The Blind Owl

THE BLIND OWL

The Blind Owl

TRANSLATED
BY

D. P. Costello

Sadegh Hedayat

Copyright © 1957 by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd.
Introduction copyright © 2010 by Porochista Khakpour

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [email protected].

Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9642-2

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

THE BLIND OWL

INTRODUCTION

AMONG THE MANY PLACES I WAS FORBIDDEN TO GO AS a youth, was through the pages of a book that didn’t even exist in our bookshelves. We had it all: walls and walls of the apartment I grew up in in suburban Los Angeles were lined with books, Persian and English. But there was one book, a notable book, we did not have a copy of, whose absence I was soon enough made to not just feel but to crave so ardently that it almost makes sense to me why I’d end up here, of all places.

I was barely double-digits when I first heard the title Buf-i Kur. The Blind Owl—it sounded not unlike the titles of my children’s storybooks. When I inquired about it my father said it was a masterpiece of Persian literature, written before he was born. What was it about? I asked. Silence. Is it about a blind owl? Silence. Do we have it? I asked. There was something in my father’s uncharacteristic reticence that made me push further. Every few years the book would inevitably come up in conversation and I would prod, but still nothing but that same silence.

My teenage years could be characterized by obsessions with all sorts of things I knew nothing about, and The Blind Owl was no exception. I was determined to get my hands on our copy. My father, with a particularly oily smile: We have no copy. I was shocked: Why? What is the deal with this book? Have you read it? My father: Of course. Everyone in Iran has read it. The logical complaint: Then why can’t I? It was then that my father, suddenly desperately grave, told me that the reason we didn’t have a copy—the reason, if he could help it, that I would never get my hands on one as well—was that, apparently, it had caused many suicides in Iran after it was published. Silence. And, well, if you must know, the author also committed suicide.

Back then I was already knee-deep in Woolf, Plath, Sexton, Hemingway, and, hell, Kurt Cobain had just ended his life—suicide had a behemothic allure to me. This made me want it all the more.

But I was not going to get it, not for a while. And then the moment I went to college and forgot all about it, suddenly one summer break when I was home, my father brought me a copy, an English translation. He seemed embarrassed. Here. But don’t read it.