Biography of Jaleh Esfahani

In year 1921, in a grand, old house located at Majlessi Alley in the city of Esfahan, a baby girl was born, whose parents could not reach an agreement on the subject of her name. The mother, Monavar favoured ‘Jaleh’, while the grand Aghajan Soltani preferred ‘Ethel’.

He had befriended an English nurse at the British hospital in Esfahan named Ethel and wished to remember her eternally. 
Aghajan Soltani’s choice finally prevailed and the child’s name was registered ‘Ethel’. A name which was displayed above her hospital bed, alien to its owner, in the final days of her life at St Charles Hospice, where she welcomed her well-wishers and said farewell to life.

From an early age she had a keen interest for poetry. At the age of thirteen she wrote her first piece of poetry and chose ‘Jaleh’ as her pseudo name. At 23, she published her first volume of poetry; ‘The Wild Flowers’ under the same name. For her, name was always problematic. Ethel/Jaleh Soltani changed into Jaleh Badi Tabrizi after marriage. Then Jaleh Badi in the then Soviet Union where she lived for many years and Jaleh Zendeh Roodi in the Persian- speak regions of Afghanistan and Tajikistan where she was well-known as an Iranian poet.

In 1946, when the first Congress of Iranian writers and poets convened in Tehran, as the first female poet, she was invited to recite her poetry. It was a great honour. One of the organisers; either Ali-Asghar Hekmat, the chair or Malik-al-sho’arai Bahar (poet laureate) called her ‘Jaleh Esfahani’. Thereon, she rejected her registered name (except for the official documents) and was known as Jaleh Esfahani up to the end. Jaleh Esfahani had officially been registered in the Encyclopaedia of the city of Esfahan’s poets and writers.

Jaleh had a complicated and often painful childhood. Her mother, Monavar was a wealthy widow when she married her father, Gholamreza Soltani, who himself was a wealthy landowner. Monavar was keen to send her two daughters; Jaleh and Nosrat to school, while Soltani was opposed to the idea. Finally, Monavar’s strong personality convinced her husband and the two girls were registered at Behesht-ain school. Jaleh fast-tracked her studies and completed the second and third year together and there on was always known as the best student in her class. She was good at sports, very sociable and had an ability to understand social issues of her time.

Behesh-ain school’s principle was a woman called Miss Aydin, whose mother was Irish and father an Armenian from Esfahan. Miss Aydin had a huge impact on her students especially Jaleh. The years she spent at Behesh-ain were one of the happiest years of her life. The school was well advanced for its time. It had boarding facilities and middle class families from Shiraz and Kerman often used to send their daughters to study under Miss Aydin who had combined western and Iranian culture together and was able to connect with her students.

Jaleh graduated from Behest-ain with good grades. Now she was a young woman of high aspirations. She wrote prose and poetry, learnt English well. As Jaleh’s father lived for most of the time in the villages he owned, Monavar, her mother had brought a number of her family members to live with them and so the household was filled with a population of young cousins who each played an instrument and filled the house with music and dance. Jaleh soon joined them. Her sister, Nosrat played Tar (an Iranian instrument like Indian sitar), some cousins played saxophone, mandolin or accordion. Jaleh chose violin. Jaleh and her close friend, Maliheh also learnt European dances from the Armenians and the French who lived in Jolfa town on the banks of Zayandeh Rood which was close to Esfahan. Jaleh was very keen to read classical poetry as well.

All this aside, she wanted to continue her studies at the University of Tehran. But she had no financial backing since her family would not want her to move away. A branch of the National Bank (Bank Meli) at Esfahan was recruiting female secretaries. She and two of her friends; Maliheh and Shahnaz Elami were the first to apply for the job and be employed as typists. In the meantime, jaleh joined an English club and attended a workshop on Shekspeare along with playing tennis and violin or cycling around Esfahan. In her early twenties, her poetry had found its way out and some of her work was published in the press.

Suddenly and in the middle of the way to a bright future, Jaleh’s mother, Monavar passed away. Her death was a blow to her as well as to her younger siblings as that merry household faced a lot of hardship and disintegrated very quickly. However, in 1943 Jaleh met a young Air force officer, Sham-el-Din Badi at the English club and after a while accepted his proposal and got married in Esfahan in a simple ceremony. Soon she left her family and hometown and accompanied her husband to Tehran.

Her position at Bank Meli was secured in the main branch in Tehran. She actively continued her poetry as well as other activities. Bank Meli commissioned to print her first volume of poetry ‘The Wild Flowers’ in 1000 copies. Later, she came to know the great contemporary poet, Nima Ushij, through his wife who also worked at the bank. Jaleh learnt a lot from Nima on the much controversial subject of the New Style Persian poetry whom he was the pioneer.

The early 1940s was a turbulent period both for Jaleh and the country. Reza Shah had been forced to abdicate his throne in favour of his young son, Mohammad Reza. In the vacuum created, political parties, especially the leftist parties had flourished and social gatherings and street demonstrations had spread throughout the country.

Jaleh was preparing herself to enter the university. In 1946 in cooperation with the Soviet-Iranian Cultural Society, the first writer’s congress convened in Tehran and many writers and poets presented their work. From the then Soviet Union some 80 delegates who comprised of poets and writers such as Alexi Surkov, Vera Einber and Professor Aref Dadashzadeh attended this historical event. Jape was invited to present her work and she recited two pieces; ‘Pansies’ and ‘Iran’. Her presence at this congress opened the doors for her to enter the intellectual circle of the Capital. She came to know many poets and writers and to enrich her work.

