For Googoosh, Iran’s most-famous singer, life always has been balancing act of one kind or another.
It began as a child, performing with her acrobat father who balanced her on a chair atop another chair resting only on his 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,” a Farsi adjective all her own.
Then came the decades of silence after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, barred from performing, only to return to the stage abroad in 2000. And now, embarking on a farewell tour, she’s adding author as her latest reinvention as her homeland undergoes a societal change yet again.
“I did not realize that all these challenges and struggles were considered a balancing act,” the 75-year-old singer told The Associated Press. “If that is what it means, then yes, I have spent my entire life trying to create and maintain a balance between my personal life and my artistic life.”
‘We were a hit!’
The new book by 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 by both the political forces that have changed Iran in the modern era and her tumultuous personal life.
But it all began with performing at an early age with her father, Saber Atashin, to whom the book is dedicated along with the people of Iran. Googoosh recounts falling only once in the shows, her father catching her. But from the first performance atop the chair, Googoosh appeared bound for the spotlight.
“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 gently toward the ground. When my feet touched the floor, the audience sighed in relief before they erupted into roaring applause. I had survived. And we were a hit!”
Googoosh began singing and performing in films at a young age. That included before the royal court of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who later became mortally ill and fled Iran just before the 1979 revolution.
Googoosh had been tabloid fodder in Iran before the revolution. Married four times in her life, her personal life long had been a fascination. And within her book, she recounts undergoing abortions and battling with substance abuse around and after the revolution, including freebasing cocaine and smoking opium. She considers suicide at one point in New York City before deciding to go back to Iran under its newly formed theocracy.
“There were times where I would ask this question to you and say, ‘Are you sure you want to share this?’” Dehlavi, her co-author said. “And you always said that, ‘I’m either I’m telling my story or I’m not. I have to I have to tell it all.’”
Detention, harassment and an escape
Returning to Iran, Googoosh found herself harassed by its newly empowered theocracy, which put a lien on her home and blocked her ability to be issued a passport. Authorities banned her from performing or singing, she recounted, and at one point imprisoned her
But she describes while trying 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,” Googoosh said. “Since Farsi is my mother tongue and I grew up in Iran, I could not adjust to living outside my country. I did not want that life. I hoped I could somehow continue performing for my own people, inside my own country.”
Ultimately though, 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 liens, obtain a passport and leave Iran. She never returned, but has performed abroad for the last 25 years for Iranians who similarly are homesick for their country.
Islamic hard-liners within Iran still denounce her, particularly after 2014 music video about homosexual love, punishable by death in the country.
Iran’s women increasingly abandon hijab
Googoosh’s new book and her farewell tour come at a time of change in Iran. More and more, Iranian women choose to forgo the country’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab. The 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and the nationwide protests that followed enraged women of all ages and views in a way few other issues have since the revolution.
But meanwhile, Iran’s economy continues to strain under international sanctions over its nuclear program. Its theocracy continues to execute people in the wake of the 12-day war with Israel, while also increasingly targeting intellectuals and others with 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,” Googoosh said.
“People in my country are struggling to give their families an ordinary life. They struggle for clean water, clean air, and land where they can live. Our young people grew old without ever enjoying their youth. Our people must end this painful cycle and gain the freedoms every human being deserves.”
But asked what her plans were once her tour ended, Googoosh left open the possibility of once again getting back on the stage.
“Throughout my life I have almost never been able to plan my future. Everything has simply happened to me,” she said. “We have not controlled our own lives for 47 years. Whatever we planned never happened, and whatever happened was never planned by us. I am no exception, and I expect to continue living this way.”
She added: “Still, I prefer to leave my artistic work for a day when the Islamic Republic no longer exists in my country.”
