***REGION 17: Middle East II

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***REGION 17: Middle East II

1avaland
Dez 25, 2010, 5:23 pm

If you have not read the information on the master thread regarding the intent of these regional threads, please do this first.

***17. Middle East II: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Iraq, Iran

2whymaggiemay
Jan 26, 2011, 3:14 pm

I recommend The Blood of Flowers which takes place in 17th Century Persia (Iran) and tells the story of Azizam, the only daughter of a poor farmer and his wife. When she is 15 her father dies, she and her mother must travel to Isfahan to live with her father's half-brother, Gostaham, who is a rugmaker to the Shah. Upon discovering that his niece has a talent for rugmaking and a fierce thirst to learn, Gostaham begins to tutor her in design and color selections. Azizam is young and rash and makes mistakes which have consequences for the entire family.

This book is a coming-of-age tale, but it also has themes of persistence, independence, subjugation, growth, oppression, strength, power, and so much more. I found the book a bit slow to get into, but once I did I was immersed in the culture, the food, and the art of rugmaking.

3DubaiReader
Mar 28, 2011, 7:34 pm

I agree, The Blood of Flowers was a great read!

4DubaiReader
Mar 28, 2011, 7:39 pm

There aren't many books based in UAE, well not in English, at least, but The Sand Fish by Maha Gargash is worth a look for getting the feel of the place 50 years ago.

My husband is reading The Duke of Dubai by Luigi Falconi. I believe it is set in Dubai in the seventies - banned here!

5JMC400m
Mar 30, 2011, 12:37 pm

I also read The Blood of Flowers and really enjoyed it.

6DubaiReader
Maio 3, 2011, 7:58 pm

Well my husband has now finished The Duke of Dubai and that in itself is a remarkable feat, given the number of half read books by his bed! He enjoyed it and is recommending it to others here. Part of his motivation, however, is the fact that we were here in the 80's and he met several of the people who are mentioned in the book - I don't know how satisfying a read it would be for others.

I have just come across a book based in Bahrain that might be of interest.
I will be reading it for a BG next month - The Meeting Point by Lucy Caldwell.
I'll reopt back.....

7labfs39
Jul 29, 2011, 6:02 pm

Kurds/Iran:



46. The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi

I was supposed to receive this book as part of the Early Reviewer program, but the book never came, so I picked up a used copy.

This is one of those books which I expected to like more than I did. I have been reading more books set in the Middle East of late and found the dust jacket of this one intriguing. A young Kurdish boy is captured in a battle between his rugged Kurdish kin and the soldiers of the newly-founded Iran. Given a new name, that of the Shah, Reza learns to survive by becoming the soldier’s soldier and grows up virulently anti-Kurdish. At the apex of his impressive career, Reza marries and is given the captaincy of a new post on the edge of Kurdish-held territory. Who better to fight the Kurds than one of their own? But memories of his childhood come back to him, and he feels a sense of belonging to both the mountains and the people.

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately the book and I never clicked, so although I don’t dislike the book, I don’t feel compelled to rave either. I found Reza to be an annoying and unlikable character from the beginning and was therefore unable to empathize completely with his situation. Although his life as a servant in the army is horrible, there is also something a bit off in his character from the beginning. The trappings and insignia of success were always a siren song for him, and I don’t think I would have liked him even if he were never captured.

The theme of an identity crisis compelling a person to confront her past is always an interesting one. Certainly there is a long way for Reza to go to reconcile the person he has become with the child he was. But, once again, it just didn’t click for me. The crisis is described by Reza’s actions, not his thoughts, and I think I would have been more empathetic if I had known what he was thinking.

So I recommend the book to those who enjoy this setting, as they may have a completely different emotional reaction, but I’m in no hurry to chase down the next two volumes in this proposed trilogy.

8rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 19, 2012, 1:24 pm

IRAN

The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
(Written in Persian but not yet published in Iran; published in German translation in 2009 and in English translation in 2011)
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads

It is raining in a northern Iranian city, and the aging colonel hears that knock on the door in the middle of the night that never means anything good. So begins this complex and bleak novel that, with memories, nightmares, and ghosts, interweaves the story of the colonel and his five children with 20th century Iranian history and millennia of Persian literary tradition.

