Although the narrator’s change of consciousness happens in increments, the moment she deliberately travels to the basement and discards her mantle of silence and secrecy, which had bothered her “like a tight woolen dress in hot weather” (22), is such a turning point in her life that she recalls it with precision and lucidity. “It was after Father’s death that I broke my silence by screaming,” she declares. “I wanted the whole world and everybody to know everything” (20). It is no accident that when the narrator of My Bird begins to write, and composes the critical letters to her sister, Mahin (chapter 25 and 45, both beginning with “I write”), she describes her repressed and painful recollection of Father’s death. So, too, Fariba Vafi’s first letter to the world—her first published short story, “You’re at Peace Now, Father,”—revolves around and discloses the details of a painful memory, the death of the father in the basement.

Flying out of confinement and silence, the narrator breaks out of the cage of her former self. Celebrating her ability to speak her mind, she announces with great pride that “I write about me and the world around me” (110). Intoxicated from her sense of power and agency, believing in the transformative power of the pen, she thus moves from muteness to communication, from immobility to flight. Watching her creative energy kindled in front of her bedazzled eyes, she weaves words into a magic carpet, travels to forbidden territories, and beholds her imagination, which glides around “like a butterfly, showing off its wings that change color every second” (96). She converts her secrets and sorrows, the unwritten tale of her muted and concealed identity, the alienation written on her body, and the frustration scripted through her assigned roles into a novel. Her portable text cannot be chained, put behind bars, caged. Like a flying bird, it roams at will and goes to faraway places. It has just transmigrated, thanks to Mahnaz Kousha and Nasrin Jewell, to North America. The birth of the text, then, is a rebirth of the narrator. It frees her from the finiteness of her circumstances; it allows her to define for herself a new life as a woman: daughter, sister, wife, mother, and—no less important—as a writer as well. The nameless narrator grows wings, turns feathers into pens, allows her caged voice to soar, and becomes the highly acclaimed Fariba Vafi.

I wish to express my gratitude to Kaveh Safa, who not only shares my great enthusiasm for Fariba Vafi’s work but also contributed with boundless generosity of spirit and profound clarity of thought to this piece. I also want to thank my good friend and colleague Rae Blumberg, who offered helpful and astute comments, and my bright research assistant, Elizabeth Walsh.