How far would you go for forbidden love? That is the query that units in movement Medusa of the Roses, a queer romantic noir set in modern-day Iran, the place intercourse between males is a capital crime. The debut novel of Navid Sinaki – himself born in Tehran and now dwelling in Los Angeles – is narrated by a younger man referred to as Anjir, and addressed on to his childhood good friend and secret lover, Zal. The motion kicks off with the disappearance of Zal after a row between the couple. “Ought to I’ve simply instructed a protracted weekend as an alternative of a homicide?” muses Anjir, within the first trace that one thing sinister is afoot.
Earlier than turning his hand to fiction, Sinaki established a profession as a visible artist, making work that explores queer identification alongside historical mythology and outdated types of digital and analogue media. These preoccupations are removed from forgotten in Medusa of the Roses; in truth, the novel might be thought-about an extension of Sinaki’s creative apply. Most notably, Anjir has inherited from his mom, Nilofar, an obsession with Greek and Persian myths – specifically the determine of the blind prophet Tiresias, “who was a lady just by hanging two snakes”. Anjir believes that he can also foretell the longer term, by studying tea leaves. Then he begins to surprise if he may also be able to altering intercourse: if he turns into a lady, then he and Zal can have their fortunately ever after. It’s an oddity of the Iranian system that the federal government is prepared to fund gender reassignment surgical procedure regardless of draconian legal guidelines on intercourse exterior heterosexual marriage.
Zal, in the meantime, is a fan of previous Hollywood movies, which he watches on glitchy contraband VHS tapes in badly dubbed Farsi. (In post-revolution Iran, the consumption of western tradition is tightly managed.) A plot to get Zal’s spouse out of the best way is impressed by The Postman At all times Rings Twice – a metatextual flourish from Sinaki, who’s clearly having lots of enjoyable writing his personal tackle the basic noir, replete with intercourse and violence and sociopaths. However Medusa of the Roses lacks a key ingredient for a thriller: suspense. The depth of the novel’s opening salvo regularly dissipates as Anjir will get distracted by varied duties: trying to find Zal, attempting to pay money for estrogen, investigating whether or not Zal was dishonest, and so forth. Nonetheless, the novel’s closing act delivers some good twists that you won’t see coming.
The larger drawback is that it’s by no means made clear why Anjir is prepared to go to such extremes to be with Zal. “We have been one another’s first every part,” Anjir says at one level. “How merciless to search out love on the primary attempt.” We simply must take this as enough proof that it is a love story for the ages. However there’s little or no sense of what both character is like and why they’re drawn to one another: no moments of interiority, nor any significant interactions apart from a few intercourse scenes. The perfect thrillers place you proper within the minds and hearts of their antiheroes (consider Patricia Highsmith’s The Proficient Mr Ripley). You care what occurs to them – even, or particularly, when that identification has queasy implications.
Then once more, perhaps Sinaki isn’t aiming to put in writing that type of fiction. In one scene Anjir and Nilofar are discussing the Greek fantasy of Dido of Carthage’s self-immolation after she is deserted by Aeneas – Anjir doesn’t perceive why somebody wouldn’t robotically attempt to escape a fireplace. “Mythology doesn’t exist for realism,” Nilofar says. “Some fires you don’t realise you’ve made.” Medusa of the Roses additionally comprises a variety of superficially baffling photos and occasions which have a deeper allegorical resonance. Anjir’s determination to transition from man to lady is essentially the most vital of those: it’s introduced not as a case of gender dysphoria, however reasonably as a drastic technique that may enable Anjir to cover the connection with Zal in plain sight. The fantasies of fantasy are a channel by means of which to precise the realities of dwelling – and trying to like – below a repressive regime.
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