DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — For Googoosh, Iran’s most famous singer, life has always been a balancing act of one kind or another.
She started as a child, and performed with her acrobat father who balanced her on a chair on another chair resting only on her chin. Then later, as an icon of stage and screen during the last years of the shah, her looks and hairstyles were copied by Iranian women who wanted to look more “Googooshi,” her Farsi adjective in full.
Then came the decades of silence following Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, thwarted, only to return to the stage abroad in 2000. And now, she’s embarking on a farewell tour, adding the author as her latest reinvention as her homeland undergoes societal change yet again.
“I didn’t realize that all these challenges and struggles were seen as a balancing act,” the 75-year-old singer told The Associated Press. “If that’s what it means, then yes, I’ve spent my whole life trying to create and maintain a balance between my personal life and my artistic life.”
‘We were a hit!’
The new book of the singer, born Faegheh Atashin, is called “Googoosh: A Sinful Voice.” In it, Googoosh with the help of co-author Tara Dehlavi recounts a life shaped both by the political forces that changed Iran in the modern era and by her tumultuous personal life.
But it all started with the performance at a young age with her father, Saber Atashin, to whom the book is dedicated along with the people of Iran. Googoosh recounts that she only fell once in the shows, her father caught her. But from the first performance on the chair, Googoosh seemed bound for attention.
“They held their breath and waited in complete silence,” she recounted. “Every muscle in my body tensed. Seconds felt like an eternity. Finally, Papa slowly began to lower me slowly to the ground. When my feet touched the ground, the audience let out a sigh of relief before bursting into roaring applause. I was wallowing. And we were a hit!”
Googoosh started singing and performing in films at a young age. This included before the royal court of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who later became mortally ill and fled Iran just before the 1979 revolution.
Googoosh was tabloid fodder in Iran before the revolution. Married four times in her lifetime, her personal life has long been fascinating. And in her book, she recounts going through abortions and struggling with substance abuse around and after the revolution, including free cocaine and smoking opium. She considers suicide at one point in New York City before deciding to return to Iran under the newly formed theocracy.
“There were times where I would ask you this question and say, ‘Are you sure you want to share this?'” said Dehlavi, her co-author. “And you always said that, ‘I’m either telling my story or I’m not. I have to tell it all.’
Detention, harassment and escape
When she returned to Iran, Googoosh found herself harassed by the newly empowered theocracy, which put a lien on her house and blocked her ability to be issued a passport. The authorities banned her from performing or singing, she said, and at one point threw her in jail.
But she describes that while she tried to hide her identity in public or in private, people always pushed her to sing again, to find her voice despite the restrictions and threats.
“After the revolution, the pressure on me grew,” said Googoosh. “Since Farsi is my mother tongue and I grew up in Iran, I couldn’t adjust myself to live outside my country. I didn’t want that life. I hope that somehow I can continue to perform for my own people, inside my country.”
However, in the end, in 2000 under the government of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Googoosh was able to get a contract to perform abroad, pull the money together to pay off her bonds, get a passport and leave Iran. She never returned, but performed abroad for the last 25 years for Iranians who are similarly homesick for their country.
The Islamic race in Iran still denounces it, particularly after a 2014 music video about homosexual love, punishable by death in the country.
Iranian women are abandoning the hijab more and more
Googoosh’s new book and her farewell tour come at a time of change in Iran. More and more, Iranian women are choosing to forgo the country’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab. The death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 and the nationwide protests that followed outraged women of all ages and views in a way that few other issues have since the revolution.
But in the meantime, Iran’s economy continues to strain under international sanctions over its nuclear program. Its theocracy continues to execute people after the 12-day war with Israel, while it is also increasingly targeting intellectuals and others for arrest.
“We are seeing our youth, especially women, fighting for their most basic rights, including choosing what to wear, expressing their art freely if they have artistic talent, and living a normal life like people in other parts of the world,” said Googoosh.
“People in my country are struggling to give their families an ordinary life. They fight for clean water, clean air, and land where they can live. Our young people have grown old without ever enjoying their youth. Our people must end this painful cycle and obtain the freedoms that every human being deserves.”
But asked what her plans were once her tour ended, Googoosh left open the possibility of returning to the stage.
“Throughout my life I could hardly ever plan my future. Everything just happened to me,” she said. “We didn’t control our lives for 47 years. Everything we planned never happened, and everything that happened was never planned by us. I am no exception, and I expect to continue living this way.”
She added: “Anyway, I prefer to leave my artwork for a day when the Islamic Republic ceases to exist in my country.”