In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran

Christopher de Bellaigue is a British journalist who lives in Tehran (or did at the time he wrote In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, in the early 2000s) with his Iranian wife and son. He is then, well-positioned to think and write about Iranian culture and society for a western audience, but with an insider's nuance.

What de Bellaigue does best is modern Iran: the traffic; the nuances of buying a car, and why new rarely trumps used; the contradictions. If he had written an entire book on the Iran of today (or 2002, say), the entire work would have been a joy. He writes, as one would expect of an author whose byline has appeared in such stalwarts of the Western press as The Economist and the New Yorker, beautifully, using short, snappy prose to bring emphasis, irony, or humor as needed. That said, a reader can only remember/differentiate so many mullahs, so many generals, so many wounded veterans of the Iran-Iraq war. To say I was bogged down in the politics is an understatement, and quickly I learned to skim passages on the competing ideologies that led to or stemmed from the Revolution.

While Iran's relationship with the world today is largely defined by its standoff with the U.S. (and on which side of that standoff others nations choose to align themselves), de Bellaigue deftly raises the issue of the collective West's long history of meddling in the Middle East (see: Hero), writing, "Two centuries of semi-colonization sometimes seem worse than unambiguous colonization; at least the unambiguously colonized got railways and sewers and unambiguous independence."

The Iran-Iraq war looming as it does over so much and so many in Iran and the larger Middle East, de Bellaigue also plucks at the threads of U.S. involvement, not least the Iran-Contra affair. That U.S. arms - to both sides - increased the firepower and made the bloodletting that much greater is clear, only reinforcing one of the central tenet's from Notes on a Foreign Country: U.S. decisions directly impact the lives of those in other countries on a regular basis, in a way that is difficult for Americans to appreciate. (Although the global experienced with Covid-19 may offer a taste.)

The most telling exchange occurred toward the end of the book, as de Bellaigue is discussing the present and future of Iran with one of the few Iranians he considers a friend, Mr. Zarif. In thinking about the state of the country, Zarif draws a corollary with the state of the Iranian-made Paykan, the butt of more than one joke throughout the book (and country, it seems). Zarif says, "When I get into my Paykan and it lurches and coughs, I think to myself that the men who made it aren't well enough trained or paid, and that they have bad equipment and are badly managed and didn't sleep well last night. ... On the few occasions that I've been in a Mercedes and been astonished by its mechanical perfection, don't you think I've asked myself if the men who built this car are better off?"

Food for thought.

Four stars. 

Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

Suzy Hansen's Notes on a Foreign Country is a clear-eyed look at U.S. foreign policy (particularly in the Middle East) from the perspective of an expat American being enlightened about her country's misdeeds while fulfilling a fellowship in Turkey.

Honestly, while I was initially shocked by Hansen's naivete (which she acknowledges, and even refers to as ignorance, early and often, and which given that, when she departed for Istanbul she did so with an Ivy League education and several years of NYC work experience, only speaks to the larger issue of ignorance of international affairs in this country), she quickly gets to the heart of the matter in terms of the U.S.'s near-continuous and out-sized presence in the Middle East in the past 70-odd years. She builds the case that the U.S. has created an empire quietly and without the awareness of most Americans, and that, as she demonstrates time and time again, U.S. decisions directly impact the lives of those in other countries on a regular basis. (Case in point: today's headlines regarding the assassination of an Iranian general by the U.S.).

Hansen explores U.S-Turkish relations most closely, as that is where she now lives and has the greatest experience and knowledge, but she does a more-than-passable job is exploring similar imbalances between the U.S. and Afghanistan, Greece, Pakistan, and Latin American countries. Think coups. Lots of coups. Vietnam. The School of the Americas. Cuba and the Philippines. Hansen catalogues them all here, the questionable and the clearly wrong.

Because of the nature of U.S. imperialism, as compared to the old European empires, Hansen builds the case that the U.S. empire is equally if not more insidious and damaging than those older empires, which were openly acknowledged, and whose ties, for better or for worse, were formalized. (Those who haven't read it should follow Hansen's work with James Bradley's primer on the founding of the U.S. empire, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War or Julia Flynn Siler's Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure.)

Notes on a Foreign Country is a timely reminder of the precarious power exercised by the U.S. It is an indictment of U.S. foreign policy from time immemorial, but it is also an indictment of the generalized ignorance that has allowed this policy to continue unabated.

4-and-a-half stars.
 

The Doha Experiment: Arab Kingdom, Catholic College, Jewish Teacher

Gary Wasserman's The Doha Experiment is a look at the nitty-gritty realities of international education - a timely read in the run up to the NAFSA Conference. Wasserman was among the initial faculty appointments to Georgetown's Qatar campus. Perhaps reasonably, Wasserman has doubts as to how he will be received given his Jewish background. (Hint: better than the suggestion to place crosses outside each classroom to mirror the practice in Washington.)

