Cindy Davies
The Revolutionary’s Cousin
Freedom flows for Zahra, but suddenly it’s ebbing.
Zahra Ghafoori, an Afghan widow with a troubled past, plans to leave Tehran with her fiancé, wealthy architect Karim Konari, and her son Ahmad. Living through the post-revolutionary challenges in 1979 Iran, Zahra is anxious to settle with them in America. The dramatic reappearance of her revolutionary cousin Firzun, whom she believed dead in a bomb blast, changes everything. My second novel The Revolutionary’s Cousin continues the story of Karim, Zahra and Firzun the main protagonists in The Afghan Wife, as they escape from Iran and settle in both the USA and Australia.
I’ve also written a short piece about how Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre influenced some of the incidents in The Revolutionary’s Cousin. You can read this in my blog post: The Jane Eyre connection.
Zahra’s Story
She has to start a new life in Australia. She and Ahmad are taken to a migrant hostel 70km from Sydney. But Firzun insists she meets him at the Sydney Opera House. Zahra has to catch a train from Wollongong and nearly misses it.
The former Fairy Meadow migrant hostel is very dilapidated and due for demolition as you’ll see from the photographs. It closed in 1981 and was absorbed into the University of Wollongong.