Narrating pain: The power of storytelling in Maryam Madjidi’s Marx et la poupée

1 Translating immigrant suffering

The translation of otherness is the essence of the phenomenon of cultural translation as argued by Sarah Maitland, since the practice of everyday life in a globalized world means that “every one of us is faced with interpreting that which we do not understand” (2017: 27). Difference being everywhere, it is vital to “attempt to encapsulate that which we do not know within the terms that we do” (27–28, the author’s italics). Cultural translation then starts from a quest for understanding the other, without the guarantee of a successful integration of “foreign practices, other ideas, beliefs, traditions and ideologies [...] into the familiar” (8). What really counts is to use difference productively in order to open up a relationship between the familiar and the other.

Translation as an act of mediation establishes a mode of connection and exchange between self and other and is therefore “inextricably linked to the experience of alterity” (Karpinski 2012: 29). Karpinski suggests that the exposure to otherness, including alterity within the self, offers “the possibility of forming alliances across languages, races, and cultures, without cancelling difference” (29). Her discussion of the role of translation for the study of immigrant women’s life writing very much compares to idea of the productivity of difference as proposed by Maitland. Immigrant narratives in particular are concerned with translating questions of subjectivity, alienation, and alterity, including a reflection on the struggle over languages. The difficulty of access to the majority language confirms the marginality of the immigrant subject whose translingual position seems to reinforce the experience of foreignness rather than create a connection between self and other. The conflict between the original and the adopted language can result in a productive confrontation that perturbs the priority of either language, but this is usually a painful process during which the immigrant subject retreats into self-imposed silence. This muteness is part of the immigrant’s suffering and can only become productive when it is recognized as such. Thus, the negotiation of difference relies on the acknowledgement of pain as a meaningful and necessary part of the immigrant narrative.

When considering the various reflections on culture, difference, and translation developed above in relation to the immigrant’s suffering, it becomes clear that effective translations of pain in narrative include both the writer as translator and the reader as interpreter. Hron explores the tactics through which immigrant authors attempt to “persuade their readers of the existence and meaningfulness of the sufferings of immigration” (2009: 47) by distinguishing three different modes in which the rhetoric of pain takes shape: the bodily rhetoric, the cultural rhetoric and the rhetoric of silence. The first mode refers to the role of the body in “the linguistic expression of suffering” (79). By considering the body as a universal signifier, “shared and recognized by all human beings” (131), the expression of bodily pain “is perhaps the most direct way to communicate suffering so that it can be understood” (131). Secondly, cultural rhetoric “offers immigrant writers a more nuanced form of expression than corporal pain: not only can it denote their suffering of immigration, but it also suggests a space of creation, resistance, and perhaps release from their immigrant pain” (184). Contrary to the first two modes, the rhetoric of silence seems to be characterized by the suppression of pain, but the fact that suffering is imperceptible does not mean it does not exist. The implicit allusions offered through reticent rhetoric can help “discern more latent forms of suffering” (226) that, as observed above, often characterize the immigrant experience but are minimized since “voice is usually positively valued over silence” (Karpinski 2012: 29). This third rhetoric offers the possibility to emphasize the importance of muteness by concentrating on chosen or imposed silencing. Regardless of the preferred mode or strategy of rhetoric, the effectiveness of the translation process in immigrant writing relies not only on the persuasive manner in which the writer translates pain, but also on the readiness of the reader to “imagine the other with empathy for their story” (Maitland 2017: 7).

This story is the narrative of the immigrant subject who foregrounds her marginalized position and finds ways to express her pain. As imagined experience, this story allows for meaning to emerge as “experiential interaction between texts and readers” (Caracciolo 2014: 4, the author’s italics). Marco Caracciolo argues that readers respond to narrative on the basis of what he calls their “experiential background” – a repertoire of past experiences and values that guides people’s interaction with the environment” (4). The two mechanisms identified by Caracciolo that enable “readers to respond to narrative on the basis of their experiential background” (5) are the triggering of memories of past experiences and mental simulation, allowing for the reader “to put together past experiential traces in novel ways” (5). When considering the possible restructuring of the reader’s experiential background on the basis of story-driven experiences within the framework of cultural translation, the narrative can be capable of creating a relationship between the self and the other, ultimately stimulating “more self-conscious – and culturally mediated – judgments about the world” (5).

