Martyr!: A Novel

Martyr!: A Novel by Kaveh Akbar

An Iranian man, Cyrus,  had a rough childhood. His mother died in a plane crash when he was an infant. His father immigrated with him to the US where he worked a blue collar job. The father wanted a better life for his son. They adapted to the new life. The man's father was partially living through his son and died shortly after the son went off to college.

Cyrus went through periods of alcohol and drug use. He had relationships with men and women. He would present himself as "Iranian" or "American" depending on what is convenient. He has taken up poetry. He is attracted to an artist that has put "herself" on display for the last months of her life as she is dying from terminal illness. After talking with her previously, he eagerly goes to talk with her a final time, but finds she has died. He later learns that she is his mother. She had switched id with another woman and was never on the flight.

The book travels back and forth in time and alternates between "real" experience and dreams. There are parts told from the view of important figures of the day as well as the narrative of the main characters. Despite the back and forth, it is fairly easy to follow.

Blind Owl

Blind Owl is an important 20th century novella. It is quite weird. The narrator has a dead woman appear at his house. He toys with necrophilia, but decides against it. His father and uncle had an interesting contest for a woman in which they both somewhat lost. The narrator also sees a repetition in history through his art. He refers to his wife as "the slut". He acknowledges coping with challenges with much opium and alcohol. How much of this narration should be considered colored through the eyes of opium?

Sons and Other Flammable Objects: A Novel

Being Iranian in the United States near the September 11, 2001 attacks can be a trying experience. That is one of the important events in this novel. A family of Iranian immigrants had struggles even before these events. The father and son did not communicate well. After this, the son (in New York) ended up getting a girlfriend who was almost half Iranian. The culmination was a trip to Iran that would be taken with Father, Son and girlfriend. The son freaks out and goes through all sorts of contortions not to go. He even ends up in Germany on the way there before freaking and returning home.

This Woven Kingdom

The Jinn have greater strengths than humans. Humanity made "peace" with the Jinn which eventually lead to the Jinn being oppressed. The book focuses on a Jinn girl who is destined to be a leader. She is highly educated and well trained in physical defense and dressmaking. However, she is currently living on the streets and happy to get a job as the lowest of servant girls. 

The crown prince of a kingdom likes to be out at war. The kingdom is struggling to secure a stable water supply. Another kingdom sits in the path that could provide it, yet they are regularly at odds. This crown prince comes home because his grandfather is near death and he is next in line to be king.

While walking outside, the girl is jumped by a street urchin. She is able to easily defeat him, but offers him bread at her currently place of employment. The boy attempts to commit suicide when he is confronted about his crime. The prince sees this. He thinks the girl is a spy and carries the boy to treat him and help find the supposed spy. This ends up endearing him to the common people, but causing the nobles to question his sanity.

The current King wants his son to choose a spouse from the nobility so that he can produce an heir. It seems obvious that the future king and future Jinn leader will eventually get together. However, they seem a million miles apart. There is plenty of action and a bit of fantasy and romance as the events unfold.

There are plenty of conflicts as the story unfold. There seems to be a fairy tale ending, but there are plenty of twists and surprises. It is never good to make a deal with the devil.

Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) 2nd Edition

Zoroastrians were once one of the major religions of the world. Today they are just a minor sect. I was curious to know how big they were and what became of them. What do they believe? How did they lose stature in the world? This book provided some limited answers, though I found it most accessible towards the end.

The early history in the book has a focus on our current historical understanding of the roots of Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism. This helps give context, but also distracts from the religious history. It would be more interesting to have a focus on what Zoroastrians accept as their history and then bring out areas that can't be verified. This is especially important with a religion that is as old as narrowly practiced as this one. I also struggled understanding the beliefs and locations that were described.

Things started to become more clear after the rise of Islam. The religion was mostly relegated to rural backwaters. The story of the Parsi in India is the one major exception. The exodus allowed the Zoroastrians to flourish. They have come to economically dominate the Indian economy, but are also fading in population.

The beliefs of the Zoroastrians is a little less clear. Fire is important. They are often accused of being fire worshipers. However, they also have a form of monotheistic dualism.  There seems to be a good deal of Zoroastrian doctrines that have been adopted by Judaism. 