The colonel was in the Shah's army, but was kicked out either for his principled refusal to follow a particular order or for a personal crime, or both. He is an admirer of an earlier Iranian colonel, a hero to secular nationalists, referred to as The Colonel (with capital letters); a portrait of The Colonel hangs in the colonel's home, with photos of his dead children tucked into the frame. At the outset of the novel, which takes place during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, the colonel's oldest son, Amir, released from imprisonment and torture as a revolutionary, is living in the basement, talking to nobody. He has mysterious visits from Khezr Javid, a secret policeman who conducted his "interrogations." The colonel's second son was killed as a revolutionary; his youngest son has just been killed in the war and thus is a "martyr." His older daughter is married to a man who bends with the wind, and the current wind is the Ayatollah; he tries to prevent his wife from visiting her father and brother. And his younger daughter, just 14, has vanished.

On the surface, the novel covers the few days in the colonel's life in which he discovers what has happened to his young daughter, attends the essentially state funeral of his youngest son and other "martyrs," and finally connects with Amir. But the surface, and the present, are only a thin veneer in the book. The reader travels back and forth in time, back and forth between the "real" and the memories, nightmares, and ghosts. It takes concentration to figure out what is happening, and when it is happening. Amir is as important in the colonel; while at times he appears "crazy," the reasons for his behavior gradually become clear.

And what of these memories? The colonel has political memories, of what happened under the Shah and before the Shah took power with US and British help, kicking out the democratic and nationalistic government under Mossadegh, as well as of the Islamic revolution under the Ayatollah in 1979. But he also has memories of his wife, and reflections on whether he raised his children right, given the toll of their involvement in revolutionary activity. Amir has nightmares of his experience in jail, the torture, his wife, the unanswered questions. At the same time, the author weaves in references to earlier Persian history and to Persian literature; the translator has provided invaluable explanatory notes, because otherwise these would go right by readers not well versed in Persian history and culture.

Ultimately, this is a very sad book, an elegy for a lost history of culture and freedom and a reflection on ideology and betrayal, love and loss, reality and the interior world. And it rains and rains and rains.

9Trifolia
Editado: Jan 2, 2013, 7:55 am

Bahrain: An Archaeological Guide to Bahrain by Timothy Insoll (2011)

As I did not find any fiction set in Bahrain or written by a Bahraini, I decided to read this non-fiction-book on the archaeological treasures of Bahrain. It was an eye-opener because it briefly sums up the archaeological highlights of the country and gives a little backgroundinfo on the history of the country. Since it is meant to be a guide to people living in or visiting Bahrain, there are also directions to find the sites and what to see in the museum which wasn't all that interesting to me. What bothered me more was the dry style in which the book is written. Surely, with a bit of imagination or effort, this book could have been much more entertaining, without comprimising to the scientific standards.

10greydoll
Abr 14, 2013, 3:05 pm

Iran:
I love graphic novels and one of my favourites is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. It's the story of Satrapi's childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and during the Iran/Iraq war; her teenage years alone in Europe; and her return to Iran as a young woman. It is drawn in deceptively simple black and white panels and she writes and draws it with a tough humour and honesty. Satrapi now lives and works in France.

11kidzdoc
Editado: Maio 7, 2014, 5:36 pm

IRAN

The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, translated from the Persian by Tom Patterdale

Winner, Jan Michalski Prize for Literature (2013)
Shortlist, Best Translated Book Award (2013)
Longlist, Man Asian Literary Prize (2011)



The tragedy of our whole country is the same: we are all alienated, strangers in our own land.

Fear eats away at the soul worse than leprosy; it hollows a man out and takes him over.

This powerful novel is set in a town in Iran in the late 1980s, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and roughly a decade after the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the accession to power of Islamic fundamentalists, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The main character is 'the colonel', an unnamed disgraced former member of the Shah's army, who is so named because of his former title, but also because he reveres Mohammad-Taqi Khan Pesyan, or 'The Colonel', who is considered to be a hero by Iranian secular nationalists (but not Islamic fundamentalists) because of his sacrifice in attempting to free the country from foreign influences in the early 20th century. the colonel frequently speaks to and confides in the portrait of The Colonel in his home, as he lives in fear of what will happen to him, to his children who are missing under separate circumstances, and to his eldest son Amir, who refuses to emerge from the basement and seems to be descending into madness.