These reflections on the translation of the immigrant’s suffering into narrative offer a framework for the analysis of Madjidi’s novel in which the act of story-telling goes in two directions. It allows for the immigrant subject to translate the pain of disintegration as well as to reshape her identity, and offers the reader the possibility to engage with the experience of the immigrant other. In the analysis, this two-way process will be examined by considering how the different modes of the rhetoric of pain as developed by Hron are adopted in Marx et la poupée and how they allow for the young protagonist to gain agency as well as for the reader to engage with immigrant suffering.

2 The disintegrated body, self-imposed silence and resistance

The body is an all-pervading element in Marx et la poupée.^[4] As has been observed by Aurélie Charon in a radio interview with the author (Charon and Madjidi 2017), a significant number of the book’s chapter titles for example refer to the human body and its capacity to express itself, such as “la voix de la grand-mère” [“the grand-mother’s voice”] (Madjidi 2016: 18) and “les yeux de la mère” [“the mother’s eyes”] (21). In the interview, Madjidi confirms this omnipresence and explains that the protagonist, as a child, understands the world through her body: “on est dans une étape de sa vie où tout passe par les sensations physiques” [“one finds oneself at the stage of life in which everything passes through physical sensations”] (Charon and Madjidi 2017). These bodily sensations play an important part even before the child’s birth, in the mother’s womb. When, as a twenty year old student, the protagonist’s mother is forced to flee a demonstration at the University of Tehran that got out of control, the baby painfully experiences the outside world: “J’ai peur, je sens le danger et je me recroqueville un peu plus au fond du ventre mais ce ventre va vers la mort, poussé par une force irrépressible” [“I’m frightened, I can sense danger and I curl up a little more inside the tummy, but this tummy is heading for death, pushed by an irresistible force”] (Madjidi 2016: 14).^[5] Her mother escapes and survives, but unsafety and fear of dying have been irrevocably implanted in the foetus. The womb is normally considered a safe place that protects the unborn child, but during her escape, jumping from a classroom window, the mother puts her own life and that of her baby at risk. The womb moves towards death: “Tu tombes et je meurs le temps d’une seconde dans ton ventre devenu tombeau” [“You are falling and I am dying, in the space of a second, inside your tummy which has become a tomb”] (16).^[6] This pre-birth experience expresses how danger and fear are lived through the body: “tu as creusé un trou en moi dans lequel toutes les angoisses de ma vie future prendront racine” [“you dug a hole inside me where all anxieties of my future life will take root”] (16),^[7] thus foreshadowing how future feelings of agony and distress will be sucked in by this hole and become part of the body.

Her mother risking her life and that of her baby can be considered as a dangerous act of resistance. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, movements that had gathered behind Ayatollah Khomeini to expel the Shah continued to express their ideologies. Universities had played an important role in the making the political reversals happen and university students had actively participated (Razavi 2009: 1). However, through what was called the Cultural Revolution, “the new Iranian regime closed all colleges and universities in summer, 1980” (Sobhe 1982: 271). This Cultural Revolution aimed at making “the elite able to control political activity in the universities more effectively” (Razavi 2009: 2) and for “education to correspond to the Islamic ideology” (Sobhe 1982: 271). The closure was preceded by student protests during which “religious, Marxist, and other students groups and organisations occupied offices in the buildings of the universities (Sobhe 1982: 275). This political activism, in which the protagonist’s mother participates as a student and communist, is referred to in the opening scene of Marx et la poupée. If political motivations are implicit in Madjidi’s narrative, there are clear references to the parents’ affiliation with communism, such as the name of Marx in the title and the expression of their communist values symbolised by the word poupée [doll]. The young girl has always been taught that property is an ugly thing, and she is forced to give all her toys, including her favourite doll, to the children in her neighbourhood before they leave the country. As a result of his political activism of handing out inflammatory leaflets contesting the religious regime, Maryam’s father has escaped from Iran and the girl and her mother follow him to Paris.