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran is memoir by Azar Nafisis describing the author's experience reading Lolita and other books of English literature in Iran during the time of the Islamic revolution. She was born in Iran, then educated in the United States and returned to teach in Iran right as the revolution was taking place. At first, the revolution looked like it would be a positive experience. However, it later became more totalitarian, eventually shutting down the university and leading to her leaving the country. She does note that even the participants in the revolution were complex people. (At one time, the more radical Islamists would defend her while the liberals were silent.) She brought with her some western sensibilities that she wanted to live in Iran. Alas, the revolution would spin from crackdown to liberalization leaving the life of a westernized intellectual precarious. (It was interesting that they would use "Switzerland" as the example of a lax moral state.) The youth were often the ones to provide the muscle behind the revolutionary effort. (Hmm... Are the professor shoutdowns the first step of that in the US?)
The history of the revolution is secondary to the life of individual people through literature. The book is divided into four sections, each based on an author or work of literature. The book provides excellent literary criticism by weaving the story of the people studying the work with the characters and themes of the book. Lolita is in part a story of oppression, but also one of willingly taking the "easy path". Forcing everyone to fully cover themselves can be just as offensive as forcing people to not be covered. Great Gatsby superficially glamorizes "immoral" behavior, but deep down it is condemning it. The subtleties are lost on censors. The works are all fiction. They are presenting tales of the conditions of people to help us today.
While the first two sections tended to focus on individual works, the last two where geared more towards authors' as a whole - Henry James and Jane Austen. Nafisi finds parallels in the human condition and subtleties of reaction within the current Iran. Women's rights are greatly restricted in the Islamic republic. Even some devoutly religious find issues with their identity. With everyone forced to adopt the headscarf and covering, the devout no longer are set apart physically. Courtship and marriage takes on a very different meaning. People are not supposed to even look upon the opposite sex, yet they still have the sexual urges. They complain about hypocrisy among those in power, yet are often reluctant to challenge themselves within or without of the confines of the rules. Those in power in Iran are often portrayed as reactionary buffoons. One student sets himself on fire after no knowing how to deal with life after the end of the Iran/Iraq war. In another case, an attempt is made to murder a group of authors by getting them on a bus and driving them off a cliff. However, in spite of this, there is a reference shown to the unifying force of the death of Ayatollah.
In the end, the author leaves Iran to come teach in the US. Many of her friends have also left Iran, while at the same time Iran had made some small steps towards liberalization.

Argo

Argo won the Oscar for best picture. It is a good movie, but not a great movie. The politics of the movie are somewhat confused. The open sequence gives a brief background of Iranian political history. It had been a kingdom for millennial. In the 1950s, it democratically elects a president. The president nationalizes oil companies. The Americans and British don't like that and decide that oil trumps democratic ideology. They put the Shaw in power. He is friendly to the west and attempts to westernize while looting the country. Finally in the late 1970s, the Iranians take back their country and the Shaw sneaks out. Ok. So far, Americans = bad guys. Then we go to the American Embassy. All these evil Americans are hanging out in there. They are preventing the evil dictator from getting his just rewards. We should side with the students that want to jump in the embassay and take hostages, right?

Well, no. At this point, the politics shift. Now the Iranians are bad guys and the Americans are the innocent workers who happen to be trapped in the embassy. The good-guy Americans aren't going to release the Shaw. Instead, they are going to start some great secret mission to get the Americans out.

Now that the story movies back to "raw raw" America, we discover that 6 of the embassy workers managed to escape and are now hiding out in the Canadian embassy. The CIA hatches a few plans to get them out. One involves riding bicycles 300 miles to the Turkish border (in winter!). Then one guy comes up with the genius plan of making a movie. They go through great details to get a real script and make it all appear to be a real movie. It seems ok and a lot of work is done to set it up. He goes off and tries to get them out.

The escape is melodramatic. Everything seems to come through at just the last minute. We even get a chase where vans are zooming after an airplane that is about to take off. Is this real?

No it isn't.

Yes, it was based on a true incident. However, the melodrama was greatly amped up in the movie. The "super-close-calls" were actually not that close. And the runway chase? Well, nothing even close to it happened. In this case the melodrama was pumped up just a little too much, moving it from exciting to pure fanciful. With a little more restraint, this could have been a better movie.