Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror: a memoir

Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror is not what I expected it to be. I thought it would be an angry #MeToo story, with a lot of hand wringing and sobbing. What it was instead was wholly entertaining, disturbing and fascinating. It was like walking through a series of dark poems.

While Majidi’s childhood is wrought with sadness and unimaginable losses, like her family having to escape Iran at the onset of the Islamic Revolution, Majidi is never sentimental, not even when her cousin is murdered because he’s Iranian. Not even after she’s raped. We’re given details, all except her feelings, which she explains as numbness. Her candor and understatement make her story even more powerful.

Alex is the only man out of a string of exes who seems to have mattered to her and in the memoir. Because she’s not Jewish, his family not only forbids him to marry her but they begin pressuring him into dates with Jewish girls. After the break-up, Majidi enters one abusive relationship after the next, with men who seem to find pleasure in physically and sexually hurting her. It’s frustrating as a reader to watch her make the same mistakes repeatedly, but this is what battered women do; they keep going back or they find another abuser (or the abuser finds them).

The author seems to see a correlation between being Muslim-Iranian and the maltreatment she received from men, even close friends, post-9/11. Even though she doesn’t make a very strong case for it, the question does linger. What is clear is that she picks the wrong people to surround herself with, in general. It’s also clear that her mother broke down her boundaries about how to be treated long ago.

Madness or Stream of Consciousness?

We (and she) only later find out that she’s bipolar, and the funny part of the book is that she talks often about her former professor James Lasdun and editor Joyce Johnson in the same sentences. She couldn’t have picked a better allusion to James Joyce, whose most unconventional prose echoes here in Majidi’s breakdowns. Stream of consciousness it’s not, but it could easily be called its close cousin.

This memoir made me think about what’s considered art and what’s considered madness, especially in relation to her professor, James Lasdun. I have not read his memoir about the author, which seems exploitive, to say the least. But why is he considered an artist for exploiting her after she was raped, and she’s considered a stalker for writing about him? And why did he not help her when he saw that she was sick? Why is it acceptable to be so cold?

If you enter Majidi’s world when she’s in a manic episode, you can see there is some sense in her madness. It’s as if she is going through her days explicating one frightening poem after another instead of dealing with the trauma and abandonment she’s experienced. Sometimes it feels as if she’s deciphering mystical signs that others can’t see. And if you follow the unreasonable logic of her thinking, the whole situation does become a frightening metaphor for what’s happening in the world.

I didn’t know a lot about Iran, but I’m seeing that Majidi’s family was very Westernized but were persecuted for being Iranian in the U.S.. It seems that her early recollections of childhood violence during the revolution may have unleashed some of her hallucinations while she is in crisis in her thirties. It’s unclear, but what is certain is that what she imagines is absolutely frightening.

Unreliable Narrator?

Some readers may feel that Majidi is an unreliable narrator in speaking out about rape, but it was easy to make the distinction between when she’s in crisis and when she’s sane. She also begins to hallucinate shortly after she’s drugged and raped. Getting roofied is nothing new, and it has long been a problem, one that results in many deaths. It was just shocking to learn that it’s a problem in the publishing industry. It seems like the #MeToo movement has yet to crack the magazine and book world.

What Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror lacked was permission to laugh at some of the lighter moments. Because Majidi shows so much restraint in displaying emotion, it’s tough to know when it’s intended to be humorous or serious. I felt guilty laughing at a mentally ill person in distress. She could have trimmed some of her sexual exploits down to brief exposition, but for anyone wanting to watch a lot of drama unfold, there is plenty of sex in this memoir. The writing is strong, and it’s clear that she has plenty of material to draw from when she sets out to finish the novel that never did end up being written.

Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror is a courageous book about surviving domestic violence, sexual assault and mental illness. And yes, Majidi is yet another talented person with bipolar disorder. There is still so much stigma about bipolar disorder and other psychological disorders but Majidi throws caution to the wind and takes us through an experiential ride to show us what it’s like to be trapped in a bell jar.