I purposely looked for novels about the middle-east that are written by their inhabitants, not foreigners, and The Cypress Tree is one of those that I found. The said search criteria were due to that 1) I want to know about the middle-east, and 2) I want to know the truth. Almost all the time when westerners write about the east, regardless Asia or the middle-east, there is always a hint of Orientalism, still. It was such a strong influence since the 17th century that the effect still lingers. I believe it is very likely that the writers from the west know too well that they could be under such influence and tried their best to get rid of it. However, the force was too powerful and lasted too long to really come clean of it.
Mohammadi’s description of her experience of her homeland, Iran, surprises me. Most of the time, I read the news, which is western-biased, that the Islamic Republic of Iran is an evil regime while the Shahs before the republic led Iran into a free and Westernized country before the revolution in 1978. Mohammadi tells a different story. For one thing, Iranian has always been conservative that when the puppet regime of the West, Reza Khan and his successor and son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, implements “The White Revolution” to aggressively westernized the social and economic aspect of Iran, including banning hijab, it initially horrified women. Even though there were good policies done to the society, including votes for women and compulsory schooling for women, the shahs and its government were also severely corrupted and heavily manipulated by the Western power for the wealth of the oil exploration and exploitation. Opposition voices were systematically silenced by SAVAK, an Iranian intelligence organization with the help of U.S. and Israeli intelligence officers. The situation cultivated national shame as well as discontent among Iranians, including Ayatollah Khomeini, who later had to flee to France for his life. We never read this part of Iranian history. We only learned that the new republic is an evil regime. By reading Mohammadi’s The Cypress Tree, I am having a better and more balanced view of how Iran came to be Iran today. It is necessary to understand a country from the people there, not from outsiders.