci sobbalzare tra corsi e ricorsi della storia, nel mostrarci come il destino spesso muta improvvisamente di rotta e si cimenta in repentine inversioni di marcia. Se con i romanzi di Antonia Arslan (“La masseria delle allodole”, “La strada di Smirne”) il lettore ha potuto immergersi nell’orrore disumano dello sterminio degli Armeni nel 1915 ad opera dei turchi e delle popolazioni curde dell’Anatolia, è con “L’età degli orfani” (Rizzoli, 2009) di Laleh Khadivi che il timone inverte la rotta e, con un improvviso giro di boa, s’inabissa in uno scenario di repressione etnica e culturale dove, questa volta, sono i Curdi a farne le spese ad opera del “moderno” e nascente Iran del primo Scià di Persia Reza Shah Pahlavi.

I fatti di cui ci narra Laleh Khadivi iniziano nella prima metà degli anni Venti del Novecento e hanno sullo sfondo il sogno d’indipendenza curdo ed il miraggio di una nazione, il Kurdistan, capace di proteggere tra le alte montagne a cavallo tra Iran e Turchia storia, lingua, cultura e tradizioni di un popolo fiero. Una nazione promessa, ma subito dopo tradita (era il 1923) e divisa arbitrariamente tra quattro entità: Iraq, Iran, Turchia e Siria. Nell’Iran nascente e autoritario non c’era spazio per le minoranze ed ebbe quindi inizio la repressione, non dissimile da quella, protrattasi sino ai giorni nostri, in Turchia.

In un’intervista Laleh Khadivi ha affermato che “puoi entrare dentro un personaggio e raccontare la tua storia a una persona alla volta se usi il linguaggio della poesia, piuttosto che i fatti. È un modo seducente per raggiungere le persone”. Se qualcuno quindi pensa ad un saggio sull’eterna ed irrisolta “questione curda” si sbaglia.

Questo libro non è un resoconto dei fatti, è un romanzo puro. Lo è nelle liriche, fortemente poetiche, talvolta addirittura oniriche nel loro linguaggio trascendente, magico e ridondante, nella cui eco c’è però il rischio di smarrirsi, perdendo il ritmo della narrazione e sprofondando in una letargia che non incoraggia a proseguire. Lo è nell’approccio narrativo, nel quale l’autrice inventa i personaggi e li inserisce nel contesto delle sue origini trovando in loro il proprio sangue. Paradossalmente, come ha spesso dichiarato, accantonando ciò che ha ascoltato nella narrazione dei parenti che le serviva solo per imparare da dove veniva, visto che è arrivata negli Stati Uniti da bambina ed è cresciuta come un’americana della West Coast. Lo è quando, tra le righe, si scorgono gli scrittori americani che l’hanno influenzata, William Faulkner in primis.

"Proprio come io sono tuo padre, un giorno diventerai padre e la terra sarà che ci hanno generato, le linee di sangue curdo non si incrociano ma confluiscono insieme dal loro tempo al nostro”. (“L’età degli orfani”)

La storia è apparentemente retta sulla linea del tempo, se non fosse che, di tanto in tanto, la voce narrante cambia d’aspetto e di personalità. In fondo si nota lo sforzo creativo di lasciare correre la mente e la penna per inventare personalità incisive, perché è chiaro che nessuno dei parenti di Laleh abitava davvero il mondo immaginario che lei ha costruito nell’intreccio delle parole. Con questa modalità Khadivi ci racconta la storia, ma sarebbe meglio dire la vita, di un bambino curdo strappato al seno caldo e alle canzoni della mamma e alla magia di un cielo puro in cui egli sogna di volare, librandosi sopra i monti Zagros, la schiena irsuta e robusta della sua terra tormentata. Troppo giovane per la lotta, egli dovrà però affrontare la battaglia, dovrà vedere il padre umiliato e ucciso dai soldati dello Scià. Catturato dalle truppe iraniane che hanno invaso la sua terra, egli crescerà come “uno di loro”. Dovrà affrontare una nuova vita da orfano, una rinascita ed nuovo nome, una nuova lingua ed una nuova patria, diventare uno spietato cacciatore di ciò che era, ma in fondo anche di ciò che è diventato. Perché Reza ha la guerra dentro: per metà figlio dell'Iran e per metà curdo fatto di roccia, stelle e cielo, è il nemico di se stesso, destinato a immaginare per sempre il sogno impossibile di una casa.

