Lion Eyes
Page 22
Mischa: You think he’s trying to recruit you?
Claire: Why would he bother? I’m a novelist.
Mischa: Yes, but he thinks you’re a spy! Claire! What a great idea for a novel!
Oh, Bill also caught innumerable embarrassing mistakes in my Ottoman history. And my Persian history. And my European history. If Bill’s not a spy, he should be. Ladies and gentlemen: write to your congressmen today and tell them the CIA needs to draft this man. He’s our only hope.
Norah Vincent, author of Self-Made Man, has been as good a friend to me as anyone I’ve ever really met. She has also been a very good sport. I took the idea for Sam and Samantha from her book, but of course she never did anything remotely so stupid as falling in love with Lynne. Norah, thank you—and this I truly do sign with sight-unseen love.
To all of my Iranian pen friends, thank you. (I’ve never met them, either!) To Jeff Jarvis (whom I’ve never met!) of buzzmachine.com: thank you for helping me find so many wonderful Iranian pen pals. A special thanks to Hossein Derakhshan and Rouzbeh Gerami, and, most especially, to Ali Azimi, who patiently answered about a million of my odd questions about, for example, the proper translation of the word “wanker” into Persian. I’ve never met any of you, but why would I need to when you come streaming into my apartment at 256k bits per second?
And last there is David Gross, who lives with me in real life and three dimensions and who has been saintly in his patience with Lion Eyes. He has never once complained that every single day for months on end I have left our bed each morning, gone upstairs to my computer, and betrayed him with some imaginary Persian archaeologist.
Reality, David, in the end, is better than anything I can imagine.
NOTE ON THE PERSIAN POETRY IN LION EYES
This book’s epigram is an adaptation of The Leopard, written by Sa‘di and translated by John Charles Edward Bowen; I took the zoological and poetic liberty of changing the subject of the poem from a leopard to a lion. Also from Sa‘di, translated by Edward Granville Browne, come these words:
No shield of parental protection his head
Now shelters; be thou his protector instead.
The words She has escaped from the cage now, her wings spread in the air are Arsalan’s loose interpretation of Rumi, as translated by Annemarie Schimmel. Likewise from Rumi, translated by E. H. Whinfield:
Our wind whereby we are moved and our being are of thy gift;
Your whole existence is from thy bringing into being.
and, translated by Zara Houshmand:
Wrap my secrets within your soul, and hide
even from myself, this state of mine.
as well as this verse:
Everyone has someone, a friend to love,
And work, and skill to do it. All I have
Is a fantasy lover who hides
For safety in the dark of my heart’s cave—
From Hafiz, translated by Gertrude Bell, come the words:
No tainted eye shall gaze upon her face,
No glass but that of an unsullied heart.
From Farid al-Din ‘Attar, translated by A. J. Arberry:
When shall it come to pass, ah when,
That suddenly, beyond our ken,
We shall succeed to rend this veil
That hath our whole affair conceal?
All of the following verses are from Edward FitzGerald’s The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam:
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass’d the door of Darknessthrough,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
and:
Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
and:
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing!
I acknowledge my debt to these poets and translators with gratitude.
CLAIRE BERLINSKI is the author of Loose Lips and the nonfiction journalistic exposé Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too. Born in California, she received her undergraduate degree in modern history and her doctorate in international relations from Balliol College at Oxford University. Like the heroine of Lion Eyes, she divides her time between Paris and Istanbul, where she lives with photojournalist David Gross and a menagerie of adopted stray animals.
ALSO BY CLAIRE BERLINSKI
Loose Lips
Menace in Europe:
Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too
Lion Eyes is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2008 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2007.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berlinski, Claire.
Lion eyes / Claire Berlinski.
p. cm.
1. Women spies—Fiction. 2. Blogs—Fiction. 3. Iranians—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.E758L55 2007
813’.6—dc22 2006047815
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-51330-4
v3.0