A significant portion of this book involves how Sahar expresses her dissatisfaction with her father while at the same time tries to understand her own role in her relationship with him. Sahar’s father clearly loves her, yet his love his attenuated by grief over Sahar’s mother. There are so many other types of love present here as well. Yet I don’t think it would be fair to write Nasrin off as shallow versus Sahar we simply don’t get access to Nasrin’s thoughts or feelings beyond what Sahar reports to us. She is head-over-heels for Nasrin in a way that Nasrin might not be about her-Nasrin cares for her, but I got the impression it was in a more egoistical, “I like who I am when Sahar is around me” kind of way. Farizan only gives us access to Sahar’s perspective as a narrator, so she is almost certainly unreliable in some ways. This is a story about love, but it is also about selfishness. When she learns that Iran recognizes being transgender as a “medical condition” and will pay for the surgeries involved in medical transition, Sahar thinks she has hit upon the solution: she can’t be with Nasrin as a woman, but what if she were instead a man? As Sahar becomes more and more obsessed with enacting this plan, she gets involved both with trans Iranians as well as the seedy underworld her cousin, Ali, is wrapped up in. She is determined to find a way that she can be with Nasrin. Nasrin’s parents arrange her betrothal to a doctor doing his residency, starting a ticking clock for Sahar. They also might be gay-that is, they love each other and are attracted to one another, but in Iran this is illegal.

Sahar and Nasrin are 17-year-old Iranian girls on the cusp of womanhood. Finally, it is a story about the outsize importance we place upon gender. It is a reminder that, in the face of incredible oppression, people always find a way to strive to be together, to hope, to have enough. Ultimately a tragedy of sorts, If You Could Be Mine is nevertheless filled with promises of new beginnings. Sara Farizan poses a thorny problem here and asks very real questions about the lengths to which one might go to be with one’s forbidden love. Do not let the slim form factor and thinness of this book fool you.

If you could be mine by sara farizan