On a rainy night two young police officers come to the colonel's door, to inform him that he is wanted by the local prosecutor. He follows them, and receives tragic news: his youngest daughter, who is not yet 14, has been murdered. He and the two policemen proceed to the local mortuary to claim the body, as it must be washed and buried before the dawn call to prayers.

The night, like the rainfall, is seemingly unending. the colonel is plagued by fear and uncertainty, as he recalls and regrets his past actions and decisions, while reality merges into often nightmarish scenarios that make him question his own sanity. The lives of his children, his wife, a roguish son-in-law, and an 'immortal' former intelligence officer of the deposed Shah's feared secret police are weaved throughout the novel, along with frequent references to important figures throughout Iranian history. The individual stories merge in the manner of a tornado that forms and strengthens, as chaos and a foreboding sense of doom becomes ever present.

The Colonel was published in 2008, after Dowlatabadi had worked on it for 25 years, and it has been published worldwide to critical acclaim. However, it remains in the hands of censors in Iran, as the author, who still lives in Teheran, continues to refuse to allow it to be edited to meet the demands of the current regime. It is a beautifully written but challenging read, due to its references to Persian history, although the translator, Tom Patterdale, does a superb job in providing brief footnotes throughout the book, along with an excellent afterword and glossary that is invaluable to the average reader. My comments don't do justice to the complexity and richness of this superb and highly instructive novel about a country that is important to the Western world, but one that continues to be a worrisome enigma to most of us.

12Nickelini
Jul 7, 2014, 11:22 am

Iran

Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, Shahrnush Parsipur, translated by Faridoun Farrokh, 1989


Cover comments: I suppose this is a movie tie-in cover, and I don't like it. There was so much evocative imagery in this book--I think they could have done much better.

Comments: The powers that be in Iran were not happy with Shahrnush Parsipur when she published this novella so they banned this book and threw her in prison. Using a heavy dose of magical realism, Parsipur depicts the lives of five abused women who find themselves alternatives to the traditional gender roles for Iranian women. Eventually they all meet in a walled garden from where they reinvent themselves.

It is unfortunate that I found the narrative voice flat and dry, and couldn't warm up to it. Women Without Men would have been a fabulous book to study at university, and if I'd had that opportunity, I'm sure I would have loved this. This would also make for great discussion at a book club (if all the members could get copies). I will definitely look for the film (here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CGxQlcrlYw)

Recommended for:: obviously for readers interested in gender rights and Iranian culture, as well as fans of magical realism and banned books. Although Women Without Men won't make my favourite books list, I highly recommend it for its uniqueness (it's only 113 pages, so not much of a risk).

Why I Read This Now: it was time for something completely different.

13klarusu
Fev 23, 2015, 11:55 am

IRAQ

The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim



I really do love well-written short stories - when an author understands that a short story is an art form to be perfected rather than just a shorter piece of fiction writing - and these stories were so well-written. They all have some kind of connection to contemporary Iraq but Blasim writes superbly off-beat stories which lead you somewhere you are surprised to go. When I bought this, I thought that it may represent a collection of tales that form some kind of overt description of the years of war but instead, whilst always present, the conflict-state and the violence are often alluded to in such a subtle and original way that it takes you by surprise. This is a collection that I really will come back to and read for a second time because for me it was exactly that, a collection, a whole entity. Having reached the end, I feel that I need to come back and reread the earlier stories because I know that my perspective and reception of them will now have changed. I can strongly recommend this to anyone with an interest in innovative international short fiction.

14kidzdoc
Fev 24, 2015, 10:41 am

Thanks for your review of The Iraqi Christ, Claire. I bought this recently, but was dissuaded from reading it by another LTer. I'll get to it soon.

15klarusu
Fev 25, 2015, 6:09 am

>14 kidzdoc: You're welcome Darryl. Hope you enjoy it. It was a really, really quick read for me so it's a nice book to squeeze in somewhere.

