I personally was never quite into the romance genre. But having read Iranian Canadian author Arezou Amin’s magnificent debut novel, The Aroosi Arrangment, coming out October 14, I realized just how badly I, and many other SWANA people, need to have this sort of representation.
As a Kurdish American reader, reading Arezou’s story of two Persian Canadians finding each other, I resonated deeply with the shared experience of Iranic folks finding love in the midst of their own insecurities and societal pressures.
Toronto based Sharzad Daryai, the heroine of the tale, needs a date to her broth Shayan’s wedding. She’s quite simply had enough of family and family friends pestering her on her love life. Ultimately, she strikes a deal with fellow Persian Canadian Sam, with whom she stepped on the wrong foot, to pretend to be her boyfriend so as to fend off the pestering. But do they have more in common than they realize, and what will they uncover about one another?
We interviewed Arezou on her inspiration for the novel and how she imparted her own experiences onto her main characters. We also discuss the oft-ignored topic of demisexuality she highlights through her characters, how Sharzad and Sam engage with their culture and community, body image, and much more in this superb rendering of a West Asian romance. We also discuss the rising trend of SWANA romance in the literary field. Check out our full conversation below the cover image.
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity
NOC: Mobarak on The Aroosi Arrangement! So I have to tell you, I’m not usually a romance reader. However, I found this book very accessible. How did you aim to make this book accessible to non-romance readers like me?
Arezou: Is it bad if I say that was not my aim? I am very deeply entrenched in romance. It’s my favorite genre. It’s what I read the most of. So that had not been a thought when I went into it, but I think romance as a genre is a lot more accessible than people give it credit for, particularly like contemporary romance, historical romance, maybe contemporary a little more so if you’re really not the type to read outside of the contemporary frame. It’s such an accessible genre because it’s human interaction, it’s communication, it’s stuff that everybody does on a day to day basis. And then when you get into more genre romance, then maybe it requires a little more familiarity to really get into it. But I think it’s just it’s an accessible genre, so making it accessible to non romance readers, and you’re not the first non romance reader who read an advanced copy, who told me that despite them not being a fan of the genre, they were really into the book. So I think it’s just more accessible than people give it credit for.
Totally. So on the substance of the novel itself, how did you approach developing the backstories for Sharzad and Sam respectively, and what was important to you in highlighting their different experiences?
I think any diaspora kid knows that your experience of your background is not the same experience as your friend, as a sibling. Everybody experiences this differently. So going into this is going to be a walk through my process. So initially, going into it, Sharzad was more my point of view, the you have access to it, and you sort of feel comfortable in the space you inhabit within the diaspora, even though it’s not as deeply entrenched as some may be, and it’s not as removed as some may be. She’s just pretty middle of the road and she’s pretty happy about it. And then Sam was going to represent the counterpoint. He wants to be more deeply entrenched than he is, and he’s not happy with the space he inhabits. And then, as I went through developing their backstories, I realized that I have more in common with Sam. I think in that respect, in that I am not always happy with the space I inhabit, and I wish I was a little more entrenched in it.
So then developing their stories from there became much easier, because then it was sort of both of them were speaking to a very relatable experience for me, in that you’re happy with what you have, but you wish it was different, and then so that’s their their cultural backstories, and then their their personal backstories. I have a very close family. I have a very large family, so that kind of comes from there. And Sam’s came by accident. His familial dynamic, because I written his mom in and not yet written a dad for him, and then, and then it’s that weird thing of, I don’t know if you’ve heard other authors say this, but it feels they’re talking to you the characters I kept looking at someone, “But why are you like this?” And I was like, “Oh, his dad’s not in the book, because his dad’s not here.” It was like they told me that, and I’m like, great. And then this sort of also informs his wanting to be more entrenched, because he feels like he’s missed out because of XYZ reasons. So it all fell together very organically. I hope that made sense.