In The Doha Experiment, Wasserman reflects on his time in Doha, as well as the initial founding and evolution of the school itself. Many of the anecdotes will elicit a familiar groan from those who have tried to navigate the developing world: the policeman who issues "slowing" tickets to every vehicle stuck in a traffic jam; the ubiquitous security that provides questionable value; the nightmare of navigating the roads.

Much of the book, though, is focused on the educational experience, and rightly, and offers plenty of food for thought for those of us who work in international education. The value of intercultural understanding and importance of travel can't be overstated, but Wasserman does pose important questions about the ability to overcome societal and family expectations and the ultimate value of a multicultural education if and when individuals return to the pre-set path.

Wasserman does not shy away from the difficult questions. To what extent are such campuses a form of American imperialism? How might such campuses further perpetuate social class dynamics? (He ruminates at length on the proper approach to dealing with "the help," which in Qatar consisted largely of terribly underpaid South Asians who had their passports confiscated as a condition of employment.) To what extent must a university tolerate government interference, or a government tolerate dissent by the college?

Although I personally found The Doha Experiment terribly interesting, I recognize this is one book that appeals to a particularly niche audience. If you're part of that audience, by all means, read away. If you're not, you may find greater interest between the pages of another book.

Four stars.

Salt Houses

Improbably, Salt Houses is the third multi-generational narrative I've read this year. Following the Koreans and the Italians, I've hit on the Palestinians. Hala Alyan's Yacoubs are certainly the most peripatetic of these families, forced by events from their ancestral homes in Palestine into Nablus in '48 and then from Nablus to Kuwait City in '67 and then from Kuwait City to Amman in '90.

Without giving the plot away, I can certainly say that the younger generations find themselves part of the diaspora in Europe and the U.S. some years after that. Phew. Also: these are people who, relatively easily, transport themselves from country-to-country and continent-to-continent is telling. No refugee camps here. And so, it is interesting to consider the history, the sadness, the anger, the resignation, and ultimately the meaning of home from the perspective of people who don't always behave as they should and seemingly "have it all."

Despite the turmoil, Alyan's story centers on the relationships the characters have with one another, parents, spouses, children, siblings, grandparents, and cousins. Alyan's story also moves at a good clip, covering more than half a century in a succinct 300 pages. I was fascinated to read an interview with Alyan (available on Amazon), in which she talks about her writing process, specifically that this began as the story of a young man, presumably Mustafa, in pre-1967 Palestine, because in its final form, the protagonist is his sister, Alia.

Alyan's prose is lovely and the characters are just maddening enough to be real. I found this a quick, but thoughtful, read, and would that I would particularly recommend to someone looking to broaden their reading horizons beyond the "usual" perspectives.

Four stars.

Dreamers of the Day

It would be difficult to start the year with a better - or more appropriate, but more on that later - book. Several years ago I loved Mary Doria Russell's Doc, which set me on a Wild West reading spree. Moreover, Hero remains one of the finest biographies I have read, and Gertrude Bell was nothing if not extraordinary. Hence, there was no way I was missing out on Dreamers of the Day, written by Russell, co-starring Lawrence, and with some serious cameo appearances by Bell.

Agnes Shankin is an unassuming school teacher from Ohio, alone and lonely following the death of her entire family in the influenza pandemic that swept America on the heels of World War I. She is dogged by a lifetime of maternal criticism, but has the happy fortune, at least, of inheriting three modest estates as the result of her aforementioned circumstances. Seeking a chance of scenery, she departs for Egypt rather on a whim. There, she finds herself the honored guest of none other than T.E. Lawrence, who knew Agnes's sister when the latter was a missionary in the Middle East before the war. Through Lawrence, Agnes is thrust into a high-powered circle of British actors who are gathered in Egypt for the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference. (Not incidentally, it is at this conference where the fate of the Middle Eastern tribes was sealed, their borders drawn, and so many subsequent troubles sown.)

Agnes is likeable, witty, sympathetic without being cloying...in short, everything I would expect from Russell. Russell's language is bright, the characters - both historical and fictional figures alike - are well-developed, and the story is reasonable: the reader knows it is fiction, but it's constructed in a way that it could have happened. Russell has clearly done her homework. In short, Dreamers of the Day is a joy to read.

And then I got to the last page. Now, this is a book whose topic is relevant for any number of reasons these days, unfortunately, but I was unprepared for the penultimate paragraph, which is short, pithy, and can be repeated here without spoiling a thing: And never buy anything from a man who's selling fear. Reading that, I was certain Russell had whipped this book up in the last year. She didn't; it was was published in 2008. Nevertheless, the words hold true, and perhaps never has an ending felt more appropriate to me than that.

Four stars.