16rocketjk
Jun 6, 2015, 1:10 pm

Iran
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: a Memoir of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue



I know that this is primarily a fiction group, so I hope I will not have transgressed too badly by adding this compelling blend of memoir, history and reporting. At the time of this book's publishing (2005), de Bellaigue, a British journalist who is married to an Iranian and speaks Persian, had been living in Tehran for several years. This book presents the story/history of the Irianian revolution that toppled the Shah and brought the Ayatollah to power and also provides a fascinating picture of daily life in Iran just about one decade ago. Things are placed in clear historical context and the progress, transgressions (that's a mild term for it) failures and successes of the Revolution are illustrated both through de Bellaigue's own observations and, most powerfully, through a series of penetrating interviews with participants in and victims of that Revolution.

17rocketjk
Editado: Nov 26, 2017, 8:25 pm

Yemen



I recently finished and very much enjoyed From the Land of Sheba: Tales of the Jews of Yemen, collected and edited by S. D. Goitein. Again, not a novel, but a fascinating collection of folktales that help provide a background to the Jewish culture of Yemen and the lives these people lived for centuries embedded within the Moslem culture of the region. The tales reflect the tensions between the two groups, the ways in which the Jews were usually dependent upon the good will and protection of the local rulers and the consequences to them when that protection wore thin. As someone much more familiar with the culture, history and mythology of European Jewish culture, I found these tales to be most interesting. Goitein's historical introduction to the collection, "About the Jews of Yemen," is very valuable for a full understanding of the stories. In 1949-50 there was a mass immigration of the Yemeni Jewish population to Israel.

18rocketjk
Editado: Ago 30, 2018, 1:24 am

Mesopotamia

The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by N.K. Sandars



N.K. Sandars' prose translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh is fascinating, for Sandars' well constructed and insightful introduction as well as for her rendering of the story itself. The introduction fills in the background of the discovery of the ancient tablets that contain the story, plus the mythological and cultural background of the mythology. The introduction in itself takes up the first half of this Penguin paperback edition's 120 pages, but no complaints on that score. I had heard of this classic, but knew essentially nothing about it. I found it particularly interesting to learn that our understanding of the work has been formed by excerpts of carved stone tablets found hundreds if not thousand miles apart, written by people of widely divergent cultures, centuries apart from each other. All of it buried and entirely unknown to us until the archeological digs of the 1800s began across the Middle East. My edition was printed in 1972, at which point it already contained two revisions as new information has arisen with new research. I don't know how much new information has been discovered since that time. According to wikipedia, though, the most recent revised edition came out in 1987, so I guess that means my copy is somewhat out of date. Sandars died in 2015 at the age of 101. Seems she had a fascinating life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Sandars

Normally I wouldn't read an introduction or forward before reading the work itself. Too often you'll find irritating plot spoilers therein. In this case I broke that rule, and I'm glad I did. Having that foreknowledge helped me very much to enjoy this tale of an all powerful king who goes on a quest for immortal life that captured the imagination of so many for so long.

19SassyLassy
Ago 29, 2018, 6:45 pm

Not sure why there is so little reading from this part of the world, as there is some interesting reading here from lesser known authors. Maybe it is a problem with getting books translated into English.

Definitely no transgression with nonfiction from primary sources in this group!

>18 rocketjk: The Epic of Gilgamesh is definitely due for a reread in my world. I believe I have the same edition, so it was good to see your comments on new ones.

20Tess_W
Ago 31, 2018, 10:01 pm

>18 rocketjk: Love Gilgamesh! I have my college freshmen read it when we study Sumer!

21rocketjk
Editado: Jan 10, 2019, 1:40 pm

Scheherezade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights translated by A. J. Arberry



I'm not 100% sure which of the Middle East categories this book goes in, but I think this one's correct.

According to this book's back cover, famed British orientalist A.J. Arberry's translation of these famous tales was "the first new rendering in over half a century." This relatively slim volume contains only four tales, actually, "Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp," "Judar and His Brothers," "Aboukir and Abousir" and "The Amorous Goldsmith." It was fun and interesting, in particular, to read Aladdin as translated directly from the Marmaluke-era Arabic (Arberry estimates the stories to date from around 1500 AD) into contemporary English, as opposed to the Disney version of the tale most American children have come to know. Not surprisingly, elements of the story are darker than the sanitized version we know. Arberry, in his interesting (though frustratingly plot-spoiler laden) introduction points out the degree to which, he believes, these tales were meant as satire on the society of the day. This volume was originally published by George Allen & Unwin in 1953. My copy is a beautiful Mentor Books paperback edition, and a first edition of such, dating from 1955. That makes my copy pretty much exactly as old as I am!