Meanwhile, the political activities of her husband as a member of the Marxist Tudeh Party of Iran which was a pro-Soviet party attracted Jaleh to politics and sent her husband to prison for a year. The turmoil of the war and the politics of the Allied forces on the one hand, and the active role of the pro-soviet parties in the north-west Tabriz brought much chaos to the country. After release from prison, Jaleh’s husband, Shams was posted to Tabriz. Jaleh packed her belongings and joined him, where she hoped to continue her studies at Tabriz University.

Shortly after her arrival in the autumn of 1946, the Shah dispatched the army to Tabriz to end the chaos and crash the uprising which called for the separation of Iranian Azerbaijan. Before she knew, Jaleh was on a bus full of the families and the cadres of the Tudeh Party and other parties which were the spearhead of the uprisings and headed for the Soviet borders. Her wedding presents and her newly acquired furniture waited in vain. She never returned home. Not until some 34 years later.

The bus carried the refugees to Baku in Azerbaijan, where they were separated and housed in various places. It took Jaleh a while to understand that it was a journey of no return, of months of fear and bewilderment before they were given a permanent residence and ordered to register at the Baku University to learn the language and to study in order to assimilate into the general population. Jaleh was bewildered for a while but her desperate struggle with her situation did not deter her from learning Azari and entering the university. She registered for a degree in literature and graduated some four years later. Her poetry took a new turn as did her endeavours in the literary field. Her knowledge of Azari language improved to the extent that she accepted the university’s proposal to translate the work of Azari poets into Persian. Thousands of lines of poetry from the classic to contemporaries were translated into Persian poetry.

Meanwhile, Jaleh’s first child, Bijan was born and that gave her some degree of stability and happiness. On the occasion of his birth, she wrote a poem ‘Mothers want peace’, which caught the eye of Sadar-el-Din Eiyni, the founder of contemporary Tajik literature. He invited Jaleh to Tajikistan, where she felt at home immediately as she could speak her mother tongue and was welcomed by the Tajikistan’s intellectual elite.

A few years later, as Jaleh’s second son, Mehrdad was born she decided to move to Moscow where she believed would provide her with better opportunities. She applied for permission from the authorities and her husband agreed to the move. Bijan, then four was sent to a boarding school and Jaleh took the train to Moscow, carrying baby Mehradad into the unknown. Post-war Moscow was in a dire condition but Jaleh managed to find herself a place at the Moscow state university to do a PhD. It was her fighting spirit and strong determination that helped her to learn once again a new language, cope with her child’s demands and write poetry at the same time. A few years later, Jaleh became the face and the ambassador of Iranian literature in the Muscovite literary circles.

Her doctorate thesis which she originally wrote in Farsi but was ordered to re-write in Russian passed successfully, her husband and son joined her after four years and she was employed at the Maxim Gorky Institute. By then her poetry had found its way into the then Soviet republics with Persian speaking population, where she often attended conferences and literary gatherings. In 1965 Jaleh was accepted as a member of the Soviet Union’s Writers Association. Her literary work at the Soviet International Institute of Literature was published in the Soviet press. Her poetry was regularly published in the Tajik press as well as the weekly Soviet magazine with three million circulations. She regularly met with distinguished Iranian literary personalities who travelled to the Soviet, such as Pourdavood, Mohammed Moieen, Natel Khanlari, Lahooti, Sooratgar and many more. These meetings enriched her poetry and widened her knowledge of the subject to a great extent.

In the late 1970s, and as the turmoil of revolution in Iran spread, a lot of Iranians who had lived in the Soviet Union for decades decided to return home. Jaleh got involved with the Association of Iranian refugees in Moscow for a while but soon felt it wise to return to her poetry. She passionately followed the developments in Iran and was keen to return home as soon as possible.

Finally, in September 1980, after more than three decades she arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport and was welcomed by friends and relatives who had not seen her since 1946. She was so overwhelmed by the moment that she wrote the following poem on the occasion of the reunion:

So enchanting is the day 
we see each other once again.
We laugh happily and sweep 
with our tears
the dust of the journey. 

Jaleh stayed in Iran no longer than one year when she discovered to her disappointment that her homeland had changed beyond recognition and she was a stranger to the political and social life in Iran. Although she met with poets and writers and attended the Iranian writer’s Association meetings and her poetry was published in some of the magazines but Iran right after the revolution was too far away from the land she had left some three decades earlier. She lamented this alienation in the poems she had written during this time.

Finally, in February 1982, she left Iran for England to join her children and settled there until the end of her life. Jaleh wrote and published most of her work during the time she lived in England. She had regular contact with the magazines both inside and outside Iran and contributed to them whenever possible. She also travelled extensively and attended literary gatherings throughout the world. Her house in west London became a centre for the young poets where she welcomed them with her motherly warmth and became their patron. In 2000, she published her autobiography. In 2003, she was named the woman of the year by the Iranian Women Studies Association.

Jaleh was diagnosed with cancer some 4 years before her death but with her iron determination kept it a secret for a long time. Despite the painful treatments and the deterioration of her situation, she continued her work until the last months of her life. She was a woman of style and colour. Her well-groomed hair and colourful clothes and especially her scarves were her main characteristics. She had an astonishing memory and recited all her poetry by heart.

When in the final months of her life she was transferred to St Charles Hospice, her room turned into a collection of books, photo albums, cards and flowers, where it left little space for the medicine and tablets she had to take. She had the ability to ignore her grave situation and discussed poetry and current events as if the visitor was sitting in her bright and sunny sitting room. In the last moments of her life, she was surrounded by her children and friends, who held her hand and recited poetry to her until she slowly and graciously turned silent. She lived in poetry and died with the music of poetry with a smile that stretched to infinity.