My Uncle Napoleon

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: My Uncle Napoleon is the best book about Iran that I ever read. It's author, Iraj Pezechkzad, will be at Stanford. So if you are lucky enough to be in the area (I'm not, unfortunately), go hear him speak!

Details at Payvand. http://www.payvand.com/news/09/may/1042.html

Intro to The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

Haven't read the book, but that does not stop me from enjoying the intro. Found via the blog: Fudzail. UPDATE: Just realized that the well-written commentary on Fudzail's site was from Iran Writes.

Now that you've seen it, I have 2 comments:

1. Only a man could claim to be "sometimes" reminded that he is living under Islamic rule. For women, the reminder is relentless.

2. I agree that the lack of fear is surprising in Iran; that there *can* be no palpable sense of secret police. I do, however, think that if he were to stay for a really extended time, say a year or two, he would have a different view. (If he had an American wife staying with him, I'm positive he would have a different view.)

I would also argue, that if he were a woman, he would think differently as well. Every woman I know who returned to Iran after spending a significant amount of time abroad, had the sense of being watched. Many of the Iranian women I met, who had become accustomed to life in the UK or the US or the Netherlands or any number of other places, had lost much of their ability to maneuver easily in the society. It wasn't even an issue of "ability," it was an issue of willingness.

It was so much easier for me than for my expat Iranian friends. My taarof mishaps were excused, my aggressiveness accepted... People expected me to be inflexible, selfish, and miserly. With those kinds of expectations, it's easy to impress. I was treated like a full grown child: spoiled and doted upon. Trust me, had I been culturally Iranian I would have been taken to task for every misstep: whether perceived or purposeful.

I would love to hear from expat Iranian women out there who want to chime in and tell me how wrong/right I am.

I'll even tag a few:

Pedestrian at Sidewalk Lyrics
Homeyra at Forever Under Construction
Beja at A Voice of Two Cities
Ava at Love Jihadi

(I hope commenters will add to this list and chime in with their own experiences)

Know Thine Enemy

"The mollahs rule because we're too proud," Hosein continued. "When I visited my family in Turkey before the revolution, I felt pity for them. They'd been Iranian. When I go to Turkey now, I know my family pities me. I pity myself."

"Most Iranians never leave Iran. What do they care what others think?"

"We all feel it. We all know we've ruined the revolution. There's not an Iranian alive who doesn't know it. We were supposed to lead the Muslim world."

(Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998)

Just finished Know Thine Enemy, which is the work of a former CIA agent, Reuel Gerecht, writing under the name of Edward Shirley. I’m a little late, I know. The book was published in 1998.

Despite all of the bad reviews on Amazon, I loved the book. Gerecht clearly understands what it means to fall in love with Iran. He writes: “Iran seduces through contradiction, through her ugliness as much as her beauty. Heaven is married to Hell. Isfahan and Tehran. Rumi and Khomeini.”

Reading the book, I could not help thinking that Gerecht would be awfully jealous of me and my 4 years in Iran, where I had many conversations similar to those he had: conversations that surprised me with their candor and their blasphemy. And where I traveled freely without fear, speaking to anyone and everyone. Ha.

I, on the other hand, am jealous of his knowledge of Iran. Why oh why didn’t I study the country and its history more before I lived there? Why did everything have to come as such a surprise to me? I was an Iran-ignoramus when I first stephttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifped foot in Iran. It’s only been since returning that I have started to read about the country and its history.

If you are interested in Iran, the book is really interesting and easy to read. And while I’ve read that some find his memory for conversation suspect, I would counter by saying that the conversations he reported were incredibly similar to those that I heard during my four years in Iran. If you are interested in the way that the CIA works, you are in for more of a treat. Unless the book is a clever bit of disinformation designed to make the CIA look less formidable than it is, it really de-mystifies the workings of the agency… As if the intelligence blunders surrounding the events of 9-11 were not enough to convince us all that something had gone desperately wrong... His book makes me wonder if there was ever a time when the CIA played a valuable role in gathering intelligence?

Another book to read: The Persian Puzzle

The Persian Puzzle: An Interview With Kenneth Pollack

As far as regime change, I think you need to look back at Iran's history. First off, regime change is coming—it's clear that the Iranian people generally want a very different form of government. It's coming very slowly. Most Iranians are sick and tired of revolutions. They've had one for the last 25 years, and they don't want another one. Those who've tried to spark another revolution have failed time and again. I don't think there's any evidence that somehow, if the U.S. gave these guys the high sign, it would make regime change somehow more likely. Every time the U.S. has tried to interfere in Iranian affairs to help a particular group of Iranians, it's backfired on us, and hurt the group we tried to help. Look, regime change will eventually happen, but this isn't an answer to the very short-term problem of the nuclear program.

Interesting interview... must read book: Lipstick Jihad
Lipstick Jihad: An Interview With Azadeh Moaveni

Yes, I think this is the biggest difference between the US and Iran -- how honesty is interpreted. American culture is incredibly forthright. There’s this premium on telling it like it is and being frank. Iranian culture, and Farsi, the language, is really evasive; it has all these rituals and cues and formalities in how people deal with one another.

I think evasiveness took on a whole new meaning after the revolution. You suddenly had Islamic conservative values governing how society was run, which pushed a lot of things behind closed doors and under veils and chadors. Private behavior became much more weighted.

I write in the book about eroticization. It’s not explicit, ever, but the emphasis on covering and the hidden and forbidden was sexualizing because everyone was very preoccupied with that. Nothing about how you conduct your private life is at all apparent from the way you look to everyone else. Evasiveness, privacy and eroticization all came together in the post-revolutionary culture.