Chapter Six: Native Traditionalism and Hegemonic Otherness
Jalal Al-e Ahmad's "The American Husband"
Synopsis:
One night while getting drunk on whiskey an Iranian divorcee is telling the story of her marriage to an American. They meet at the Americans Club where she is studying English and he is an English teacher. He is tall, handsome and blond. They begin liking each other. At first, he invites her and her parents out to an art exhibition. Next, he asks her out to a thanksgiving party. Soon she begins tutoring him in Persian at her parents' home. Thus they spend eight months together, they go sailing, to the theater, the museum, bazaar, suburbs of Tehran, and at his behest to a famous graveyard called Mesgarabad. They are accompanied on this trip by another American who is a consultant to the Iranian Plan and Budget Organization. The conversation between the two Americans, in so far as it is understood by the Iranian girl, revolves around the profitability of changing Islamic burial rites. Finally, he invites her parents and her brother--Fafar, to a Christmas dinner at his home. That night at the dinner table he asks her to marry him and wants her to translate the proposal to her family. The father immediately consents to the marriage, but asks her to think about the fact that she is marrying an American. He advises her to ask the American for a week's time to think about the offer. The grandmother, however, opposes the marriage and refuses to show up at the wedding. The wedding is performed according to Iranian custom and the American follows the prescription of a Moslem groom by repeating verses from The Koran and agreeing to pay dowry.
After marriage the new couple move to the USA and begin life in Washington D.C. where each day upon arriving at home the American drinks whiskey habitually. Two years pass during which she never meets her husband's family or any of his relatives. One day, an American girl, the former fiancee of the American, shows up at the door, and tells the Iranian woman the story of her involvement with the American. He has fought in the Korean war, after which he returns to Washington, D.C. and begins the lines of work that he is now occupying. The American girl is greatly surprised that the Iranian woman is unaware of her husband's job, a reason for all of his family abandoning him. Afterwards, they go to the American husband's place of employment: the Arlington National Cemetery. After visiting the cemetery's office, they go directly to the graveyard where her husband is digging a grave. Still in great disbelief, and while crying, the Iranian woman hides behind the hedges to watch her husband at work. It is a busy time for the grave-diggers at the Arlington National Cemetery, ten to twelve groups of diggers are preparing graves for the dead soldiers brought home from Vietnam. After the American girl leaves, the Iranian woman calls her Iranian friends, seeking counsel while remembering that back in Iran her husband showed great curiosity about Islamic burial rites. She especially remembers one afternoon when he takes her (along with another American) to a graveyard near Tehran.
At last, the American husband arrives home from work and they begin drinking whiskey and talking about their separation. Next day, they go to the court and with the consent of her husband (who does not want the judge to know about his lie regarding his job) agrees to the terms of her divorce: she gains the custody of her daughter and is allocated alimony. Still drinking at the end of her story, the Iranian woman now suspicious of the American girl, expresses her fear that the American girl may have been motivated by personal reasons.
Analysis:
In "Showhar-e Amrika-ii" (The American Husband), Al-e Ahmad depicts, as he would have it, a "Westoxicated" (gharbzadeh) female Self as a protagonist.[1] She is a divorcee who as a middle class Iranian and as a woman, falls prey to the duplicities and bad influences of her ex-husband, an American posing as a teacher, but representing, stereotypically, the American government.[2] Constricted by the author's quotation marks--this Self narrates her tale in a monologue about her victimization mainly by her American husband, but also Iranian government and Iranian men. The quotation marks also designate the intermediariness of her narration: the story is part of a larger monologue.[3] The monologue, while exposing her untrustworthiness, her naivete, and her gullibility, becomes the author's mask for leveling criticism not only at this type of the Self and the type of the Other that the American represents, but also other Selves.[4] Used partially as a negative example and partially as an author's mouthpiece, the Iranian woman ultimately becomes the victim of Al-e Ahmad's ideological fiction.[5] Protected by the story's blank margins as well as the text before and after the quotation marks, Al-e Ahmad veils his criticism of different types of Selves and Others. Only the divorcee's traditional, xenophobic, and religious grandmother remains free of criticism. It is this conservative and uncompromising type of Self that at the end proves to be correct in her total distrust of the Other. Al-e Ahmad tends to espouse and embrace her conservative attitudes toward the marriage of Iranians with Americans which could also be viewed as the marriage of American policies with Iranian socio-political and cultural life. But the American by hiding his actual job of grave-digging--the main reason for the divorce--causes more disgust in the Iranian woman than his lie about it. Grave-digging, symbolizing the fatal and catastrophic American policies in Iran and world-over, emerges as the single most important issue in the story.
