Destination: Iran

Book: Saved by Beauty: Adventures of an American  Romantic in Iran (NEW May 2011) by Roger Housden

Roger Housden‘s Saved by Beauty combines an enticing travel guidebook with a philosophical memoir as he travels in Iran, seeking the beautiful culture he first fell in love with (at a distance) as a student.

If I am right, and poetry provides the key to Westerners understanding The Middle East, particularly Iran, then Roger Housden will be the perfect person to unlock that meaning.

Before visiting Iran, he wrote several books about poetry, including one about Rumi, a revered Iranian poets of the 13th century. So in 2007, about to turn 60, he sets off with Rumi in his pocket to find what he calls the other Iran.  What he finds confounds some of his prior assumptions about a deeply complex society.

The book has a chilling prologue in which police interrogate Housden about his real reasons for being in Iran. This scene sharply contrasts with the world he plunges into when he arrives in Iran.

This is a pilgrimage to ancient poets and contemporary artists–to the intellectual, expressive part of a culture that in America generally conjures up only forbidding images of the Ayatollah and “Kill all Americans” slogans.

As he visits the ornate grave of Omar Khayyam, best known in the west for The Rubaiyat (verses) of Omar Khayyam, his guide points out, “We have no memorials to soldiers or generals…We have our poets and saints, and each of them has his story.”

We learn that Omar was much more than a poet. He was a philosopher, a scientist, a mathematician and an inventor.  Housden muses,

“…I asked myself why a one-thousand-year-old Omar should matter to us in the first decade or so of the twenty-first century.  Even if he was the Einstein of his time, there have been hundreds more bright stars since then. But it was not the sum of his particular achievements, impressive as they were, that moved me… His poetry and his science contribute to something greater still…”

Housden continues:

“The human spirit runs like a current down the line of the generations, binding us all in a rolling wave of continuous story.  In Iran, this sense of shared history is in the air, and people breathe it in as their daily bread.  It nourishes them in a way that we, in our transient and disposable culture, can barely begin to imagine.”

Housden’s biggest self-realization comes when he, who thinks of himself as apolitical–simply a seeker of understanding–realizes that there is no such thing as apolitical. “Art itself was a political act. The book I was writing, whether I saw it that way or not, was necessarily a political act.”

Despite the difficulties of travel to this country and a frightening episode referred to in the prologue, after reading Housden’s irresistible descriptions of Iran you may decide to travel to this amazing land.

Isfahan blue dome

Unlike many foreigners who never get outside of Tehran, he introduces Isfahan, a city of great beauty, with the blue domed mosque that called him to Iran to start out with– just one of many in the city. He goes to Shiraz, the city of roses and wine and the tomb of the poet Hafez. He visits the ruins of once great Persian cities, Pasargadae and Persepolis. He talks to people about Zoroastrianism, the religion founded by Zarathustra and Sufism,  Rumi’s religion, known in the west for mystical Dervishes.
The variety of religion and cultures and depth of history  is overwhelming and alluring. I could not help thinking throughout, however, that I was glad to read about some of his experiences that simply would not be possible for a woman–particularly a foreign woman.

I will leave it to you to discover how that interrogation turns out, because I would like to lure you into adding this lovely book to your traveler’s library.  Meanwhile, I’m off to gather some poetry by Hafez and Rumi to continue my Iranian journey.

You can see Roger Housden talking about his book in this book trailer at YouTube.

Disclaimer: Broadway Books/Random House provided me with an uncorrected review copy of this book. Photo of book cover is from publisher’s page. All others are from Flickr and you can find out more about the photographer by clicking on the picture.

NEW: The New York Times reviews Saved by Beauty in their summer reads, travel section. (and two other books that have been reviewed here.)

If you had an opportunity to travel to Iran, would you? If yes–what would you want to see? If not, what would stop you?

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Destination: Middle East

Book: Dining with Al Qaeda (2010)by Hugh Pope

Every Monday for a while now, I’ve been writing about books that might shed some light on the current internal struggles of countries in the Middle East (as well as Iraq and Afghanistan as the center of international warfare) for those of us who  plan to travel there in the future.

Some of the books I have covered are directly about the politics of the situation, like In the Country of Men, and some are poetic, like The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and some are strictly travel books. I think it takes an understanding of both politics and poetry–literature and news reports–for us in the West to build an understanding of the largely Islamic countries of the Middle East and the Arab Spring.

Bin Laden on Video, 2004

In Dining with Al Quaeda, published in 2010, Hugh Pope provides a must-read  journalist’s memoir of 30 years of travel through many of the countries still on the front pages today. Much of what he writes seems incredibly timely today. Just as In the Country of Men made its way to A Traveler’s Library as the Libyan revolt was heating up, Dining with Al-Qaeda came my way during the reporting of the death of Osama bin Laden.