22spiralsheep
Editado: Ago 5, 2020, 8:45 am

I read the beginning of the Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma, which is an Arabic classic including both prose and poetry, set in the Arabian Peninsula (in the area that's now Saudi Arabia) in the mid 8th century (CE), although it was probably first written down in Egypt in the 12thC. There's a good English translation with scholarly notes (that you can also ignore and just read the story) here:

https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2151&context=mff

Basically the plot is that a misogynist nobleman rejects his baby daughter for not being born male and so she grows up in a rival neighbouring tribe where she becomes a fiendish kick-ass camel-rustling warrior and cavalry commander. Then after she unknowingly defeats her dad in combat and takes him prisoner he changes his mind: "God be praised for giving me such a lioness!"

Quotes

Only nobles are people, lmao: "He had moved to this land by himself, with one thousand warriors in his service."

Epic poetics: "Fatima traveled, folding the land by length and by width ..."

Yeah, this also happens in our village when the cricket team win an away match, honest: "The people of Bani Tayy shared in the celebratory atmosphere, some spontaneously composing poetry in admiration ..."

23Dilara86
Ago 5, 2020, 8:10 am

>22 spiralsheep: Thanks, this looks terrific! Bookmarked for later...

24spiralsheep
Dez 9, 2020, 7:33 am

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi is structured as a series of non-linear vignettes, which slowly reveal glimpses of the inner and outer lives of an extensive cast of characters revolving around three generations of one extended family originating from a village in Oman. It's a process that will be familiar to anyone who has lived in a small community: you know everything about everyone else, but that information is only learned in fragments which each person pieces together slightly differently to form their own perspective. Like life, the overall story tends towards tragedy, from small disappointments to the great tragedy of death. The novel is permeated with ways of thinking and doing that are rooted in Omani village culture and Ibadi Islam and, for an outsider like me, it appears to be a fair representation. The translation seems good and I only noticed one error when what should have been a "moth" in English (like a moth to a flame) was translated as a "butterfly".

In conclusion, skilfully written as a whole, although without any short passages I especially want to quote, and interesting to read but also ultimately tragic in tone.

25spiralsheep
Maio 21, 2021, 7:01 am

A Woman of Five Seasons, by Leila Al-Atrash, is a 2002 translation of a 1990 novel about a wealthy Palestinian couple and their marriage, while living and working in a fictional Gulf state Barqais (Qatar/UAE) then Europe.

This is a difficult book to describe. It appears to be intended to be a psychological portrayal of a relatively traditional marriage from a feminist perspective, but the focus was on the husband and the story is largely told from his perspective as a point of view character. The sections inside the wife's head mostly consist of her telling herself she's more than a wife or potential lover, although being a wife is what we read her thinking about. She doesn't think about her social life except as an appendage to her husband, or her business, or even her children. I don't believe this was intentionally ironic. Their three children don't feature (outsourced to "Asian" maids), although a few adult relatives make their marks here and there.

The husband's business, which is the is main concern of the book outside his marriage, is international arms smuggling and again I believe readers are supposed to be critical of this as exploitative, more due to dodgy business practices and corrupt political governance than any objection to the arms trade, but again with unintended irony it's portrayed as an easy way to make millions. This actually reminded me most of those 1980s blockbusters about jet-setting millionaire businessmen, but with an unusual emphasis on the protagonist's marriage because after financial success he's secondarily motivated by matrimonial success (and thirdly the social pros and cons of his illicit wealth for his fellow Palestinians and poorer Gulf Arabs because the powers that be help organise his arms deals in exchange for a cut and he donates some of his profits to good cause charities).

