The Temporary Bride: A Memoir Of Love And Food In Iran, by Jennifer Klinec

To the credit of the author, this book does not whitewash her or her husband (spoiler alert) and make them more appealing as people or make their behavior more appealing. Written in the vein of other travel/romantic memoirs of a similar kind, this book finds Jennifer single and devoted to creating authentic food recipes as a teacher in London, and when she travels to Iran, it is pretty obvious that she is going to get more than she bargains for. To her credit, if she is not exactly entirely sympathetic, the account is a moving one of interest born out of initial incomprehension and misunderstanding, and Jennifer’s sincerity about learning food and Vahic’s sincerity concerning his struggles to find a place in his world in Yazd create a compelling picture of two people adrift in dealing with their parents and the expectations of their lives, and thrown together in circumstances that end up demonstrating both of them to be a fitting match for the other. If this book is not in any way glamorous, it is at least a plausible picture of two people looking to escape who find their way to each other, even if it creates plenty of problems along the way.

The book itself is a relatively short memoir, and while it provides the author’s life story, at least in brief, before she went to Iran, Vahid’s past is a bit more sketchily drawn. He spent his two years in the army, on the urging of his father, and got a degree in engineering, but finds himself adrift and unable to find a job, in large part because of his tangled relationship with a somewhat vulnerable mother whose recent experience surviving cancer left her dramatically weakened. While this appears to be what gave the author the entrance into spending time with her to learn authentic Yazdi cooking traditions, it also creates a situation where a man and a woman, both of them somewhat adrift in their lives, and with a longing both to love and be loved on the one hand and to belong on the other, find each other and end up creating a host of problems for themselves and their loved ones. Vahid’s passion, in particular, creates problems for himself with the local morality police, and the solutions that both of them choose only end up creating more difficulty for each other, including the threat of having to leave the country and the danger of breaking up a family, all for a relationship that has, at least by the middle of the story, only the dignity of a temporary marriage, given by someone who appears to speak French but neither English nor Farsi, for reasons that are not exactly clear.

If this book does not make anyone look particularly good, it does appear to be a pretty vivid and true-to-life picture of what happens when a spirited but principled Westerner gets under the skin and draws the interest of a lovelorn Iranian who first believes that he needs a much more beautiful woman to be his wife, and then realizes that certain aspects of the West can compensate for apparent lapses in physical beauty. The picture of how the two spend their time avoiding morality police in Esfahan, spending time in an apartment in central Tehran, and seeking romance in Kashan, all while the two of them seek to simultaneously enjoy their relationship but also keep it private, is told with all the sordid details one would imagine. It is by no means a romantic or glamorous portrayal, but the grim reality of what is seen throughout this book really gives the author a sense of credibility in portraying the unrecognized desperation that drove both of them to find in each other kindred souls. If it is perhaps not the best basis for a relationship, one can see why the two got together, and they have enough stubbornness to make one believe that they could stay together as well, a Canadian girl from an immigrant background whose parents prized themselves on making money while being somewhat neglectful and an overly sheltered village boy from Iran, both struggling to find a place in this world.