Iranian Beauty Dreaming of Becoming a Novelist

Shirin NEZAMMAFI

Everyone who has written stories, or who wishes to write stories, will face a common challenge at some point in time regarding the difficulty of expression and choice of words. There are approximately 7,000 different languages in the world, and of these languages, Japanese - with its hiragana, katakana and kanji - is considered to be one of the more complicated. However, an Iranian woman is striving to overcome this - by writing stories in Japanese.

Shirin NEZAMMAFI, 27, came to Japan from Iran seven years ago. She has always loved writing stories and essays, in fact anything that comes to mind.

Her class mate had lived in Japan for several years and when she came back to Iran, she used to tell Shirin great stories about the country. "I realized, I already liked Japan." As an opportunity came up she was able to come to Japan and decided to take an exam to enter a Japanese university. Shirin chose Kobe University in Hyogo prefecture with the support of her family. Since she is talented in science and mathematics, she majored in Computer and System Engineering.

After arriving in Japan, she found it was quite different from what she had imagined, for example, the students around her were all shy and serious. It was difficult for her to find friends who she could speak frankly with. In particular, she found it difficult to make people understand her. She felt very perplexed trying to understand people around her. During the time she was struggling to making friends, she came across a professor.

"While I was consulting with the professor about school matters, I showed him the works I had written as a hobby and got his views and opinions. Thanks to him I could write in Japanese without shame and depressed feelings caused by my low level writing skills."

One day, Shirin was introduced to an interpretation job by a senior student who asked her to interpret for a refugee from Afghanistan. Shirin?s job was to act as an interpreter for a group supporting Afghan refugees in order to help them win a lawsuit to enable them to live in Japan.

What she saw through her job was not pretty. She found how few refugees are accepted into Japan, and that the country does not even have refugee camps. This situation, however, caused her to think many deep thoughts and led her to write a new story. She sent her story about a female Afghan refugee to a the "Literature Award for Foreign Students" competition held by the Foreign University Students Committee.

After the judging committee considered many novels and poems written in high-level Japanese by many foreign students from different countries, they unanimously selected Shirin?s novel, "Salam" for the top "Literature Award for Foreign Students" award. "I kept sending my friend so many drafts so many times for correction just before the deadline. I really thank her." Shirin is surely moving closer to her dream of becoming a novelist writing in Japanese.

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