An odd but interesting novel. 3.5*

26rocketjk
Dez 14, 2021, 5:37 pm

I finished The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, an Iranian author living in political exile in Australia. This is a fascinating novel about life in Iran just after overthrow of the Shah and the onset of the Islamic Revolution, and over the following decade. The story is narrated by 13-year old Bahar. We learn in the book's second sentence that her brother, Sohrab, has recently been hung without trial by the new regime for political "crimes" that are trifling at best. Bahar's parents, and particularly her father, are lovers of art, history and literature, both modern and ancient, and deeply versed in age old Iranian mythology. In other words, they are targets in the new order. Soon, Bahar's parents have moved the family to a remote village in hopes of evading the wrath of the revolutionaries. As the novel progresses, we watch Bahar's family attempt to make their way through the crucible of anti-intellectualism, institutionalized violence and cruelty.

This fable-like allegorical tale of the violent unraveling of Iranian society during this era is told in fluid, poetic language (and, oh, to be able to read this book in the original Persian). The story is full of magical realism, as both ghosts and the jinns and demons of Iranian mythology abound. There is a real human touch shining through, here, and yet the current of anger courses through the telling of the story, especially in the book's first half, as a counterweight. In the second half, the fantasy element spins out in ways that I didn't always feel were entirely effective. I have a guess, though, that if I were more knowledgeable about Iranian legends and mythology, that section might have resonated with me a bit more. At any rate, by the book's end I was fully on board again.

For all its violence and sorrow, this a thought-provoking and, at least for me, ultimately life-affirming novel.

27labfs39
Abr 17, 2022, 12:22 pm

IRAN



Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Published 2003, 356 p.

Azar Nafisi was born in Iran to a political family. Her father was the youngest mayor of Tehran, and her mother was one of the first six women elected to Parliament in 1963. Her secular upbringing and Western education (she went abroad at age thirteen) were not unusual during the last years of the Shah's reign. When the monarchy fell during the Islamic Revolution, her family fell from grace and her father was jailed for a few years. She returned to Iran from the US expecting great things from the revolution, but, like most Iranian intellectuals of all ilk, was astonished at the direction the revolution took.

As the religious fundamentalists consolidated control, life became more and more constrained, especially for women. Nafisi had been teaching English literature at the University of Tehran, but was fired for refusing to wear the veil. For several years she met weekly with a small group of female students in her home. They discussed books and for those few hours were free to express themselves authentically. Eventually, Nafisi (as well as several of her students) left Iran for the West. She became a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

This "memoir in books" is divided into four sections: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. The Lolita chapters are dedicated to descriptions of the private study group and its participants, as well as a discussion of the book and others by Nabokov, particularly Invitation to a Beheading. The Gatsby chapters begin roughly eleven years before and deal primarily with her years teaching at the University of Tehran and in particular a trial her class held of Jay Gatsby, in abstentia. The Henry James chapters pick up with her expulsion from the University of Tehran and deal with life during the eight year Iran-Iraq War and her decision to resume teaching (at the University of Allameh Tabatabai). The Jane Austen chapters return to the study group and Nafisi's decision to emigrate.

Nafisi's descriptions of life in Iran after the revolution are particularly accessible to Western readers because she was coming from a secular, US-educated perspective. What makes this memoir a bit more difficult is described by Nafisi herself:

I am too much of an academic: I have written too many papers and articles to be able to turn my experiences and ideas into narratives without pontificating. Although that is in fact my urge—to narrate, to reinvent myself along with all those others.

The integration of literary criticism into the memoir is interesting, and makes it unique, but presupposes some familiarity with the novels and authors she discusses. At times the literary framework works wells, at other times it feels a bit forced. I found the James chapters the most difficult, probably because that was the author I was least familiar with.

28labfs39
Abr 22, 2022, 12:25 pm

IRAN



The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, translated from the Persian by Tom Patterdale
Published in German in 2009, English translation 2011. 247 p.

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is a renowned Iranian author with a unique voice. He was born in a rural area and has only an elementary school education, making him very different from his Western-educated, urban counterparts. His language is rich with influences from traditional Persian poetry, and he purposefully avoids using Arab loan words. In an effort to capture this effect, Tom Patterdale avoided Latinate words in favor of the Anglo-Saxon as much as possible in his translation. Patterdale also wrote a very helpful afterword and extensive notes, because there are a lot of historical figures and cultural references which a non-Iranian might miss.