As a six-year old, Maryam has to adapt to the French school system, but at the same time she is assigned a class reserved to non-francophone pupils, confirming her status as outsider: “J’ai donc deux classes, deux instituteurs, tout comme j’ai deux langues, deux manières de prononcer mon prénom, deux saveurs dans la bouche, deux musiques dans la tête” [“So I am in two classes, have two teachers, just like I have two languages, two ways of pronouncing my name, two tastes in my mouth, two scores in my head”] (Madjidi 2016: 144). She suffers from the continuous conflict between the two cultures that seem to compete like two different tastes in her mouth, two different musical pieces in her head. Following Hron’s bodily rhetoric, suffering is communicated through the expression of bodily pain. In Maryam’s case, the body is figuratively torn apart; the bitter-sweet images of the flavours and the music are replaced by a more severe figure when she considers the faces of the other children in her initiation class as a mirror of her own: like theirs, her face exhibits “la balafre de ceux que l’exil a coupés en deux” [“the scar of those split into two by exile”] (147). The use of vocabulary expressing the symbolic splitting apart of her body and face illustrates the torturing effects of the two cultures pulling her in opposite directions. This imagery displays the distress that emanates from all the immigrant children, turning them into “petites marionnettes désarticulées” [“tiny disjointed puppets”] (147) that seem to float for lack of weight and solidity and whose gaze is always sad. The protagonist wants to distance herself from these classmates and be part of the “classe ordinaire, normale, française” [“regular, normal, true French class”] (145) but is fully aware of her own difference and the fact that the disjointed puppets are her “frères de misère, de l’exil, de nostalgie” [“brothers in misery, exile, nostalgia”] (146).

The situation is reflected upon by the mature narrator who criticizes the French system that requires a cleansing of these children who are forced to hide their difference and to erase their origins: “Oublie d’où tu viens, ici, ça ne compte plus” [“Forget where you come from, that does not count anymore here”] (148). She observes that this is an “étrange façon d’accueillir l’autre chez soi” [“strange way of welcoming the other in your home”] (148) which denies the aforementioned need for engaging with difference in the process of cultural translation. Only after “un effacement total” [“a total erasure”] (147), the children will be admitted in the “real” class. And indeed, Maryam becomes a “corps effacé” [“erased body”] (146) when she decides to stop eating. As Hron argues, suffering can be signaled “in bodily functions such as eating or sleeping” (2009: 33), and the young protagonist translates the pain of her disintegrated body by refusing the French food by which she is disgusted. In addition, the young girl is disoriented by the habit of having lunch with the other children at school: “Je hais cette concentration d’enfants dans un même lieu. Je hais cette promiscuité au moment du repas. Je hais leurs chahutages et leurs cris. Je hais leur façon de manger” [“I hate this accumulation of children in the same space. I hate this lack of privacy when eating. I hate their heckling and their shouting. I hate the way they eat”] (Madjidi 2016: 135). The oppressive environment of the school canteen described in the chapter “Moi, je ne mange pas” [“I will not eat”] (135) illustrates the way in which the new culture is shoved down her throat and her refusal to swallow anything produced by the French cuisine is met with retaliation. Her teacher scolds her in front of all the other children and sets her “à l’écart de tous mais visible de tous” [“apart from everyone, but noticeable by all”] (137) or forces her to swallow “une bouchée de purée de carottes” [“a mouthful of mashed carrots”] (137–138). These demeaning measures result in an offensive attitude that both the lunch ladies and the French children adopt towards her. By setting her apart, Maryam is excluded from the group who subsequently confirms her difference by making fun of her origins and food culture, exposing at the same time their own ignorance with regard to other cultures as they assume she does not eat pork or prefers couscous or curry. Since no distinction is made between the different backgrounds of the immigrant children, their exclusion as strangers who share the condition of non-belonging is reinforced.

