My name is Alexandra Solmaz Sharabianlou
You can call me Lexie (and if you forget, you can just peek up at the url).
Back in my fetal era, when my parents were discussing names, they made a key naming decision.
If I showed up on delivery day as a girl, my mom would get to name me.
If I was a boy, my dad would get to name me.
Sounds fair, right?
Wrong. The game was rigged.
My mom made this deal after she’d already gotten the ultrasound results. Let’s just say she wasn’t pleased with my dad’s contributions to the naming discussions (Sebastian) and decided to take matters into her own hands. So, even before I arrived, Mom chose “Alexandra.”
She liked “Alexandra” because it was the name of princesses and reminiscent of a childhood best friend’s name. While she was pregnant, she wrote letters to me in a violet-wreathed diary. Dear Alexandra was written in secret and maternal anticipation, like a magic spell written over and over again. (I still have it.)
Then I arrived, and so there was Alexandra. But “Alexandra” is a lot of name for someone with no teeth. So I also got, “Lexie.”
This always felt auspicious to me considering I turned out to be such a lover of words. “Lexicon” means a collection of words, “hyperlexia” means a proclivity to reading voraciously at a young age. I always wondered, do our names make us?
Little me, reading to my littler sister.
My dad got my middle name privileges as a consolation prize—Solmaz. It means “unwithering.” It’s Persian and a little bit Turkish (like my dad’s side of the family). I love my middle name. It’s got two syllables, ends with a z, is easy to pronounce but still very otherworldly. I wound up sharing the name with some incredible Iranian artists—Iranian-American poet, Solmaz Sharif and Iranian photographer, Solmaz Daryani.
Do our names make us?
Then, of course, there’s Sharabianlou. “Sharab” is Farsi for wine, combining the old words for “sweet” and “water.” Sharab is old Persian, according to my Farsi teacher. Predating the Arab invasion of Persia in 633 C.E. “Sharabianlou” means “from the place of wine.”
Sharabian is actually a place. A small region in northern Iran where there have been Sharabianlous for generations and generations, maybe even since before the BC/AD time change. My father told me that when he was a kid, he and his family would occasionally visit Sharabian from their home in nearby Tabriz.
When I asked him what it was like, he said, “Heaven.”
According to his stories, the place of our name is lush and green. A perfect place for picnics on Persian rugs and the best gheymeh (tomato lentil stew) in the world. He said the people were warm, better than family, coming out of their homes to say hello and kiss your cheeks. That the water runs clearer, the tea tastes sweeter, and the nights beautiful beyond imagining.
A snippet of Sharabian from Google maps
I would love to see the place of my name one day.
But I probably never will.
The Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t the most welcoming place to women—their own or daughters born of Iranian nationals.
Over the years, dozens of Americans and dual-citizenship Iranians have been arrested on “espionage” charges while on Iranian soil. Some of them come home after arduous negotiations. Some are detained indefinitely. Or worse. It’s hard to justify a trip to my father’s homeland when the stakes are so high.
Then, there’s the whole…how should I put it…?
The gay thing.
The Human Dignity Trust reports that in Iran, homosexuality is considered a crime. The maximum sentence is death. Any outward expressions of queerness (even on social media or in art) could be a guarantee of indefinite incarceration if not execution.
My debut novel, The Blue Moon Cafe and 24-Hour Occult Emporium, is about a sorceress who loves to cook and is falling for the cafe’s only human regular.
She, like me, identifies as queer.
Yup, this it. My low-key coming out, here on the Internet for all the world to see. I’m attracted to many genders though I wound up happily married to a very nice straight man (hi Husband Guy). I see myself as queer, (bisexual, specifically) and so, because I don’t believe you can ever really separate the artist from the art, I write queer stories.
But when the publishing deal for this book was imminent, I realized I had a choice to make.
Choice 1: Publish under a pen name and, by doing so, protect my slim chance of visiting my father’s beautiful, dangerous, mysterious homeland. My homeland.
Choice 2: Publish under my real name and likely, sign away any chance of seeing that place of sweet water, of laughter and saffron and family I’ve never met. The heart of a culture I love down to my bones.
I thought about it for a long time. Played with pen name generators until I was irritable and head achey. I even emailed a wonderful queer Iranian-American romance writer to ask him about these choices.
He said (paraphrased), “I’ve worried about this same thing. Was I ruining my chance of ever seeing Iran by putting my name on my books? But in the end, I realized I didn’t want to visit a place that would reject me for my work and my identity. As much as I want to see the version of Iran that existed before the current regime and I long for what the country could be, I don’t want to see today’s Iran.”
Every word rang true in the quietest, most honest parts of me.
Did you know ‘Lexie” is an anagram for ‘exile?’
Do our names make us?
In some ways, they do.
Do you know what it’s like growing up with a 12-letter, shockingly unique last name? I’ve corrected every substitute teacher since kindergarten on pronunciation. I learned to speak it slowly, cherishing every sound and never hiding its full-mouthed vowels and looping consonants. I’ve learned to take questions about it and my origins with grace, sharing the pride I have for Persian culture and people.
About the author, early days
My name made me brave. It made me proud. It gave me mettle before I could even spell it.
My name, in so many ways, made me who I am.
And writing this novel, this book of my heart, and not putting my extraordinary, truly one-of-a-kind name on its spine wouldn’t be the safe choice. It would be cowardice.
That’s not what my name made me to be.
I will always want to write about being Iranian-American—my wonder, my confusion, my love for this mixed-up identity. I will always want to write about the Iran of my family’s hearts, the one I can visit through their stories. I will hope, one day, that there will be an Iran I can return to without hiding who I am or what I’ve accomplished. But that day is not today.
In the meantime, I’ll see where else this beautiful, heartbreaking name will take me.
Hopefully, if I keep telling stories, that name can mean something to others like me.
Something like home.
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