Navid Sinaki has been writing every day for more than 20 years, amassing six unpublished manuscripts. This year, he finally lets the world in on his sexed-up debut novel Medusa of the Roses, which follows Anjir and Zal, boyhood best friends turned lovers, as Anjir decides to undergo sex-reassignment surgery so they can live openly as a couple. They just have to get rid of Zal’s wife first and dodge Iran’s draconian laws around homosexuality. There’s also the issue of Anjir not knowing where Zal has disappeared off to.
Set in Tehran, where Sinaki was born, it follows a narrator-protagonist who eroticises everything he encounters. It’s an explicit work balancing the realities of an oppressive government with the creativity of its citizens to chase after their desires. Sinaki takes readers on a wild ride through Tehran’s queer underground, accompanied by a narrator so horny he can’t think of anything else: “Once your dick is in my mouth it becomes commonplace … part of me hopes to taste the other young man.”
Medusa of the Roses starts as a love story gone wrong before it twists into a cat-and-mouse noir. Weaved throughout is a romance as ancient as the references to Greek and Persian mythology; as classic as the Hollywood films that make an appearance. None of this is an accident; Sinaki is an artist and filmmaker who trades in symbols and subtext.
Below, Navid Sinaki speaks from Austin about the ideas behind Medusa of the Roses.
Paul Johnathan: What inspired the Medusa of the Roses story?
Navid Sinaki: I’ve always liked the idea of raiding elements of my personality and my experiences and combining them with folklore, mythology, and noir. I was born in Tehran but my family moved when I was one and settled in a California suburb. Most summers leading up to my teenage years we would go back.
My final trip was when I was 21 and I was studying Persian film. Coming across Filmfarsi, the B films and sexploitation films made in the 60s and 70s, was mind-blowing, they were swinging and sexual and had elements of thievery and deception. Prior to this trip, my mother read my journal. I never wrote anything personal, but at the time, I made the mistake of writing about a boy: “I’m going to see a boy that I think I love.” When I came home, she was weeping. I tried to get her mind off it. “It’s a work of fiction. I’ve learned to take elements of my life and twist it into a story.”
She asked me three questions: is it because your sister has hairy arms? Do you want Aids? And the third, the one that stuck with me, what if we never left Iran? It was this hovering question. I never wanted to explore it in a downtrodden way, as if I was thinking poorly of my family that was living in Iran. On my last trip, there was this sexual energy in the air, because I had come to terms with my sexuality. I wondered what my narrative would be if I had grown up there.
PJ: I’m similarly afflicted. My mum read my diary when I was a teenager.
NS: Oh, my goodness! Was yours out in the open or was it dug through and found?
PJ: It was dug through and found. Did you set out to write a story about star-crossed lovers?
NS: I’ve been working on this book for over a decade. Parts of it began as vignettes of things that I was noticing in Tehran. It began as a subtle love story between childhood-friends-turned-lovers. I also wrote a short story that ended up becoming part of the novel, these lovers meeting for the first time after one of them has transitioned. It wasn’t till later, after I had worked on another novel, that I felt permission to incorporate elements of mythology and incorporated the fact that their relationship wasn’t perfect. I’m drawn to the more perverse and prickly aspects of relationships. I imbued it with my own anxieties. The ending came as a shock to me as well. I knew that it might be controversial because it doesn’t portray queer love as this beautiful, aspirational encounter. There are pockets of deception, emotional unavailability and violence.
“Writing about sex, from personal experiences of how intense it can be, how violent it could be at times … I knew that parts of this novel would be an acquired taste” – Navid Sinaki
PJ: Where do the references to Persian and Greek mythology come from? Are those stories you grew up with?
NS: Actually no. In my suburban California education, Greek mythology was the most readily available in pop culture. There were corny TV shows like Hercules or Xena: Warrior Princess.
PJ: Why do roses figure so strongly in your work?
NS: My relationship to roses comes from Persian culture; rose water is in the baked goods. My father insists that Persians invented perfume and it was rosewater. Roses, jasmine and hyacinths were flowers my parents associated with Iran, because they’re the flowers of the Persian New Year that are set on the altar. My family would bring roses into the household. The fact that we would eat roses stood out to me as beautiful and grotesque at the same time.
PJ: You didn’t shy away from writing quite honestly and graphically about sex. Was that an ambition you had when you began to think about this book?
NS: Writing about sex, from personal experiences of how intense it can be, how violent it could be at times, it made sense to write it in that manner. I’m most comfortable in certain subcultures. I knew that parts of this novel would be an acquired taste. I don’t write about relationships in a blooming, lovely manner. They’re complicated, they’re sticky, they’re fluid-filled. That’s one of the difficulties of reading passages out loud, I’m like, wow, there is a lot of cum here!
PJ: What has been the response from your family, and your mother specifically? She read your diary, so I presume she’s going to read this book too if she hasn’t already.
NS: I don’t think my mother will read it. She talks about it in passing. She’s aware that it exists and that I’m on this book tour, but doesn’t ask about the details. I have a pseudo-formal relationship with my family. My friendships and the queer communities are far more familial. It’s important to me that they read the book and I long to feel their response to it.
PJ: Are you at all afraid of what the response might be from the Iranian government?
NS: I’m curious if it will have that reach. I’m open to it. I’m an exhibitionist. I didn’t want to speak poorly of the culture. There’s a Trojan Horse of a critique of the government, but it also incorporates what the government accepts in queer relationships. A fine dance of critiquing, but also reverence of Iran as it is.
PJ: Is the lollipop scene [in which gay men in Tehran need a green lollipop to access an underground hook-up club] something you saw in Tehran?
NS: No, I made that up! But I knew there were secret gay gatherings. Because I didn’t have the connection of how people would find them, I imagined what the secret code would be. I was curious what would be the way that you’re led into this secret underground humping queer spectacle.
Medusa of the Roses by Navid Sinaki is published by Serpent’s Tail, and is out now.