HOME AWAY FROM HOME
Exiled Iranian film star Golshifteh Farahani sits on the floor in Jaisalmer with the production staff for The Song of Scorpions—a Hindi film from director Anup Singh. Grabbing a quick lunch straight from the serving bowls, the 32-year-old Iranian-French actor suggests an interview with her co-stars, Irrfan Khan and Waheeda Rehman, while she finishes eating. Then, hearing we want to talk to her, and only her, she laughs, stands up, and breaks into a brief, comical dance.
Farahani’s journey to India has been a strange one. Born in Tehran, she won acclaim in dozens of films, ranging from art house movies like two-time Oscar winner Asghar
Farahani’s About Elly (2009) to the Ridley Scott CIA thriller Body of Lies (2008). But since posing topless, with her hands covering her breasts, for the French magazine Madam Figaro in 2012, she has not been welcome in Iran—an exile that she described in an interview with The Guardian as “like death”, because you cannot understand it until it happens to you.
During the two-hour drive to the sand dunes where the film is being shot, we convince her to try. “How do I give a one-sentence answer when blinding textures and colours from the streets of Tehran hit me with almost volcanic force?” she asks. “Being away from Iran is the greatest trauma of my life. But the yearning for that place keeps me going.”
Fresh off the success of Qissa, which also starred Irrfan Khan, Singh came to Farahani with the script for The Song of Scorpions four years ago. India excited her as an alternative home. “When Anup approached me with this script four years ago, I knew instantly I had to be part of it. There are not many directors in the world you can dedicate your soul to. He is one of the rare ones. The same goes for Irrfan. Despite his talent, he is one of the most humble people I have ever known,” she says. “In many ways I have not had a sense of family ever since I was 17. The time spent with this unit gave me back that feeling.”
Farahani plays a folk healer in the film, and learned Hindi for the part. Advance reviews from the Locarno Film Festival suggested that the project was not entirely successful. But it may receive a warmer reception when it releases in Indian theatres this year.
A trained musician, Farahani keeps humming Hindi songs from The Song of Scorpions as the car roars down the highway. “You know, deep inside, I believe in destiny,” she says. “Maybe my exile too comes in that category, I am not sure. I am lucky, too, in a way. Not many people my age get to encounter life in its different shades and unravel its various layers.”
Describing her resentment of Iran’s clamping down on free speech, Farahani recalls how she shaved her head at 16 and would wear tight clothes to conceal her breasts so that she was not looked at as an “object of desire” while she walked the streets in her country—a sentiment many Indian women will find familiar.
“I wanted to be free. Right now, my generation is forced to live the life we did not choose. We did not have anything to do with the Revolution, but have been forced to bear its ramifications,” she says. “However, I am optimistic that our generation would be the page-turners. We may get shattered, but we will change the course.”
Farahani recalls her earlier visits to India—the first time she came to Goa in 2003, how much she loves Gokarna and why she is apprehensive of visiting Benares. “I fear that something big will happen when I go there. That I will not be the same person again. Maybe I should go there and die.”
“Coming to this life is such a battle. Some wounds are deep, some carved in stone, never destined to be healed. But I would like to see the valleys one has to pass to be able to live, to be able to see the reflection clearly. But the pin code of that place is hazy.”
“Some wounds are deep, some carved in stone,” says Farahani about her life