The book opens with "the colonel" sitting in his dark house waiting for the knock at the gate that he knows is coming. As he nervously smokes and watches the rain run down the window, he begins to reflect on how he ended up here, with his oldest son going mad from the torture he sustained at the hands of the Shah's police, one son dead since the early days of the revolution, another away at the Iraqi front, and his 14-year-old daughter missing. Throughout the next day, the present melts into the past, both the colonel's and his eldest son's, as well as the historical past.

In his novel, Dowlatabadi is critical of the Shah and the foreign powers that propped him up as well as the Islamic revolution. Generations are sacrificed to professed ideals that all end in corruption and death. Needless to say, the book has never been published in Iran (or in Persian), but the author remains free and is a proponent of artistic freedom in Iran. I highly recommend this difficult, but rewarding, novel to anyone interested in Iran.

29labfs39
Maio 8, 2022, 6:07 pm

IRAQ



The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon, translated from the Arabic by the author
Published 2010, 185 p.

Jawad remembers clearly the first time his mother took him to his father's workplace. It was the first time he had seen a man cry, and he assumed that his father hurt the man. His mother had to explain that his father is a mghassilchi, or body washer and shrouder. It's a respected, although not well-paid, profession in his traditional Shi'ite neighborhood in Baghdad, and his father inherited the business from his father and his father before that.

Although Jawad learns the art of preparing a body for burial, and it is an art, full of ritual and significance, he wants instead to be an artist. But as the social and economic fabric of Iraqi society is torn apart by war, sanctions, and sectarian violence, Jawad finds himself once again facing death in the intimacy of the washhouse.

The Corpse Washer is a poetic novel that shifts between the past and present, dreams and reality with a fluid grace. Each chapter is short, between a paragraph and a few pages long at most; a series of vignettes that provide glimpses of Jawad's life and dreams. Although terribly sad and sometimes violent, it's a beautifully written book. I'm glad I purchased a copy as I can see myself reading it again. Highly recommended.

30labfs39
Maio 6, 2023, 3:33 pm

IRAN



The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, translated from the Persian
Published 2017, Europa Editions, 245 p.

This is a remarkable novel about a family during and after the Iranian Revolution, but told in a magical realism style that often makes it difficult to know exactly what is happening. One has to suspend logic, and instead ride the waves of myth, magic, and metaphor. The story is narrated by the ghost of thirteen-year-old Bahar, who has the ability to make herself visible to her family and intervene on their behalf.

When the Revolution begins, Bahar and her family were wealthy intellectuals who lived in a beautiful home. After a tragic attack, the family moves to a very remote village where the mullahs have little sway at first. But even here they cannot escape the effects of fundamentalism, war, and sorrow. Ghosts, mermaids, black snows, jinns, and wildly growing plants symbolize various emotional tolls that the Revolution has taken. Only at the very end of the book do we learn what really happened to the mother and sister, Beeta.

I found the author's ruminations on death to be interesting. At one point Bahar says,

...I'd made a mistake. I had been wrong to think that death only marked the end of some things. No! Death was the end of everything. The end of my body, my identity, my credibility. The end of everything that had meant something to me in life: family, love, trust, friendship. Yes...death was the end of all these things.

A fellow ghost comments, "Death hasn't made humans any happier."

I also enjoyed the passages about the importance of books. Although the Revolutionary Guards had burned most of their books, they slowly collect more, and later Bahar's father returns to his family home which still has a large collection.

Every book he touched was more than a book. It was a memory. His entire destiny. It was longing.

Another interesting metaphor is the River of Oblivion. An entire village falls into a deep sleep, because "sorrow brings oblivion." The being responsible for the stupor says, "I'm not the one who goes after people, it is always the people who come after me." When reality becomes too overwhelming, oblivion is the escape, but resolves nothing. When Bahar's father eventually returns to Tehran, he is forced to confront reality and to analyze his own role in allowing the mullahs to take over the country.

He bought the newspaper every day, and though he knew that much of it was devoid of truth, he wanted to know what had become of the rest of the population while he had been away—after the war, after the mass executions, after the flight of the educated and wealthy from the country. He still didn't have the courage to leave the house, to walk among people in the streets who, either through their silence of their ignorance, had practically killed others to take their places. He still couldn't forgive: not others, and not himself.

Although not always an easy book to read, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is an interesting way to look at the Iranian Revolution and its effects. When the world goes crazy, magic realism doesn't seem so farfetched.