This book educated me more deeply about more different cultures in the mid-East than anything else that I have read.  I have seen it compared to Thomas Friedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem (1990-revised for Kindle edition in 2010), which broke ground in explaining the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, through the lens of an American very aware of American public opinion. I agree. I still recommend From Beirut to Jerusalem to anyone traveling to Israel, and wrote briefly about it some time back.

Both Friedman and Pope were employed by first-rate American newspapers and news organizations. They are both masterful reporters and enticing writers.

However, Friedman approached his reporting from the background of an American Jew, skeptical of Israel’s political actions, and Pope, born of British parents and educated in England, approaches the Middle East with a deep-seated love of all things Arabic.

Pope owns up to his prejudices (pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel for instance) and admits when reality does not quite match his infatuated romantic vision of Arab culture and behavior.  Since he studied the Arab language and culture at Oxford, he can more easily converse with people in various countries. Because of a childhood spent partly in the Middle East, he also can get along in Farsi.

Although I was afraid that I would be turned off by his one-sided viewpoint, he demonstrates that he is an even-handed reporter, and I found myself trusting his account of the countries he covered during his 30 years in the area as an eager seeker of adventure but a reluctant war correspondent. Lebanon during the Israeli-Lebanese war, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Palestine and Israel.

His discoveries continually surprise, not only the reader, but the author as well. “Ultimate, I learned, every country in the region viewed itself as a kind of island uniquely connected to the West, not the East. Politically, the “Middle East” barely existed.”

Wall Street Journal

I learned as much about how the Wall Street Journal curates the news and treats its writers as I did about the Middle East. Pope wanted to let Americans know that the Iraqi people were not going to unanimously welcome American troops. Pope’s “fixer” in Iraq before the American forces arrive says, “Here in Iraq freedom means the freedom to kill” and he goes on to say that because the American blockade cost his family medicine his brother needed, he would kill the first person out of the tank when they arrived. But because it sounds too much like propaganda, the quote could not go in the story. “I understood that , too. I was up to my eyeballs in Iraqi propaganda and I didn’t want to scare the readers into thinking I couldn’t be trusted….Reality was a broad spectrum and the common zone between the diametrically different Iraqi and U.S. worldviews overlapped only a short handspan in the middle,” Pope says.

I want to read it again. That is how valuable I believe this book is. Pope now lives in Turkey, and with his wife wrote a history of Turkey, Turkey Unveiled. See his pick of five best books on Turkish politics at The Browser.

Thanks to the generous photographers who share their pictures on Flickr. Please click on each picture to learn more about it and the photographer. Have you noticed — you can rate (up to 5 stars) any post on A Traveler’s Library? AND you can rate comments on posts, too (thumbs up/down).

And if you have not yet replied to the poll from Friday–it is right below this post and I’d like your opinion. (If you are not reading this on the website, you’ll need to click over to comment or take the poll).

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Destination: Iran (Persia, 12th Century)

Book: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1917)

Iranian Memorial to Omar el-Khayyam

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*, a rather slim book with its ivory slip cover and front embossed with green, red and gold twining roses held an honored position in my parent’s living room.  Inside, in my father’s distinctive sweeping handwriting, a front page bore a dedication to The Duchesss, his form of address for my mother when they were courting back in the 1930′s.  The book was gilt edged and illustrated with dreamy watercolors of beautiful and exotic scenes of women in filmy gowns and men in turbans and gowns surrounded by lush gardens. Other illustrations show white palaces, or royal rooms that set a little girl dreaming.

This was my first introduction to the Middle East. My father, who liked to quote poetry, recited lines from Omar Khayyam so often that they are still stuck in my head.

Edmund Dulac illustration of Quatrain XI

A book of verses underneath the bough,

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread– and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness–

Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow.

Unfortunately, when my mother died, the book disappeared from her meager possessions and I only recently bought a used copy. There was a lot I had not remembered about the book–which contains four versions of the translation as Fitzgerald continued to tinker– but the opening seemed very familiar:

Illustration by Edmund Dulac, Quatrain I

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

And Lo! the Hutner of the East has caught

The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

Although the verses seem transparent and could be understood by a young person, some are a bit sobering.

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sands Song, sans Singer, and–sans End.

