Ari Honarvar owes her life to a poem.

This is not an exaggeration. In the late 1980s, just a few years after the Iranian Revolution and at the closing salvos of the Iran-Iraq war, Honarvar’s mother wrote a poem to the Indian Embassy in hopes of securing a visa to get out of Iran. The Indian ambassador apparently liked the poem so much that he gave a then-teenage Ari and her family visas to come to India from Shiraz, Iran.

Once in India, Honarvar says she “miraculously” received a visa to come to the United States even as her family was about to head back to Iran. She was 14 years old when she arrived in the U.S.

“It’s rare to find people who can say that their lives were literally saved by a poem, but mine probably was,” says Honarvar from her home in University Heights. “It doesn’t surprise me that my mother still believed in the power of poetry and was confident that it was going to save us.”

Considering how the importance of poetry and writing was imprinted on Ari Honarver at such a young age, it’s not surprising to learn she became a writer herself. From its initial inception as a screenplay to its publication, Honarvar’s debut novel, “A Girl Called Rumi” (out Sept. 21 on Forest Avenue Press) took 15 years for the author to complete.

Weaving back and forth through time and told from the perspective of varying characters, the novel mainly centers on the story of Kimia as she grows up in post-revolutionary Iran and, later, working as a spiritual adviser in 2009 San Diego. After having something of an existential awakening while going through some of her mother’s old things, Kimia reluctantly returns to Iran, where she must reckon with her past in the midst of the country’s own Green Revolution. Interspersed are chapters told from the perspective of others, including Kimia’s brother Arman, her mother Roya and even a hardline Iranian commander.

And while the plot of “A Girl Called Rumi” is strong enough to where Honarvar could have written a straight-ahead novel, she chose to incorporate fantastical and even magical elements into the story. Posing as a boy named Rumi so she can still play with her male best friend, Kimia visits Baba Morshed, a local mystic who introduces her to “The Conference of the Birds,” a 12th century epic poem by Farid ud-Din Attar which works as a metaphor for humanity’s, and later Kimia’s, inability to attain enlightenment.

“Perhaps the more relevant question is, who are you?” asks Baba Morshed to Kimia in the novel after from “The Conference of the Birds.”

“I still wasn’t used to the odd feeling of leaving with more questions than I had arrived with,” thinks Kimia after Baba Morshed poses this question to her. “But what competed for my attention was the new sensation that had stirred inside my belly. Like all children of war, I was well-versed in anxiety; I knew by heart all its subtle tweaks and jabs. But this was brand-new.”

In many ways, the novel serves as a love letter and tribute to the myths and art of Persian culture, with a young Kimia dutifully absorbing the stories as a means of coping with the war and, as an adult, using the stories to come to a better understanding of her existence.

“The timelessness and the relevance of wisdom that shines through Persian poetry and myths, that’s what I really wanted to highlight,” says Honarvar. “That’s kind of what has stayed in Iran, but has also been somewhat of savior for me here, too.”

The more one learns about Honarvar and her own life, the more parallels there seem to be between her and Kimia. For example, she recalls writing “anti-regime rhetorics on the walls” when she was a teenager, a protest that is also performed by Kimia in the book. In one part of the book, Kimia’s brother secretly buys a horse and hides it in the family’s basement, something Honarvar’s own brother did when they were young. Most pressingly, there’s a picture of a young Honarvar in the back of the book, her hair cut short, with the caption “The author at age nine, trying to blend in as a boy in Iran, 1982.”

Still, Honarvar maintains that most of what makes up “A Girl Called Rumi” is fictional.

“Some of it is based on my own experiences, but most is an amalgam of experiences that friends and family shared, as well as things I’ve just imagined,” says Honarvar, who will host a book release event at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore on Sept. 22 at 7 p.m.

And yet it’s hard not to look at the novel as something Honarvar was destined to write. From her own experiences in a repressive, war-torn country to her own American journey, “A Girl Called Rumi” not only serves a fantastical tale of finding hope among the ruins, but as a tribute to the places we have to leave behind in order to find ourselves.

“Joy is such a sustainable fuel, its sustainable energy that we tap into to help us with the challenges,” says Honarvar, who often hosts arts workshops for refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border. “Seeing how people build their own resilience in difficult situations has been a tremendous inspiration.”