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and daughter, and makes her way to
Turkey. Years later, her sister Miriam
the Moon finds her again. It is Miriam
who narrates part of the story, telling
the family secrets to Lili, who later
narrates, zigzagging across time, with
the real events of Iranian history in
the background, including the Islamic
revolution of 1978-79.
The author depicts her characters
with much color; her women are
strong and independent. Although
they are oppressed by the society as
women and as Jews, they show great
pluck and under-
standing of faith,
miracles, forgiveness
and redemption.
Roxanna and
Miriam and their
sisters are descended
from the Russian-
born wife of a
Chasidic rabbi who
"vanished into the
unforgiving sun of
the Day of
Atonement."
Another charac-
ter, an enigmatic
woman named
Alexandra the Cat,
is a ghetto resident who's a patron of
the arts and protector of 120 stray
cats. She saved her life, after the
Bolsheviks attacked her home and
killed her husband, by walking from
Moscow to Tehran, dressed in a satin
ball gown and high heels with 12
strands of pearls around her neck. Her
daughter Mercedez the Movie Star
helps save Lili in Los Angeles.
A 38-year-old born in Iran who
now lives in Los Angeles, Nahai says
that all of the stories she tells in this
novel are based in reality. Some of the
characters are modeled after members
of her extended family; others are
based on Iranians she has met and
interviewed over the years.
She sees herself as telling stories in
the tradition of the Persian storytellers
who would travel and bring news
from one community to the next,
spinning lyrical tales from memory in
a culture where most people were not
literate. None of the stories they told
was written down.
"I am very careful to tell the story
the way I heard it," Nahai says. "I
write because I think I owe a debt to
the people who have suffered through
this, who don't have a voice. I'm try-
ing to make their voices heard."
Although the characters are real,
she explains, the way she puts them
together in the plot is pure fiction.

She says that elements of storytelling
interpreted in the West as "magical"
are actually the way people talk in
Eastern cultures.
And, she notes, she couldn't write
these stories as nonfiction, out of con-
cern for hurting the individuals in a
cultUre in which "the most important
thing is to preserve your good name."
In Iranian Jewish circles, much is kept
private or, at least, within the family.
The author of a previous novel, Cry
of the Peacock, she also joins the ranks
of the many Jewish writers who've writ-
ten about exile, although
most books have been
about leaving Europe.
In Moonlight on the
Avenue of Faith, Roxanna
says, "This much I know
about living in exile, I
who have done it all my
life, even in my own
home: 'You can love the
old country all you want.
Sometimes, exile is the
best thing that can hap-
pen to a people.
In an interview, Nahai
speaks of historical mem-
ory, how somehow she
innately understood
things she did not witness. A mother
of three who left Iran at age 13 and
attended boarding school in
Switzerland for three years before
coming to America, she explains that
she "never felt at home living any-
where." She says she is comfortable
living in Los Angeles 1pecause it is "a
community of exiles."
Her own family stories sound as
exotic as her fiction. In Tehran, her
paternal grandfather had two wives,
one a traditional Jewish wife who kept
their home kosher and the other a
French Catholic; the former now lives
in L.A., the latter in Tehran.
Nahai speaks fluent Farsi as well as
French and Spanish. Knowing other
languages helps her in writing in
English, she says, as she is able to
incorporate their richness. She points
out that in Farsi, there is one word for
"to die of sorrow," a word used to
describe the ailing Roxanna when she
arrives in Los Angeles.
Would she go back to Iran? She
says that she would like to and wants
to bring her children, who've
expressed interest. Although she has
traveled widely, she's never seen a
landscape as magnificent.
When she left Iran, she didn't think it
was for good; she left clothes hanging in
the closet. Now, there are more Iranian
Jews in California than in Iran.

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