It was many years before I would learn about the paradoxes and ambiguities of the poetry– that all that talk about wine might be contradictory to the beliefs of a Muslim country and might not even mean wine; that the beloved might be another man, or a young boy instead of the ravishing beauty pictured in the illustration.  But most importantly, that the philosophy of “live it up for tomorrow we die” would be anathema to the conservative Muslims who rule in Iran today. And indeed Omar got into some trouble in his own lifetime, for lines like this:

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,

Lift not your hands to IT for help–for It

As impotently rolls as you or I.

Poetry, I learned later in life, fuels the thought of many countries in the Middle East–particularly Iran, but also in other countries, as I saw in the book The Calligrapher’s Secret–in Syria. And the two books I am currently reading, Dining with Al Qaeda and  the soon to be released Saved by Beauty, demonstrate WHY poetry might be so beloved.  Poetry, with all its circular, formal locution, its ambiguity and symbolism reflects the general pattern of communication in the Middle East.  Perhaps the West might communicate better with those countries if we learned to think like poets.

Because of an accident of attention paid by a then-famous English poet, Khayyam became known and even famous in the Western world. But as you will see when I talk about Saved by Beauty, there are much better-known poets in the Middle East, and now I’m eager to read them, too. It is difficult to translate poetry, and difficult to read meaning into a translation of an ancient language, but Fitzgerald gave us something of beauty, anyhow. But we owe thanks to Khayym for singing verses in the twelfth century that still resonate with us today. As my father was found of reciting:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

[*The Amazon link in the first paragraph shows the edition that my parents owned. There are many other editions to choose from, and your local bookseller may have something less expensive. However, I will be grateful if you follow my link any time you are going to shop at Amazon.]

Disclaimer: The photo of Khayyam’s tomb comes from Flickr and I encourage you to follow the link to the work of Elias Pirasteh and learn more about him and about the poet. The photographs of illustrations from the 1937 edition by Edmund Dulac are from the Crossett Library of Bennington College (Flickr, Creative Commons).

Do you remember your own first impression of the countries of the Middle East? Have you read any of the poets of those countries?

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The troubled times that the news reporters have tagged as “Arab Spring” continue. Things are heating up in Syria, as government troops fire on mourners. (See our review of The Calligrapher’s Secret, set in a peaceful Damascus). The U.S. is sending drones into Libya and French spokesmen are calling for “boots on the ground” form NATO troops as Gadafi holds off rebels. (We talked about In The Country of Men, which helps understand the long, desperate struggle in Libya).  Although Iran is not one of the countries in open revolt right now, they went through a perilous time last year, and continue to be a thorn in the side of the Western nations. We continue our series on Arab countries with an interview from last year.  I found Mostofi’s view of her native land to be quite different than the usual view we get of Iran.

Ahmed Shah's Pavillion, Main home of Shah Rezi Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, Tehran

Destination: Iran

Book: Cemetery of Dreams (2010) by S. Mostofi

Cemetery of Dreams by S.  Mostofi   covers in fictional form the events during President Jimmy Carter’s term when the United States tried (and failed) to rescue diplomats held hostage by the Iranian Revolutionary government.

The book is complex, as were the events, but the characters are compelling individuals rather than stereotypes. We see the events of that year from the point of view of Iranians and what was going on in Iran . This inside view makes clear the political differences within Iran in a way that was new to me. Along the way we are introduced to the wide variety of cultures and society within Iran.

I  turned to Mostofi’s  web page to learn more about how the book was structured. While there is some information in the book, and more on the web page, I still wanted to talk to her. Here are some of the answers she e-mailed to my questions.

A Traveler’s Library: Do you worry that writing this book (and your blog) will make it difficult for you to travel to Iran in the future?

Sasha Mostofi 

Sasha Mostofi: Cemetery of Dreams is fiction but it’s inspired by true stories from personal experience as well as years of research and provides a pretty accurate description of post revolutionary Iran. Many of my relatives, some who were officers in the Shah’s military were executed without fair trials immediately after the revolution. Their stories clearly have had an impact on me while growing up in Iran. However, I never intended to make any sort of political statement with this book.

My blog also highlights ordinary everyday Iranians. I think in the sensationalism of Western media we sometimes forget that Iran is a very diverse country; ethnically, linguistically, religiously and even culturally. .. But sometimes people tend to put everybody from that region in the same category, which I think is a mistake.

It is important that our government (U.S.) works with the people of that region to fight extremism. I also like to highlight the unsung everyday Iranian heroes in Iran and around the world, who take action to have a positive impact on their country. I like to celebrate them because I know of the risks they’re taking. In some way I’m doing that with my novel as well since I’m portraying Iranian characters who take action to make a difference.

I don’t think the straightforward way I have portrayed the human rights violations, many of which are close to reality and continue to this day, will be simply ignored by the Iranian authorities.