Once again as in most of the previous stories, the Iranian author's depiction of the Western "Other" is intertwined with severe criticism of an Iranian character representing a type in Iranian social and cultural history. In "The American Husband", the Other is portrayed as a liar and an alcoholic who deceives an Iranian girl and her family about his job as a grave-digger, but the Iranian woman too is severely exposed for her gullibility, her falling for the American's lies and deceits. From the beginning she is attracted to the American, because of the appearances: he is polite and gainfully employed as a teacher, and promises a comfortable life to her back in the USA. She marries him and gradually adopts his drinking habit which she continues even after her divorce.
In this story Al-e Ahmad aims at formulating cultural, political, and social commentary, instead of creating characters that have specific names and situations. All of his characters are stereotypical creations that formulate socio-political and cultural concerns. Al-e Ahmad's female Iranian represents the type who is unfamiliar with her own self, her own culture, city, and country, a culturally alienated Self. It takes the American and his desires and plans to bring awareness to her, and only after she has been victimized. The American introduces her to places in her own town that she would have otherwise never seen. She is not only alienated of her own culture, but also the culture of the Other; her alienation makes her vulnerable to the American's lie. It also takes an American woman to finally make her aware of her husband's deceit, but even then she is not sure of herself and her own awareness; her victimization is compounded by the fact that like her husband she too is now an alcoholic. Nevertheless, as a negative example, she, in turn, through her own experience as a duped woman who is somewhat conscious of her own state of being, disseminates awareness toward the same issues in the Iranian reader. But on the way to do so, she and, through her, Al-e Ahmad criticizes both Iranian[6] and American cultural, and socio-political anomalies. Nevertheless, the most crucial criticism is the one leveled at the Americans for their symbolic job of grave-digging and policies that bring death to Iranians and Americans.
Here, too, like Simin Daneshvar's "The Iranians' New Year", one set of cultural signs are strung up, in contrast to another: drinking alcoholic beverages, gas stoves and washing machines, the celebration of thanksgiving and Christmas, Hollywood stars, the American way of selling and purchasing burial ground, and the Arlington National cemetery stand in contrast to the Iranian wedding ceremony and Islamic burial rites.
"The American Husband" features five groups of characters. Two Americans and three Iranians. The first American group are those who lived in Iran and have had contact with Iranian people and culture such as the "American husband" and his friends. The second group comprise of those without any contact with Iran and Iranians such as the husband's former girlfriend. Iranians make up three general groups, those who have had contact with Americans such as the Iranian woman and all the other Iranian friends whom she consults after she discovers the American's lie, her relatives in Iran whose contact with Americans is possibly limited to their acquaintance with the American husband, and the grandmother who refuses to meet or encounter the American. The difference between these two latter groups is formed by their position regarding the marriage of Iranian girl to the American. The young female Iranian relatives like to marry the American themselves, "all the girls desired him" (hama-ye dokhtarha arezush ra mikardand). They are all the same type as the Iranian girl. But whereas the father of the girl expresses an ambivalent position, the Iranian grandmother never agrees with the marriage. In the beginning the father consents to the marriage (papa keh az haman shab-e awal razi bud), but he still warns her about marrying an American and urges the Iranian girl to give the matter serious thought (shukhi keh nist). The Iranian grandmother, however, from the beginning, opposes the marriage on grounds that "how do we know who he is" (cheh mishenasim kiyeh). The grandmother accepts marriages between her family and Iranians from other parts of Iran, but she believes that one should be able to investigate the family of the suitor and enquire from his neighbors as to what work he does (az dar wa hamsayeh tah tuy-e karash ra dar beyari) before marrying him. Of course in the case of the American, this is not possible at all and the grandmother's cautionary wisdom and conscientious opposition proves to be correct. The grandmother not only opposes the marriage, but also refuses to participate in the ceremonies.
