Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming

For her, Paris is the source of great poetic inspiration, and, after gathering up pages of her writings, she sends a manuscript off to a self-publication company and soon receives a box full of her newly printed book: My eye full: poems by a person who has never been to France. Rosie has plenty of initiative and distributes her books “old school . . . hand to hand” (p. 12), leaving copies in book stores. But, poets usually need a day job, and Rosie is no exception. She works in a fast-food joint, and it’s while mopping the floor at work that she tells Kelly, a co-worker, that she’s been invited to a poetry festival in Iran. Exactly how this has happened is a bit of a mystery until the end of the book.

Rosie lives in North Vancouver with her grandparents, and they are thrilled when they learn of her status as a published poet, opening a long-stored bottle of champagne to celebrate. But, they’re not quite as thrilled with her plan to fly to Iran. Their granddaughter has lived with them since she was very young; we learn later in the story that Rosie’s mother is dead and her father seems to have abandoned them. Nevertheless, they see her off to the airport, and the farewell is tearful. As the plane prepares to land in Shiraz, all the women onboard don headscarves. Rosie doesn’t have a headscarf; “luckily, Granny thinks of everything” (p. 53) and, opening the package her grandmother gave her before leaving, Rosie finds a full-length chador (not exactly the right clothing choice, but Granny meant well). Once through customs and immigration, she finds someone holding a sign with her name on it. It’s a driver, who takes her to her hotel, and amidst the magical sounds of the beautiful and historic city of Shiraz, Rosie drifts off.

The poetry festival is the beginning of a multi-faceted adventure, a journey in which Rosie seeks her poetic voice as well as answers to questions about her mixed heritage. Her mother was Chinese Canadian and her father, Persian. Rosie knows only a few words of both languages, and, while in Iran, she is drawn to finding out more about Persian culture and possibly, her father. On Day 1 of the festival, Rosie offers her first poetic recitation, a lengthy, wide-ranging narrative that is not greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm. In the reception that follows, she meets the Cyrus Kazimi, director of the festival, and Rosie learns that her dad’s family name is “well known . . . here in Iran . . . in Shiraz”. (p. 87) Cyrus promises to makes some inquiries, and then Rosie heads off on a tour bus with other poets at the festival, discovering that Iran is a country rich in poetic tradition. In the course of tours, meals, and in conversation with other poets, she learns that she does have a poetic voice: “you just have to find out how to express it fully. This is the journey we are all on. It takes a lifetime – sometimes, many lifetimes – to learn our own story.” (p. 107)

Poetry is often a vehicle for political expression, and all poetry is rooted in the culture of the poet who writes it. One of Rosie’s fellow poets is Di Di, a Chinese poet, who lived for a time in exile after the violence in Tiananmen Square, and he has now returned to his homeland, continuing to write about the many changes that life can bring. One of his poems is called “Mah”, a word that can mean many things: “horse. Mother. Part of a sentence. A bridge from one word to another.” (p. 117) The word resonates with Rosie; poetic expression is powerful, and one word can forge so many connections, both within a culture and beyond. Iran is, of course, a country in which politics have been volatile, and she soon comes to understand how geo-politics changed her father’s life and, by extension, hers.

Early in the morning on the second day of the festival, seemingly by chance, she meets a man who was in military school with her father, Mehran Ardalan. These young airmen trained in America, and when the Islamic revolution happened, most of their cohort chose to stay there. Rosie’s father and his friend elected to return to Iran, and, because of the Ardalan’s family ties to the Shah, he became unemployable. But, Mehran, too, had a poetic soul, and, as her father’s friend relates the story, Rosie comes to understand that her dad had difficult choices to make. Deserting the military, he fled to Turkey. Although living in a detainment camp, one day, he went out to a beach and saw beautiful woman lying on the sand, reading a book of poetry. It was Caroline, Rosie’s mother. He recites the poetry of Rumi, the Persian poet, and she responds with more of Rumi’s poetry, but in English. It’s one of those incredible love stories: they marry and come to Canada, living for a while with Rosie’s grandparents. One day, Mehran receives word that his mother is gravely ill and he returns to Iran. When he tries to contact Rosie, her grandparents won’t let him talk to his daughter. Rosie’s only tangible connection with Mehran is the wristwatch that he left with her grandparents.