It absolutely did. So I have another, sort of, I’ll almost say meta question, because when I when I step back, I realized, while reading the book, the only other SWANA romance story I’ve ever really encountered, or really set in western English speaking media that I could think of, was Aladdin, between two West Asian individuals or North African individuals. That was the only one I could think of, and I that was a mind blowing moment for me. So I obviously might be disregarding other Iranian or other SWANA authors. But still, in general, why do you think that SWANA romance stories in Western markets haven’t been as prominent as they should be,
Diana Quincy, Amalie Howard and Evie Dunmore have been in the romance writing game for years. Nadia El-Fassi just released her second book, and Evie has four, but Diana and Amalie in particular have very robust bibliographies. Diana Quincy, who’s Palestinian American, we have Evie Dunmore, who’s Lebanese. Amalie Howard has some Persian ancestry, and she’s got a series out now. So I think it is overall becoming more predominant. My initial joke off the top was, we don’t see a lot of this because we were all told to be doctors or engineers. Nobody was writing romance. But I feel like there is more out there than we realize, and it’s a larger market issue of they are not accessible to us because they’re self published and they don’t have the marketing budget and stuff like that. Simone Soltani is another one who is a Black Iranian author who who is currently writing contemporary romance. Nadia El-Fassi, also writes paranormal romance. We’re having a moment, we’re emerging.
I have to check those out. So again on the main characters, how do you balance inputting aspects of yourself into Sharzad and Sam and letting them have their own uniqueness?
I think for any character, you come from a place of ‘write what you know,’ and you can imagine what somebody’s experience would be, and they both certainly have experiences that I do not share. So these are not two sides of the same self insert. That’s not what this is, but it’s I find, if you take a truth that you know, and you put it in somebody else in who lives in a different environment and whose experience of the world and of life is different, you’re like, Well, if this truth exists in this person, how does it then shape who they are? And then obviously the way they make their own choices is different, and the way they engage with the world is different from that one, like familiar to me, kernel of of their personality or their feelings or how they how they go about things,
Absolutely so I found that you portray the Iranian Canadian community in this as incredibly grounded, so relatable, just going through the daily motions. So why was it important to you to portray this diaspora community in the way that you did?
It’s funny, I’ve talked before about when you see characters of your background in media that the background sort of defines them as a person. And I was looking, in general, in media for more characters that are, incidentally Iranian. They just happen to be Iranian, or all of that, but they’re just kind of going about their day. And that was what I’d initially set out to do with this. And then looking back on it, I did inject a lot more of that in it than I think I’d initially set out to do. But then then that’s when you realize that that is just a part of who they are, that’s a part of their day to day. And the way I depict the diaspora is not everybody’s experience of it, but this is my experience of it, which is very grounded. It’s people who are walking this line between the homeland they left behind and the place they’ve chosen to live and raise their kids and eventually raise their grandkids and all of that. And then it was important to show this sort of side of people who have made their home here for some time. There’s a huge influx of Iranians coming to, like Canada, where I am now, but there’s a huge influence that has been here for decades. And then, that’s the life I am familiar with, and that’s the life I wanted to to bring to life, because I feel like we don’t see a lot of that kind of like settled diaspora experience,
Totally. So again, on Sharzad and Sam. You know, we have this premise that Sharzad, she needs a date to her brother, Shayan’s wedding. And Sam happens to fit the bill. They’re sort of like a rivals to lovers, if I’m getting that right, sort of dynamic at play. What in the first place inspired you to write this story, and what do you hope, like readers will be taking out of it?
So the inspiration came from the fact that one of my best friends got married in September 2018 and my cousin was getting married on the exact same day the next year. So I was at my friend’s wedding going, I have one year, exactly one year, to find a date to my cousin’s wedding. Didn’t work out. There was no there was no Sam for me to blackmail into taking me to the wedding. But that was where the kernel of the idea came from. Was, what would somebody do if they because, because my cousin had showed me the guest list and she put my name plus one, and I’m like, “Who’s the plus one? “And she’s like, “You got a year find somebody.” So my thought was somebody who has to find somebody in an allotted amount of time to take to a family wedding, What would she do to do if it’s not working out in a conventional way? So that’s where, that’s where it came from. And then what I hope people take from it, oh, goodness, I think, I think what I want people to take from this at the end of the day is, if this is the kind of thing you want, if love is the sort of thing you want, I want people to leave and to hope that there is somebody out there who will love you in the way that you want to be loved and that you deserve to be loved.
You have in the book the sort of preamble introductory text that talks about body image as it pertains to the Iranian diaspora. And throughout the novel, particularly through Shahrazad, we go through great detail about body insecurity. So tell us why that was important for you.