The grounds on which the grandmother's opposition to the marriage is explained by the Iranian girl are worthy of further analysis. She is willing to accept the "otherness" of an espouse within the boundaries of Iran. This is directly related to the fact that national boundaries of Iran provide her with accessibility to knowledge and information regarding the family and occupation of the groom. Her opposition, however, at first surfaces because of the fact that the American (accompanied by another American) takes the Iranian girl to visit a cemetery in Tehran. "This matter gives [the]...grandmother the excuse for complaining" (hamin qaziyah ra bahaneh kardeh bud baray-e qor zadan). She questions the meaning of this kind of behavior and through her questioning another aspect of her opposition to the marriage is exposed. She opposes the American's behavior not only because he has taken his fiancee to a graveyard, but also because he is an "irreligious man" (binamaz), one who does not practice Islam. By taking the Iranian girl to the cemetery, the American commits two forbidden acts: first, taking of a bride to graveyard is culturally ominous; second, a non-Islamic person is not allowed to the graveyards of the Moslems as well as their holy shrines. The grandmother's opposition also highlights the peculiarity of the Americans' interest in Iranian/Islamic burial rites, the significance of which expands as the story unfolds.
This means that the grandmother's notion of otherness relates to religion as well as nationality.
Back then I couldn't at all understand what they meant by all these questions. But I remember that my grandmother made this whole incident into a reason or excuse for her complaining. `What does it mean, the irreligious man has asked for the hand of a girl in marriage and then he takes her to Mesgarabad?'...Just think of it I didn't know any of these matters back then...That night at dinner I told my grandmother about all this and she got frustrated and began to gripe. Then at the time of the wedding she left for Mashhad...But I just couldn't understand it.(3, 12)
In retrospect, the Iranian girl by recalling the grandmother's bases for opposing her marriage to the American, also reveals other incidents which in the past she had been incapable of understanding and now she uncovers their meaning for herself and the reader.
But it is the American girl and the trip to the Arlington National cemetery that open her eyes to the hidden truth in her grandmother's stance as well as the truth about her husband's actual (or other) job in Iran.
This trip is a fact-finding mission for the Americans, whereas the trip to Arlington is a truth-revealing journey for the Iranian. During and after the latter journey, she not only discovers facts regarding her own life, but she also comes to understand and view the outside world (in this case the immediate surrounding of Arlington Cemetery) and its meaning through the help of an American girl who has lost three fiancees in wars, two of whom are buried at Arlington. Hence, Arlington National Cemetery becomes a pivotal point in the lives of both the Iranian and the American girl. For the Iranian woman it presents the locus for the revelation of truth, ending her marriage; for the American girl, it is the locus of loss and failure of her dreams regarding marriage. It is also a certain locus of time and place that one type of Self shares with one type of Other. Just as the American girl reveals to the Iranian woman (and readers alike), "all the attempts of us Americans end to Arlington", Arlington becomes the turning point for both the Iranian and the American girl. The trip to Arlington refers the Iranian woman to her trip to Megarabad. The American who accompanies them to Megarabad is recognized by her as someone who is a consultant at the Programming Organization. Still a virgin and an innocent girl, she is used as a guide and interpreter on the trip to the Iranian graveyard. After the Americans learn that Iranians bury their dead wrapped in cloth coffin and without a casket, they decide to "speak about this matter with the Organization." The Iranian girl is surprised at herself that initially she had been unable to understand the meaning of such curiosity and decision on the part of the Americans. Now on recollection it becomes clear to her why the Americans were interested in such things, but some of this blatant revelation on her part does not become fully clear, though offering in turn areas of conjuncture and speculation that are perhaps worthy of consideration.