A telephone conversation with her grandparents about that watch reveals more about her parents’ love story and the reasons that the grandparents broke off contact with their son-in-law: “our only child graduates from university, [goes to Europe], and comes back, pregnant with you and married to this man with the saddest eyes in the world.” (Pp. 224-225) Rosie’s birth brought great joy into everyone’s life, even though life in Canada was difficult for Mehran. His return to Iran caused concern. “We didn’t know what would happen if he went back to Iran. How could we? We didn’t know why he had left in the first place. All we knew was that he had fled . . .” (p. 226) The situation ended badly for both Caroline and Mehran; on the way back from the airport, crying uncontrollably, Caroline lost control of her car, dying as a result of a head-on collision, and, once back in Iran, Mehran is imprisoned for several years. When he contacts Rosie’s grandparents, asking that they send her to him, they refuse. “We didn’t think it was safe. We had already lost our only baby, Caroline. We weren’t going to lose you.” (p. 235) They had acted out of love and a determination to protect Rosie, going so far as to relocate from Toronto to Vancouver.

Family history is always nuanced and often burdened with secrets. Angry at her grandparents for having withheld the truth, Rosie is determined that she will find her father. Hampered by her lack of fluency in Farsi, the search takes her down some apparent dead ends, but, at last, she locates the Ardalan family home, shows an elderly lady her father’s watch, and the door opens to a group of women who have been waiting for her. The women – aunts and cousins – introduce themselves, embrace her as family, and accompany her to the poetry festival. First, they ditch that chador and find a new outfit for her; Rosie always wears pink (with that name, what other colour would do?), and attired in a modest pink skirt and head scarf, she heads off to the festival with her entourage.

Standing in front of the microphone, Rosie begins by acknowledging her gratitude, not only for the hospitality of the festival’s hosts, but also for the opportunity to find the connection between her Chinese and Persian identities. Poised and confident, the poem she recites is her poem, a poem about her past, her present, and her future as a poet. She has found her poetic voice, but, most importantly, she has also found her father. Sitting in the audience is the man with sad eyes, holding a copy of his daughter’s collection: My eye full; poems by a person who has never been to France. He calls out her name, “Rosie junam” (Rosie, my life) and, although it is a dark, moonless night, Rosie stands in the spotlight, reaching out to the man who engendered her poetic self. She’s not in Paris, but maybe, some day . . .

There is much to like about Rosie Ming. A teen of mixed heritage, living with very protective grandparents, she is determined, sensitive, and resilient. She’s dealing with many of the typical stresses of adolescence: determining who she is, chafing against the good intentions of her grandparents, and trying to understand the complexity of life. Unlike all the other characters in this graphic novel, Rosie is rendered as a stick figure with a white face, but it’s an expressive face. In contrast to the graphics of Rosie’s story, the frames telling of Iranian history and the poems recited at the festival are drawn by a variety of artists, highlighting the uniqueness of each poet’s expression. Window Horses really does provide a window into the poetic culture of Iran, a rich culture of which many readers would be otherwise unaware. Poetry is a powerful literary medium, regardless of one’s cultural background.

The book is based on an animated feature film, and, at times, I really felt that the transition from film to stills didn’t quite work. The sequences in which poems at the festival were presented by non-English speaking poets would have benefitted from subtitling, as would the Farsi dialogue throughout the story. Context did not always make clear the content of the conversation. As an adult, I was very conscious of the historical and political events to which Iran was subject, first during the Islamic Revolution and, later, the Iran-Iraq war. However, I doubt that many young readers would pick up on the visual subtleties in the frames depicting those events. I didn’t have a really good sense of the age of reader for which Window Horses is intended. Rosie seems to be in her mid-teens, perhaps 15 or even 16, and I don’t think that the book would work for a reader much younger than 14. s well, I think that it would appeal primarily to a female readership, although there are interesting male characters in the story, notably, Dietmar, the German poet who offends the festival’s hosts with his poem about dogs in a restaurant.

The back cover of Window Horses states that the story is “about love (it’s always about love . . .) – love of family, poetry, history, culture.” It’s not a simple story, though, and, as a book rather than as an award-winning feature film, I think that it would appeal to a fairly limited range of female graphic novel readers.