Oh, this one is purely selfish. This one is because I think anybody from certain communities can relate to the fact that if you gain five pounds, somebody will notice, somebody will comment on it. And it is, it is the line that separates you from, being a desirable adult. Once you cross a certain line, then you pass that you’re no longer a desirable adult, and Sharzad is, I hope, somebody who is generally fairly confident in the way she looks and likes the way she looks and knows she looks like a knockout in a dress. But when you hear something enough, you start to internalize it, even if you don’t want to. So that was, I didn’t want to be somebody who hates her body and who is only, who only finds love for herself through a man’s eyes, like she has that she doesn’t need him for it, but to just sort of because it doesn’t ever go away. And nobody can really, well, can, I swear, nobody could ever be like, “Well, f*&# you and f*&# your opinions. And this is how I look,” because that’s not realistic for diaspora people. When you do listen to the aunties, and you do hear what they say, even if you don’t want to, and all of that. So I so I wanted to leave the note that this does deal with that to some extent, because I know there are some people who just don’t want to engage with that kind of thing, and that’s okay. With that kind of thing, and that’s okay, but yeah, it was important for me to be like she is a very desirable woman, and she knows how how gorgeous she is, but it does when, when you hear something enough, then it does start to affect you, no matter how confident you are.
Yeah, exactly. So this book also covers sex and sexuality in a way I’ve never encountered almost any Iranian or other SWANA set media. So what was it like for you to write these steamy scenes? I have to ask, knowing that, unfortunately, so many in our community still tend to view this as some sort of taboo, whether they’re religious or not, or what have you.
I don’t come from a particularly conservative family, but they have joked that I should make the “grandma cut.” But so the actual writing of it was fine. I come off of a proud fan fiction tradition where, by the time I came to this, was not my first rodeo, but in in terms of knowing that people in the diaspora are going to read this, and yes, they can be fairly conservative for whatever reason. Part of it is I’m glad because I was never the scandalous teenager, and I’m finally glad to be doing something scandalous. And part of it is just it sort of goes back to what I was saying before. These two are adults, they are sexual beings. They’re sexually attracted to each other, and they’re going to act on that and it I know not every romance novel has open door sex in it, but this was something I wanted for the two of them, so it simply is, and people are going to like people. People can pretend that we’re like above this. We’re not above this.
Yeah, it’s just, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just what happens between two adult, consenting adults who are so inclined. The book also explores demisexuality, which doesn’t get explored anywhere near enough in pop culture. Can you elaborate on that, please?
So from the outset, I knew Sharzad was demisexual, and that sort of played into part of her struggle with with finding a partner, and that it is very, very difficult to date while demisexual. I am definitely speaking from experience, because especially the pace of modern dating is very hookup culture driven, and that’s just incompatible with demisexuality. And then Sam was another thing, where it sort of came to me as I developed his character, where I’m like, well, he also doesn’t strike me as the hook up kind of guy, even if he is a recovering finance bro. That doesn’t seem to be where he’s at. And then, you know, demisexuality, asexuality is a spectrum. Lots of people experience it differently. So then I felt if they are both on this spectrum somewhere and just have different experiences of it, then that makes for a very interesting dynamic, because for her, it really informs her dating life as a whole, because it’s constant advances from people who would like to have a sexual relationship, and she’s just not interested because she doesn’t know them like that. But for Sam, he has this sort of male privilege in being a demisexual man who can express interest in a partner, and they’ll go out and he will not want to be sexually active with them quickly and to them, that’s just he’s doing the gentlemanly thing, and he never really has to explain this to anybody. He can simply be demisexual, and they don’t need to know. Whereas for her it’s, it’s sort of the first thing she needs to tell people. So just kind of exploring them from different like from how their genders affect it, to how they’re different places on the spectrum. I hope I have done it justice.
I think you did truly. I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure many others will while reading the novel. And my last question for you is a bit of a fun one. I know you got asked this, or you were been exploring this on Instagram stories, but what ultimately is the song that you would set for The Aroosi Arrangement?
So I so from the beginning it was “You are in Love” by Taylor Swift, because it’s it’s slow, like the lyrics just really fit them. So I’ve maintained that this is their song from the beginning, because it’s just such a sweet little thing about falling in love with your best friend. But ultimately, I think Ed Sheerans “Azizam” accidentally became the song of the book, because I really like the song, and I genuinely really like this, it just went hand in hand, and then I had two friends, who do not know each other, on two separate occasions refer to the song as “the song from your book.” They did not know who sang it. They didn’t remember what it was called. It was just the song from your book. And I’m like, “Okay, I think I really should have thanked Ed Sheeran.”
The Aroosi Arrangement is available at bookstores October 14.