Maryam’s refusal to eat reflects the body’s mental anguish that can be examined through the rhetoric of silence. By deactivating her tongue and closing her mouth in order to reject the French food culture that presents itself as totally incomprehensible and distasteful, she also becomes silent. The French word for tongue, langue, also means language, which marks another sign of difference, since the language learner distinguishes herself by her inadequate language use. Even if she has learned French to the extent that she imagines dialogues “où elle se défend et prouve à tous qu’elle la [= langue française] parle très bien” [“where she defends herself and proves to all that she speaks French very well”] (130), Maryam decides not to speak because she needs to discover this new language in silence: “La petite couve sa nouvelle langue comme une poule sur son œuf. Il lui faut cette phase de gestation lente et solitaire” [“The little one broods her new language like a hen broods her egg. She needs this phase of slow and solitary growth”] (131). As Ana Belén Soto argues, this voluntary muteness expresses the child’s fear to make language mistakes which would once again display her difference: “la honte de se tromper, d’afficher ses origines iraniennes” [“the shame of making mistakes, of revealing her Iranian origin”] (2019: 420). She needs to be proficient before feeling confident enough to express herself. Her focus on the French language however confirms the conflict between the two cultures that increasingly presents itself as a “lutte des langues” [“battle of languages”] (Madjidi 2016: 153). Persian and French manifest themselves as rivals that cannot coexist and the adoption of the foreign language automatically results in Persian losing its vitality and strength. Once again she is torn apart and risks becoming a split personality who protects herself by building a wall between the two languages where the two parts of her being place their own brick: “Ta brique du persan et des racines. Ma brique du français et de l’intégration” [“Your brick of Persian and roots. My brick of French and integration”] (158). Ultimately she gives up the fight and learns to juggle between the two: “le persan à la maison, le français dehors” [“Persian at home, French outside”] (158). Even if she accepts to continue speaking Persian at home, the language seems to have lost its former legitimacy since, in France, “elle n’était réduite qu’à trois locuteurs: un père, une mère et un enfant” [“it was reduced to three speakers only: a father, a mother, and a child”] (150). The child’s refusal to eat and to speak as examined in this section within the framework of Hron’s bodily rhetoric and the rhetoric of silence, can be considered acts of resistance against the suffering of immigration caused by the continuous struggle between two cultures and two languages. The protagonist has been confronted with agony and violence, but also with resistance, ever since her condition as an unborn baby in her mother’s womb. Her mother’s resistance to succumb to oppression seems to have been passed on to her child who defies suffering. Refusing food and becoming silent do however not make the pain disappear. Maryam’s resistance is therefore a first step in the process of acknowledging and translating her pain. This process advances when she truly reconciles with her mother tongue and rediscovers its beauty by virtue of her grandmother’s voice: “Tu ne me reconnais pas ? Je suis ta langue maternelle. Je t’ai attendue tout ce temps” [“Don’t you recognize me? I’m your mother tongue. I’ve been waiting for you all this time”] (193).^[8] The protagonist who has turned into a young woman recognizes the voice of the old lady embodying the Persian language to which she has become oblivious and decides to follow her grandmothers advice: “Laisse ta douleur s’exprimer” [“Let your sorrow speak”] (90).

