When people ask me where I’m from, I say I’m Persian, born in Iran. I say I write and dream in English. I curse in Spanish. And after a few pints of Guinness, I dance a mighty Irish jig.
MARSHA MEHRAN WANDERED the world since she was two years old, searching for somewhere she could call home.
Her meanderings led her, in many different ways, to Ireland.
It was in Lecanvey, county Mayo – at the very edge of Europe – that the search came to an abrupt end. It wasn’t the home she sought but it was her final resting place.
On 30 April 2014, gardaí found her badly decomposing body, face down in the bedroom of her bungalow, surrounded by pans of liquid, empty water bottles, crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers.
Known in the area as a recluse, the death not only shocked the small community, it made headlines around the world. Marsha, at just 36 years of age, was an international best-selling novelist. Her first book, Pomegranate Soup, was sold in 15 different languages and was courted by a many a film maker.
Landing in Lecanvey
Lured by the inspiration of Croagh Patrick, the restless romantic was consumed by the task of writing her third novel. (Her debut had taken the world by storm but her second failed to hit the same dizzying heights).
By January 2014, she decided that self-imposed isolation in the west would facilitate the task. Her affair with Ireland had started long before that, however.
Born in Iran in 1977, Mehran’s travels began with a revolution when her parents took the family to Argentina. Settled in Buenos Aires where the family ran a café, she developed a love of food and music.
Economic unrest in the country meant a second move when Marsha was just six years old. America was the destination for the next eight years. Until Australia called.
It was a transient, unsettled life.
Fourteen years. Four continents.
Her father, Abbas, admitted in an RTÉ Doc on One programme airing today that she never had a home.
“When you don’t have a home, you don’t know what to do, how to invest in your life.”
First love
Finding a place to call home – and being rejected – was actually the beginning of Marsha’s demise.
Five years after her parents divorced in Australia, and with $200 in her pocket, she made the trip to New York. Ready for another adventure, she worked as a waitress and had dreams of writing.
It was while in Manhattan she met her husband, Irish-born bartender Christopher Collins.
“We met on a Friday, moved in together on Sunday, engaged a few weeks after that and moved to Australia four months after that,” the Mayo man told RTÉ of his wife’s impulses.
She proposed to him.
They moved every year in the early days of their marriage – flitting between the US, Australia and Ireland.
Chris was willing to follow his first love anywhere.
Eventually though, they settled in Brooklyn. Her first book had been published and she was on a high.
“I feel most myself,” she wrote about her new city.
I understand Brooklyn in my bones. The juxtaposition of so many voices, so many souls, so many foods, so many cultures. It is in this, the most American of cities, that I’ve chosen to set down roots. Because it seems to me that no other place better embodies the world.
“…when people ask where I live, I tell them Brooklyn. Brooklyn is my home.”
But it wasn’t meant to be. A minor visa infringement – failing to enter the US during a certain period – meant her green card was permanently rescinded.
She was devastated.
Chris and Marsha consulted lawyers but Marsha could not stay and work. It strained their marriage as distance kept them apart.
By 2008, they had divorced and for the next six years she wandered again.
Melbourne, Leitrim, New York, Dublin. And finally. Mayo.
According to Christopher, it was her “demons” that dragged her back to Lecanvey.
“Croagh Patrick is magical for people. It was her mountain. It was the isolation – she was never about isolation either but she thought it was for the work and she had to do it,” he says.
In January 2014, she took a bungalow from a letting agent, moved in and erected a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the seaside property.
She made no effort to talk or know anybody. Mental illness was setting in. Unbeknownst to her, physical problems were also taking their toll.
Her neighbours don’t have much to say about her, according to today’s Doc on One.
For four months, she lived among them as a ghostly figure. Appearing briefly to use the wi-fi across the road from Staunton’s pub, sitting on a park bench.
Therese, the proprietor, recalls how she politely declined invitations into the bar.
A very different picture to the woman Ireland saw just a few years earlier on The Afternoon Show – an upbeat, pleasant and youthful voice not betraying any signs of mental distress.
Poet Paddy Guthrie told the documentary makers that it takes a certain type of person to live with the elements in Mayo’s coast.
“If you’re of a meloncholy disposition, let us say, the darkness of the landscape can weave a spell on you,” he noted.
Rejected from Brooklyn – the one place that felt like home. She had lost her passion for food. And, although she still confided in Chris, she was alone.
“I feel that she was so alone. That’s the hard part. I feel like she had nobody in her life – it doens’t matter what I say or anyone says – there was nobody in her life. She had nobody. Her best friend and muse was that mountain,” he says.
The mystery of her death
Searching for solace to complete her book, Marsha alienated herself. She was spotting only a handful of times between January and April.
In an email to her father she wrote:
“I’ve spent the past five months working on the edit for my third book. It’s been a painful process to say the least. Hardly a night has passed that I have not woken up midway through sleep, body drenched in sweat, heart beating out the rhythms of some ancient tarantella inside my chest.
“My legs throbbed both during the day and at night. Kind of throbbing that shook whatever seat I was on. It looked like I aged 10 years – eyes drooping, skin ashen, a vague recollection that I had not washed my hair for a week straight.”
During the final weeks, she slept by day and wrote by night.
One neighbour recalls:
I never set eyes on her until one day I was in the kitchen and she happened to be sitting at her table in the dining room and I could see right through. She seemed to be working away, obviously writing. I knew she was a recluse because we never saw her.
“Then I noticed there was nobody around the house, so I went in to her shed where there were plastic bags full of rubbish and I got on to the estate agent and advised her that the tenant had obviously moved out.”
The letting agent them began a spate of communication.
However, the last piece of Marsha’s connection to the real world happened on 10 April. It was a text message to the agent.
‘I have been vomiting blood for the last few weeks – I’ll get back to you in a few days to see what I’m going to do about things. I’m still sick.’
Concerned, she asked if Marsha had been to the doctor but there was no response.
She kept calling, kept texting until 23 April.
By 30 April, it was time for a house call. At 7am there was no answer at the chalet. So she returned later than day with gardaí.
They made the grim discovery. Marsha had died about a week earlier. She was naked except for a cardigan. Her only assets were a one euro coin and a five dollar note.
Investigations ruled out foul play. Decomposition meant no physical cause of death could be pinpointed.
An inquest returned an open verdict. Marsha had died of a unknown physical illness.
After years looking for somewhere to call home, it emerged that she had taken Irish citizenship.
“It’s not easy to slip through the cracks in life – but if someone is determined enough or unwell enough. It is possible,” the documentary ends.
And Marsha remained a wanderer in death. Dying in Mayo, cremated in Dublin, ashes resting in Melbourne.
LISTEN TO THE DOC ON ONE IN FULL HERE OR AT 1PM ON RTE RADIO ONE.
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