I don’t think it’s safe or wise for me to visit Iran right now.

Read the rest of the interview with S. Mostofi that ran last year in November. Learn why she thinks you should travel to Iran, how she became a writer, and more. And I also recommend her blog if you are interested in learning more about Iran.

Did you read Cemetery of Dreams last year? If you read it, I would really like to hear your reaction.

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Ahmed Shah's Pavillion, Tehran

Destination: Iran

Book: NEW Cemetery of Dreams (October 2010) by S. Mostofi

I was not sure  Cemetery of Dreams by S.  Mostofi would make it to the Travelers’ Library, because I’ve had bad results with self-published books. However, this historical thriller was a pleasant surprise. It covers in fictional form the fairly recent events during President Jimmy Carter’s term when the United States tried (and failed) to rescue diplomats held hostage by the Iranian Revolutionary government.

The book is complex, as were the events, but the characters are compelling individuals rather than stereotypes. We see the events of that year from the point of view of Iranians and what was going on in Iran . This inside view makes clear the political differences within Iran in a way that was new to me. Along the way we are introduced to the wide variety of cultures and society within Iran.

I  turned to Mostofi’s  web page to learn more about how the book was structured. While there is some information in the book, and more on the web page, I still wanted to talk to her. Here are some of the answers she e-mailed to my questions.

A Traveler’s Library: Do you worry that writing this book (and your blog) will make it difficult for you to travel to Iran in the future?

Sasha Mostofi

Sasha Mostofi: Cemetery of Dreams is fiction but it’s inspired by true stories from personal experience as well as years of research and provides a pretty accurate description of post revolutionary Iran. Many of my relatives, some who were officers in the Shah’s military were executed without fair trials immediately after the revolution. Their stories clearly have had an impact on me while growing up in Iran. However, I never intended to make any sort of political statement with this book.

My blog also highlights ordinary everyday Iranians. I think in the sensationalism of Western media we sometimes forget that Iran is a very diverse country; ethnically, linguistically, religiously and even culturally. .. But sometimes people tend to put everybody from that region in the same category, which I think is a mistake.

It is important that our government (U.S.) works with the people of that region to fight extremism. I also like to highlight the unsung everyday Iranian heroes in Iran and around the world, who take action to have a positive impact on their country. I like to celebrate them because I know of the risks they’re taking. In some way I’m doing that with my novel as well since I’m portraying Iranian characters who take action to make a difference.

I don’t think the straightforward way I have portrayed the human rights violations, many of which are close to reality and continue to this day, will be simply ignored by the Iranian authorities.

I don’t think it’s safe or wise for me to visit Iran right now.

ATL: Your characters have a deep love of country.  Even though you were young when you left, do you still feel that Iran is your country?

SM: I spent the first 16 years of my life in Iran and despite the fact that I experienced the Iran-Iraq war and dealt with the strict Islamic rules imposed by the government, I did have a good childhood and loving family and friends, so I do have a strong attachment to Iran. But the United States is now my home and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I love both countries.

ATL: I’m not sure why the commercial publishers would not be interested in this book. What’s your theory?

SM: Greenleaf Book Group (and/or Emerald Book Company) doesn’t consider itself a self-publishing house. Having a technical background I find it refreshing that there are so many different options nowadays to get your story out. What Greenleaf offers is more of a hybrid model, where they are very selective in taking on authors and provide a sales team and traditional distribution to brick-and-mortar bookstores, which is something that is missing with self-publishing houses. But you as an author take the financial risk and subsequently receive a higher royalty per book, all of which were fine by me.

Traditional publishing houses also seem to be more focused on publishing memoirs by Iranian authors. Many of these memoirs are important, specifically those that are by authors who have left Iran recently and deal with human rights violations. However,…You pick one up and you feel that you have already read that book by another writer. … they are choosing either very nostalgic flowery novels which younger generation Iranians can’t relate to (or at least I can’t) or memoirs that are written by female authors.

…I like to write thrillers or espionage fiction. .. I think traditional publishers didn’t want to take the risk with an unknown type of book. I received very good feedback on how impressed editors were with my writing but they couldn’t imagine who would ever read this book.

ATL: Your book cover says you started to write this story when you were fourteen and still in Iran. That certainly qualifies you as a “born writer”.   If you have not formally studied writing, what or who has influenced your writing the most?

SM: I sometimes think that it takes a level of insanity to write because the rewards are so small in comparison to the effort. My uncle was actually a pretty well known writer in Iran and I guess writing is in my blood. I do have a minor in English but I don’t think that any course or training got me to this point. It was my obsession that did it. A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t written. I’ve always just hoped that readers will enjoy what I have to write and it hasn’t all been pointless.

