GOOGOOSH REVEALS HER 'SINFUL VOICE'

THE POP DIVA, ONCE SILENCED BY IRANIAN AUTHORITIES AND DESCRIBED AS THE NATION'S OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, FINALLY TELLS HER STORY IN A NEW MEMOIR

- POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR

THE FIRST TIME Googoosh was asked to write a memoir, the request came from Iran's Islamic Republic interrogators. Their goal was for the pop superstar to relay a "cautionary tale." This, of course, did not sit right with the beloved diva who was the Olivia Newton-John of Iran's music world until the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979 — and all female performers were banned from singing in public.

"I didn't want to cooperate with them," Googoosh tells me as she reflects on the sham memoir the agents tried to get her to write. "I hated to tell my story to them." Decades after refusing to put her name on a government-sanctioned lie, Iran's biggest pop star has finally broken her silence. Her new book, "Googoosh: A Sinful Voice," was not a choice, she writes, but a "necessary duty."

The lyrical story chronicles her life from birth to the present, including Googoosh’s four marriages and moments of joy and despair spent under decades of house arrest while Tehran was rocked by war. It’s shockingly candid, revealing multiple abortions, drug abuse (including her own) and chilling moments of suicidal ideation. "If people hate me when they read it, it’s OK. That was my life," Googoosh says. She asserts she didn’t want to write something just to be pleasant. She also considers her home country tenderly, and in her book notes, "Iran is part of my being. You can take Googoosh out of Iran, but you can't take Iran out of Googoosh."