Marjan

Marjan — Biography

Born Shahla Safi Zamir in Tehran to a Ministry of Transport official, Ali Safi Zamir, and a primary-school teacher, Kobra Bahmani Tabari, Marjan was an Iranian singer and actress who worked as a child reporter for the magazine "Etelaat Koodakan" at twelve. After a first marriage to radio narrator Mehdi Ali-Mohammadi, with whom she had a daughter, Poopak, she entered cinema at twenty-one in Ahmad Shirazi's A World Full of Hope, adopting the name Marjan because the name Shahla already belonged to another actress, Shahla Riahi. Following a divorce, she married Fereydoun Jourak, who encouraged her toward singing; her adaptation of a Turkish song as "Kavir-e Del" made her famous, and she eventually left acting to concentrate on music. The 1979 Islamic Revolution ended that career: she was arrested in 1980 for performing a song, then arrested again in 1982 on charges of supporting the People's Mojahedin organization (MEK) and held in Evin Prison until 1990, after which she was barred from leaving the country for another seventeen years. She fled to Dubai in 2001 and later to the United States, settling in Los Angeles, where she continued performing songs of opposition in exile before dying of a heart attack following surgery on 6 June 2020.