3 Storytelling, agency and experiential traces

The imaginary encounter with her grandmother prepares the narrator for another way of addressing her suffering; instead of resisting pain, she learns how to express it. Her grandmother’s voice, presenting itself in Maryam’s thoughts as a guide and comfort, takes the form of an old lady with a cane who appears in a dreamlike or hallucinatory fashion at difficult moments in the protagonist’s life. She not only encourages the girl to persevere whenever the suffering becomes intolerable but also forms the connection with her Persian origins. Over the years, Maryam has denied these origins as a result of the process of self-effacing imposed on her since her arrival in France. In order to avoid questions about her identity, she has put on a mask that complies with the stereotypical image of the romanticized immigrant other: “je me cache derrière un masque, celui de l’exilée romanesque. Je vous le donne, ce masque, prenez-le, je le dépose entre vos mains” [“I am hiding behind a mask, the mask of the Romanesque exile. I am giving it to you, this mask, take it, I put it in your hands”] (86). She plays the part of the exotic oriental woman, particularly during her encounters with French men: “Je module ma voix, je mets mon costume de femme persane, je secoue mes voiles et, sous les feux de ses yeux déjà conquis: je lui récite Omar Khayyâm” [“I adjust my voice, I put on my Persian women’s costume, I shake my veils, and, under the fire of his eyes that have already been conquered: I recite Omar Khayyâm for him”] (80). The silent girl has transformed into a talkative young woman who seems to outshout her suffering: “je me faisais conteuse devant un public avide d’histoires exotiques et je rajoutais des détails” [“I became a storyteller addressing an audience that was hungry for exotic stories and I kept adding more details”] (80). She seems to have given up her initial resistance by playing along, by conforming to the stereotype that goes back to the orientalist paintings of Delacroix. “Le charme oriental... Tu vois ces tableaux de Delacroix, ces femmes lascives allongées sur des divans, c’est l’image que j’ai des femmes iraniennes” [“Oriental beauty.... Do you see those paintings by Delacroix, those lascivious women lying down on their couch, that is the image I have of Iranian women”] (79, author’s italics), says one of the male characters whom she seduces with her recital of the Persian poet. While mocking her short-sighted French audience, she also betrays herself by hiding behind a mask. Her inner voice keeps telling her that “tout ça, ce n’est pas moi” [“all of this is not me”] (86), a feeling which is confirmed by the vision of her grandmother who advises her to tell her stories differently and to really pay tribute to her Persian tales: “Raconte-les non pas avec une modestie feinte et une fierté cachée mais de l’intérieur, Maryam, de l’intérieur” [“Don’t tell them with feigned modesty and concealed pride, but from the inside, Maryam, form the inside”] (89). After having adopted the mechanisms of resistance and hiding, she is finally able to face her pain and starts telling her stories in a genuine way.

As her grandmother asserts, ever since she was a small girl, she loved telling and inventing stories. Maryam remembers that, as a child, she would like to spend her life gathering stories: “De belles histoires. Dans un sac, je les mettrais et je les emportais avec moi. Et puis au moment propice les offrir à une oreille attentive pour voir la magie naître dans le regard” [“Beautiful stories. I would put them in a bag and take them with me. And then, when the right time comes, I could offer them to an attentive ear and see magic appear in someone’s eyes”] (32–33).^[9] The magic of story-telling will enable the protagonist to drop the mask of her “douleur refoulée” [“suppressed suffering”] and to express her immigrant experience in a liberating way (90).

The fact that she has avoided this storytelling from within for such a long time, is strongly related to its brutal and uncompromising effects. It is a nauseating experience that initially grabs her by the throat and causes stomach ache. These physical reactions are characteristic of immigrant narratives, since articulating the experience of displacement and loss equals reopening the wounds that were caused by it. By referring to writing as a continuous re-opening of the wounds of immigration, Allesandro Corio and Ilaria Vitali (2010: 6) argue that it prevents the wounds from actual healing, while Évelyne Accad (1990) suggests that writing can operate as a bandage to the wounds in the form of a non-violent act offering an alternative to destruction. Maryam indeed reopens old wounds by digging up memories, her own but also those of others who have suffered: “je déterre des souvenirs, des anecdotes, des histoires douloureuses ou poignantes” [“I dig up memories, anecdotes, painful or heart-breaking stories”] (Madjidi 2016: 41). She refers to her family members, narrating her parents’ pain by referring to her father’s “mains abîmées et forgées par la matière” [“damaged hands, moulded by utensils”] (57) and the “mélodies muettes” [“muted melodies”] (21) that emerge from her mother’s eyes. She tells the story of her uncle Saman who has been incarcerated in Evin Prison in Tehran and whose skin is possibly “brûlée par des mégots, mutilée, électrifiée” [“burnt by butts, mutilated, electrified”] (44). She describes the situation of her cousin Simine living in Iran who is abused by her husband and loses custody of her little son when she divorces him. These stories are embedded in the history of Iran, a country torn apart by violence that massacres “ses meilleurs enfants” [“its brightest children”] (44) and at the same time the narrator’s homeland defined by its exquisite gastronomy, intense poetry and resilient people. When narrating these stories, Maryam discovers wounds that are deeper than her own, and finds that one wound can function as a bandage to the other. By digging up numerous stories of suffering caused by the experience of immigration as well as by religious and political oppression, the narrator engages in a cultural rhetoric in which creation has taken the place of resistance. This space of creation does not offer release from immigrant pain, but it does present the opportunity to share her own story of difference, loss, powerlessness and sorrow.