“L’età degli orfani”, acquistato in anteprima mondiale da Rizzoli alla Fiera di Francoforte, è il primo romanzo di Laleh Khadivi e, nonostante le critiche positive del mondo letterario anglosassone, francamente non mi ha convinto fino in fondo, tanto da essere l’unico tradotto in italiano della trilogia che nel tempo l’autrice ha costruito ispirandosi ai personaggi del libro d’esordio, tre generazioni di guerra, rivoluzione ed esilio. Dopo questo romanzo sono infatti stati pubblicati da Bloomsbury: “The Walking” (2012) e “A good country” (2017).

L’autrice è nata da una famiglia curda in Iran nel 1977. e subito dopo la rivoluzione iraniana, nel 1979, emigrò negli Stati Uniti stabilendosi nella Baia di San Francisco. A ragion veduta dei suoi genitori direi, visto che l’ayatollah Khomeini, dopo il suo ritorno in Iran nel 1979 e la creazione della Repubblica Islamica, presto si rivelò più repressivo e più feroce nei confronti delle minoranze del regno dello Scià. Khadivi ha lavorato a lungo come regista di documentari. Ha insegnato scrittura creativa in diverse università americane e dal 2002 ha iniziato a condurre ricerche sui curdi, in particolare sul loro destino nella regione sud-occidentale dell'Iran sotto il primo Scià.

A “L’età degli orfani”, la cui conclusione si perde nel sogno di un ritorno al cielo e alla terra, al vento ed al fuoco, al latte materno che regala la vita, resta il merito di parlarci di un mondo imperfetto da punti di vista non scontati, dando dignità a popoli vittime della storia e parole a persone che non hanno voce. Utilizzando la poetica del linguaggio per raccontare argomenti come la guerra, le persecuzioni etniche, la relazione tra uomini e donne, temi tanto attuali quanto ancestrali. ( )
  Sagitta61 | Oct 6, 2023 |
The Age of Orphans by Leleh Khadivi is the story of a young Kurdish boy who is violently conscripted into the Iranian army of the Shah after his father and the other males from his village are slain in battle. He is badly treated by the Iranians who use him as a plaything. He longs for his mother with whom he shared a close bond, but he realizes that he must learn to accept this new life that has been thrust upon him.

In order to climb the military ladder he suppresses the Kurd within himself and grows to become a brutal and violent hater of Kurds, working to silence the voice of Kurdish independence. We follow this young man as he rises in rank and marries an Iranian woman. He is eventually deployed back to his homeland in the Zagros Mountains and there we start to see him imploding as he both polices and sometimes kills his own people.

The Age of Orphans is the debut novel of this author and although beautifully and almost poetically written, it was a difficult story to read. The author is unflinching in her vision of an innocent boy repressing his feelings and becoming more brutal and violent as his inner fury mounts. As well as the stark loneliness and cruelty experienced and expressed by this young man, this is also a story that highlights a part of Iran’s violent history. ( )
  DeltaQueen50 | Sep 3, 2021 |
Ressenya escrita per a Crítics Matiners de LibraryThing .
It took me a long time to get into [The Age of Orphans], the debut novel of Iranian-born Laleh Khadivi. Her writing at first seemed overdone, but as the book progresses, the rhythm flowed more naturally, and I enjoyed it more.

A nameless boy spends his early years exploring his village from the safety of his mother’s lap. Around the age of eight or so (time is fluid), he goes with his father, uncles, and cousins to a distant cave where he learns the history of the Kurdish people and goes through a rite of passage to become a man. As such, when the village men are called to fight the shah’s soldiers, he rides with them. They are given guns taken from fallen soldiers, but the Kurds are slaughtered in the ensuing battle, in part, because they don’t know how to use them. The boy is orphaned on the field and is conscripted into the shah’s army.

