Veil of Roses - Laura Fitzgerald
An Iranian Woman Finds Freedom, a Better Life In America
Tamila Soroush is an Iranian woman sent to the United States by her parents to find husband, and finds freedom.
Tamila Soroush is an Iranian woman who is sent to the United States by her parents as her 27th birthday gift. She promises her mother that she will “wake up her luck” by going to America and finding a better life for herself than she would have had if she stayed in Iran. She arrives in America with six months to meet and marry an American man who will sponsor her application for residency.
Tami stays with her sister Maryam and her husband Ardishir in their Tucson, AZ, home. She drinks in the American culture and freedom like water, enjoying life without the required coverings that Iranian women must wear in public. She shops for lingerie with her sister and walks unescorted to her English as a second language class at the local university. She takes photographs of people on the streets who are enjoying their freedoms. Soon, her sister and brother in law set her up with Haroun, an engineer. Haroun looks good on paper, but when they meet in person it becomes painfully obvious that he is not a good match; he is obsessive-compulsive clean freak who treats Tami like a horse he is about to purchase and not a potential bride.
Meanwhile, Tami makes friends with an American man, Ike, who works at the Starbucks on her way to class. As her days of freedom grow shorter, their relationship strengthens as their feelings for each other intensify. Tami learns quickly that with American freedom comes with difficult choices, as well as both heartache and hope.
The novel is told from Tami’s point of view. It is at times both charming and heartbreaking as she tells of the restrictions that Iranian life puts on women, and the “everyday acts of rebellion” that she sees in America. Americans don’t realize how easy they have it, she says, and at times she resents this. Her voice is a naïve one, one that has not had the experiences that a typical 27-year-old in America has had.
Veil of Roses is Laura Fitzgerald’s first novel. Wife of an Iranian man, she explains on her website that the inspiration behind the story was seeing Iranian women during their first few months in the United States.
“I've had the great pleasure of getting to see the United States through their eyes,” she writes. “It's quite a gift, for a writer to get to see her world through fresh eyes.”
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Fitzgerald, Laura
Veil of Roses
New York, Random House, December 26, 2006