My biggest idol as a child was Alexandre Dumas. I was impressed by how he combined history with fiction to convey a story. I learned more about French history from his novels than I ever did from a history book.

Once I came to the United States, I became fascinated with thrillers. I’m a fan of several different thriller writers and love action movies such as the Bourne Series. John le Carré is one of my current favorites.

ATL:Why should the readers of A Traveler’s Library want to travel to Iran some day?

SM: Despite all the negative news we hear about Iran, Iranian people are extremely hospitable and friendly. An American who recently visited Iran said that the first question most Iranians asked him was “Do you really think we’re terrorists?”

I think your travelers will be surprised about how modern the country is and how much the Iranian people like Americans.

You can contact the author through her Facebook page, or chat with her on Twitter. If you want to learn more about Iran today, the blog on her website is a valuable reference. The photo at the top is from Flickr under Creative Commons license.  You can click on the picture to learn more about the Pavillion, and about the photographer.

And how about you?  Would you like to go to Iran? What would have to happen to make that possible? What have you read about Iran?

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Iran - Caged

Destination: Iran

Book: Inge Morath: Iran Additional text by Monika Faber and Azar Nafisi and edited by John P. Jacob. Review copy provided by the publisher, Steidl, Germany.

Traveling alone, Inge Morath (who later would marry Arthur Miller and collaborate on various projects) toured Iran and took photographs for various clients in the United States. She died in 2002, and the Inge Morath Foundation has assembled photographs and records of this trip taken in 1956 for [amazonify]3865216978::text::::Inge Morath: Iran[/amazonify].

Monika Faber, from the Albertina Museum in Vienna, who explains Morath’s techniques in a text, quotes Morath.

I always preferred territories: Iran in the Middle East…Spain and Mexico, Russia and China, countries whose influence extended beyond their borders, ‘mother cultures,’ she wrote.,[...]Most of the time it was literature that raised my enthusiasm for a certain place, visual and popular art that stimulated my eye…”

Iran Marketplace - broom seller

Ah, yes, that sounds familiar doesn’t it?  “Literature than raised my enthusiasm for a certain place”?

The reader is not only treated to a beautiful presentation of the black and white photos of an Iran that does not exist any more, but details such as her letters of assignment and minutiae of the journey that make it easier to understand the circumstances of her travel.

It is difficult to convey the fascination of these photos–a marketplace in a village of sand-blown mud huts, a Zorastrian ceremony inside a home, ordinary people in traditional costumes posing unselfconsciously for the camera. You can look at these photographs for sheer enjoyment, for a history lesson, or if you love photography, as a lesson in technique. You don’t have to be traveling to Iran to enjoy poring over these 320 images.

Iran: Little Girls Weaving Rugs

An interview with Azar Nafisi, author of [amazonify]0812979303::text::::Reading Lolita in Iran[/amazonify] and [amazonify]0812973909::text::::Things I’ve Been Silent About[/amazonify], relates the historical Iran with today’s realities. This afterword and the one by Monika Faber, make this book more satisfying to me–because I like a story–than books with ONLY photographs in them.

The photos shown here are copyright by the Inge Morath Foundation. DO NOT COPY. Shown by courtesy of Magnum Photos.

Some lucky reader of A Traveler’s Library will win a copy of this book (list price $59.95) when we do our next giveaway. I should mention that I frequently put links to Amazon with book titles. It makes in convenient for you to buy the books, but also provides a few cents to A Traveler’s Library. Please use my links when you buy ANYTHING at Amazon. Thanks!

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Reading Lolita in Tehran

Destination: Tehran

Book: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

We may not be able to safely travel to Iran for quite some time. Most of us have a rather vague idea of what life in Iran has been like since the Islamic revolution. Because we ache for the Iranians who struggle today, we can read (or re-read) [amazonify]0812979303::text::::Reading Lolita in Tehran [/amazonify]to get an idea of what life would have been like before and during the Islamic revolution in Iran.

If you missed this book the first time around, now is a perfect time to return to its account of two years during which Nafisi led a group of young women in discussions of Western books.  You will never see Henry James, Jane Austin and Vladimir Nabokov in quite the same light.

Nafisi’s web site also provides a good source for video clips that shed light on real life in today’s Iran, as well. For example, in October last year, the BBC made these podcasts called Children of the Revolution that focus on the youth of Iran. They help foretell what is going on in Iran today.

I hope you will join me in thinking about Iran and in trying to find out the truth about what is happening there this week.

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