The next few years are grim, but eventually he is sent to a training camp and becomes the model Iranian soldier. He is even selected to go to Tehran and take a modern, educated woman as his wife. Because of his brutal treatment of fellow Kurds on his first posting, he is sent to the base of the Zagros Mountains to pacify and modernize a Kurdish border area. The rest of the book follows his career and relationship with his wife and children.

Throughout his life, the boy struggles with his identity as a Kurd in the newly created Iranian state. In a pivotal moment after his conscription, he is given a name (Reza Khourdi) and age (11) by a government official. Reza to signify he belongs to the shah, Reza Pahlavi I, and Khourdi, to represent the area where he was taken. The attempt to completely erase his ethnic identity is embraced by the boy at first. He covets the shiny boots and symbolically powerful gun. But the struggle to suppress a part of himself is as difficult as it is to suppress the Kurdish people. ( )
  labfs39 | Feb 19, 2021 |
I was eager to read this after seeing reviews of Khadivi's most recent book. But the 3rd person present POV is really off-putting. Add to that a combination of harsh scenes written in extremely florid prose, and the book is almost unreadable for me. ( )
  Sunita_p | Jul 28, 2017 |
Ressenya escrita per a Crítics Matiners de LibraryThing .
The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi is an exceptional work of literature. The reader is taken back to 1920s, and is introduced to the Kurdish culture where a routine coming of age ritual changes the lives of many, when the group is intercepted by the Shah of Iran's army. The book will take the readers through a deep and rather emotional look at the life of a Kurdish boy, who is renamed Reza after he is conscripted into the Shah's army. Khadivi takes the reader through a beautifully written, yet heartbreaking story. The Age of Orphans is an exceptionally deep, complex, and at times rather graphic book, which will keep the reader intrigued until the end. ( )
  knittingmomof3 | May 23, 2012 |
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These people, the Kurds, lived in the mountains, were very war-like and not subject to the Persian king.

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It is more difficult to contend with oneself than with the world.

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Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Told with an evocative richness of language that recalls Michael Ondaatje or Anita Desai, the story of Reza Khourdi is that of the 20th century everyman, cast out from the clan in the name of nation, progress and modernity who cannot help but leave behind a shadow that yearns for the impossible dreams of love, land and home. Before following his father into battle, he had been like any other Kurdish boy: in love with his Maman, fascinated by birds and the rugged Zagros mountains, dutiful to his stern and powerful Baba. But after he becomes orphaned in a massacre by the armies of Iran's new Shah, Reza Pahlavi I.; he is taken in by the very army that has killed his parents, re-named Reza Khourdi, and indoctrinated into the modern, seductive ways of the newly minted nation, careful to hide his Kurdish origins with every step. The Age of Orphans follows Reza on his meteoric rise in ranks, his marriage to a proud Tehrani woman and his eventual deployment, as Capitan, back to the Zagros Mountains and the ever-defiant Kurds. Here Reza is responsible for policing, and sometimes killing, his own people, and it is here that his carefully crafted persona begins to fissure and crack. The stunning debut of a gifted new voice in literary fiction, The Age of Orphans tells the story of a Kurdish boy forced to betray his people in service of the new Iranian nation, and its tragic consequences as he grows into manhood as a powerful military leader. Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan Iran in 1977. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution her family fled, first to Belgium and Puerto Rico, finally settling in Canada and the United States. She graduated from Reed College in 1998 and moved to New York where she began to direct documentary films for A&E, HBO and Showtime. The Age of Orphans is the first novel in a projected trilogy that will trace three generations of a Kurdish family as they make their way to the United States and undergo the profound transformations of the immigrant experience. Based loosely on the life of her own family, Laleh Khadivi conducted extensive interviews with her extended family to get at her haunting story of displacement, exile and loss.

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