Narrating suffering is in itself a painful act that opens up wounds and translates them into language. In Marx et la poupée, various narrative forms are blended to achieve an effective translation. The frequent use of the formula “Once upon a time”, often introducing a story at the beginning or end of a chapter, refers to the importance of fairy-tales in the protagonist’s life. Poetical forms are included by quoting the well-known Persian poets Hâfez and Khayyâm that inspire the narrator to also write her own poems. Thirdly, the references to specific dates and places preceding certain entries in the chapters such as “Paris 3^e – Un café rue Rambuteau” (168, the author’s italics), suggest that these are part of the protagonist’s diary, clearly relating to the autobiographical dimension of the text. This blending of genres also involves the narrative instance using the first, second and third person pronouns interchangeably. The pronouns “je” and “elle”, the latter in combination with the characterisation of the little girl, refer to Maryam growing up between two worlds. “Tu” is used when the narrator seems to address family members directly, for example: “Des yeux de la mère sortent des mélodies muettes que la petite fille tente de transcrire sur des cahiers d’écolier. Donner voix à tes yeux” [“Her mother’s eyes released mute melodies that the little girl tried to transcribe in her school notebooks. Give voice to your eyes”] (21). This amalgamation expresses the complexity of the protagonist’s struggle and gives shape to her alienation, as is demonstrated in the following examples.

Instead of actually speaking with her classmates, Maryam imagines having conversations with them. She invents stories that console her and that “remplissent la bouche du réel” [“fill her mouth with reality”] (122). One of these fairy-tale like stories represents the girl as a queen imprisoned in her castle, disconnected from the world. She can hear distant human voices floating in through the open windows, and would like to tell them her story, “ouvrir devant eux le grand livre de sa vie” [“opening before them the book of her life”] (123). Narrating her memories out loud, she hopes the wind will carry her words in order for the people to hear them. Sadly, “la plupart des mots étaient venus mourir à ses pieds” [“most words had died at their feet”] (123–124). The image of the queen enclosed in a remote palace whose long hair covers her like a cloak, reminds the Western reader of the tale of the Sleeping Beauty whose overgrown castle is challenged by many a brave knight. This castle however is situated in the desert, and covered with dust when it is discovered by an exhausted people that will establish its kingdom in the ruined palace, naming it “le Royaume de l’Exil” [“the Kingdom of Exile”] (125). The queen will not be woken with a kiss, but blown away by the wind, since she has become “un tas de sable sur un trône” [“a heap of dust on a throne”] (125). The name of the kingdom is also a reference to Camus’ collection of short stories L’Exil et le Royaume [Exile and the Kingdom] (1957) in which “loneliness of the individual, the sense of foreignness in one’s own land and of isolation in one’s own society” (Amoia 1990: 43) are the underlying themes. The first short story, “La femme adultère” [“The Adulterous Woman”] is particularly interesting since Janine, the female protagonist, feels attracted to the desert and the life of nomads, “servants of no men, poor, but free lords in this strange kingdom” (Amoia 1990: 46). When imagining being part of this kingdom, escaping the inertness of her daily life, she experiences a feeling of ecstasy and excitement. Exile seems to present itself as an act of adultery, of revolt, albeit for a brief moment in the case of Janine. Maryam’s story, where the kingdom is that of exile, presents a turning point in the young girl’s understanding of her own situation. While acknowledging the hardship of otherness and isolation, she also recognizes the binding force of exile and the affinity it creates.

The element of exile is further explored in a poem entitled “Once upon a time”, presenting a father, a mother, and a child and their suffering: “tous les trois gardaient un secret dans le // creux de la main // Sur leur paume un mot était gravé: EXIL” [“all three kept a secret in their // hands // a word was engraved // in the palm of their hands: EXILE”] (Madjidi 2016: 93). In this poem, the process of alienation that affects all three family members is once again illustrated by means of a bodily rhetoric which characterises the mother by her hidden face, the little girl as a silhouette whose feet are suspended in the air and the father as a shadow sneaking up on the walls. Their laughter sounds like crying and they have lost “le goût de la vie” [“their love for life”] (92). The word engraved in the palm of their hands is a reminder of the scar that splits the faces of the immigrant children in two. In this poem, the little girl however does not distance herself from the imprint and does not deny her difference; she acknowledges this secret that she shares with her parents and that determines their lives.

By opening the wound of exile in tales and poetical reflections, the narrator expresses her pain in a genuine way, instead of resisting or masking it. Indeed, as she asserts herself, the string of stories she creates forms “une longue traîne de son imagination consolatrice” [“a long trail of her consoling imagination”] (122). Storytelling not only consoles, but also offers a means to gain control over her body and her life as a whole. It presents a form of re-appropriation that endorses authorship and encourages the protagonist to engage in actual conversations.

As a student, she is confronted with the opinions of her peers who take different attitudes towards their own identity. In the part that starts with the diary entry “Université de la Sorbonne – Conversations avec des étudiants” [“Sorbonne University – Conversations with students”] (168) one of them holds on to his Turkish identity and accuses her of denying her Persian origins; another student is of French-Algerian origin but does not nurture her exoticism as she finds Maryam does. A third student, “un vrai Français” [“a real Frenchman”] (169), celebrates the wealth of belonging to two cultures fostering an open-mindedness that he is unable to achieve as a result of his single French identity. He dismisses the exclusion, pain, solitude and loss that Maryam suffers and her first reaction is anger and resistance “contre ces hypocrites qui s’extasient sur une blessure. Ils enfoncent le doigt dans ma blessure avec politesse, condescendance et sourire amiable. Ils n’y comprennent rien. C’est tous des racistes” [“against these hypocrites raving about a wound. They politely stick their finger in my wound, in a condescending manner, and smile amiably. They don’t understand a thing. They are all racists”] (170). This incident is followed by another vision of her grandmother who advises her to open her fist and to not destroy what she barely holds in the palm of her hand. Following their conversation, the girl starts questioning her own behaviour – “pourquoi ai-je toujours le besoin de me défendre ?” [“why do I always feel the need to defend myself?”] (171) – and the defence mechanisms start to dissolve when she allows herself to remember various images of suffering. These are images that will become part of her narrative: her pregnant mother jumping from a window; her uncle behind bars in prison; her own tantrum when she has to abandon her toys before leaving Iran; her father waiting for his wife and daughter at Orly airport. She realises that she has to draw strength from the word that is engraved in the palm of her hand, “exilée” [“exile”] (172).

The words in French that enable her to express pain as well as to “déterre ses racines dans ce terreau qui ne sent plus le passé mais l’avenir” [“dig up her roots from this ground that does not smell of the past anymore, but of the future”] (192), gain strength from that other language, her mother tongue, or “la langue retrouvée” [“language regained”] (189), when she decides to write her dissertation on the works of the Persian writers Omar Khayyâm and Sadegh Hedayat. This study enables her to rediscover her original language and the narrative of Marx et la poupée combines the Persian and French literary traditions. As Soto observes, the text pays tribute to French authors and texts that the protagonist admires such as Marcel Proust and Victor Hugo, as well as to francophone authors like Chahdortt Djavann, Franco-Iranian author known for her book Comment peut-on être français? (2006) and influential Persian authors and poets (Soto 2019: 424). This reconciliation of the two languages, literatures and cultures paves the way for agency and a re-appropriation of the self.

As observed in the theoretical framework, effective translation of suffering also depends on the readiness of the reader to engage with the immigrant’s story. As argued by Caracciolo, the narrative can create a relationship between the self and the other on the basis of experiential traces since readers “put together past experiential traces in novel ways, therefore sustaining their first-person involvement with both fictional characters and the spatial dimension of storyworlds” (2014: 5). According to the above analysis, the stories in Marx et la poupée offer experiential traces triggering memories of childhood, such as the first day in school, the disgust of certain dishes, the relationship with parents and other family members. The child’s perspective is comprehensible, particularly by means of the bodily images and the sensorial experiences. This recognition of events, of the child’s explorations and fear, fosters interest in its perception of the world that also includes situations foreign or unknown to the reader. By connecting the new and different aspects to the familiar elements, mental simulation (Caracciolo 2014: 5) allows the reader to sustain their involvement with the protagonist and to put together past experiential traces in novel ways, thus engaging with Maryam’s feelings of being torn between two different worlds. This involvement is reinforced by the frequent references to the genre of the fairy tale and the awe as well as the comfort these tales can offer a child.

Both the bodily rhetoric and the rhetoric of silence create persuasive images impacting the reader affectively, whereas the cultural rhetoric presents the protagonist’s personal suffering in a broader framework, linking it to the pain experienced by other immigrants as well as by those who suffer from religious and political oppression in her country of origin. By using diary entries, the narrator offers the reader insight in her personal processing of the experience of immigration, including a reflection on the conflictual encounter between cultures. The use of different pronouns allows the reader to discover the protagonist’s suffering from various angles and to develop a comprehensive picture of her development. Following Hron’s reflection, the focus on the child’s experience translated through the various rhetorics of pain in combination with the blended narrative form offer the reader the possibility to translate suffering “in the context of their own experience” (2009: xvii) and to expose themselves to difference by engaging in a relationship between the familiar and the other.

Conclusion

The analysis has demonstrated that the act of story-telling in Marx et la poupée manifests itself as a powerful means in the process of reconciling two languages and cultures that are perceived as incompatible. The conflict between them is translated as a brutal bodily experience affecting the child’s eating and speaking abilities and her mental anguish is effectively expressed through images of physical wounds. Since the feelings of agony and danger have been incorporated before birth, the child has created defence mechanisms that enable her to resist suffering rather than engaging with it. This resistance is followed by the incorporation of the oriental discourse during her adolescent years, when she avoids conflict and plays the part of the exotic oriental woman. Only when she takes off her mask and learns to express her suffering in the foreign language and deploy the passion for stories that she has treasured ever since she was a little girl, does she acknowledge her difference. Her powerful narrative helps her gain agency over her situation and to re-appropriate her body. By translating her own story of loss and difference, as well as digging up stories of pain experienced by others, the narrator uses difference in a productive way and also invites her audience to become aware of the complexity of the immigrant’s suffering.

By employing the rhetorics of pain, storytelling in Madjidi’s book is a two-way process that effectively translates suffering and creates awareness for it. While this does not answer the question raised by Hron if this also allows for a better understanding of “immigrants in real life” (2009: xvi), it does illustrate the possibility of experiential interaction between story and reader, creating a connection between self and other. It also depicts how storytelling becomes a way to undermine mainstream narratives about integration that propagate the incompatibility of cultures and deny the importance of heritage culture. Maryam’s recognition of suffering ultimately allows for a reconciliation of her Persian and French identities; she defies essentialist attitudes by paying tribute to both cultures.