To stop a war in Iran, send poets
Let’s exchange books, instead of rockets, with the ancient literature-loving nation
Want to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and Iran? Send poets. Think it sounds preposterous? It has actually been tried before: In 2002, post-9/11 and prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. State Department sent Writers on America — an anthology promoting America and American values featuring 15 writers including then poet laureate Billy Collins — to Arabic-speaking nations. Cynics thought the charm offensive would never work, but anyone who has ever worked in, visited or otherwise engaged with the Middle East know that there is a strong reverence for poetry.
How revered? Well, one of the most popular television shows in the Middle East is called Million’s Poets. Launched in 2006, it’s a wildly glitzy reality-television competition modeled on American Idol that features poets from across the Gulf reciting Nabati poetry — a five-centuries-old form of Bedouin vernacular poetry — and competing for about $3.5 million in prize money each year. The show, which takes place in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, has drawn hundreds of millions of viewers and has spawned its own satellite channel to show reruns as well as its own literary magazine. I’ve attended a recording of the show. It is so over-the-top that it makes Dancing with the Stars look like something produced by a basement YouTuber.
So, my advice to President Trump to stop a potential war with Iran? Send Rupi Kaur. Iran is, after all, the birthplace of many superlative poets: Ferdowsi, perhaps the world’s greatest epic poet; Obeyd Zakani, perhaps the world’s greatest satiric poet; as well Rumi and Hafiz, the world’s greatest love poets. Today, Rupi Kaur is the world’s greatest Instapoet. (If you don’t know who she is or what that means, ask your 15-year-old daughter).
I would guess that the culturally astute in
Iran are very familiar with Kaur, whose “Milk and Honey” was the bestselling recently-published book in English across the world for two years running (until it was upended by Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” in 2018). Do they read books in English in Iran? I imagine they do. But I also know for a fact that they translate huge numbers of books from English into Farsi. One of the quirks of Iran is that it has never signed on to honor international copyright law and, accordingly, the country’s publishers — or anyone with access to Google Translate (via a VPN) — can publish a translation. There are numerous editions of most international bestsellers such as the Harry Potter novels as well as classics. Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” has been translated into Farsi more than 20 times.
So where do people buy these books? Well, the world’s largest bookstore, which has more than 12 miles of shelves — there are said to be some 400,000 books available for children alone — happens to be in Tehran. Its square footage is equiavalent to seven average-size Walmarts. Don’t believe me? It’s right there in the Guinness Book of World records. The bookstore is called The Book Garden and it gets four-and-a-half star rating on TripAdvisor, where it is listed as the 33rd best thing to do in Tehran for tourists.
Poke around in the bookstore, and you might find a few surprises hidden among the books — or rather, literally inside the books. While all books in Iran are subject to censorship by the state, publishers — particularly of translated books — might occasionally slip in a few rebellious ideas and notions. One publisher I know from Tehran has been known to bind copies of the U.S. Constitution into otherwise entirely forgettable romance novels. Others have printed the U.S. Declaration of Independence into the texts of the books in the form of a speech given by a character.
Circumventing the censors has become a cat-and-mouse game for publishers. Some, like Azadeh Parsapour, publish books that would otherwise be censored as digital e-books to help them disseminate more easily. She started her publishing business in 2012 in Iran, but was soon exiled and now runs her business, Nogaam Publishing, from London; in 2018 the Association of American Publishers honored her with its International Freedom to Publish award. Incidentally, Azadeh translates as “free human” in English.
Speaking of translations, there are numerous books originally written in Farsi about contemporary or not-so-distant Iran that are wonderful reads. A classic is Iraj Pezeshkzad’s “My Uncle Napoleon,” a novel published in 1973 that is a picaresque, politically-incorrect romp about a shared garden and a family who spends as much time as possible bickering and “going to San Francisco” (a euphemism for having sex). Unsurprisingly, it was turned into what became the most popular television show ever show in Iran. Also unsurprisingly, it was banned. For young adults, you have two great graphic novels: “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi, about a girl growing up after the overthrow of the Shah, and “Zahra’s Paradise” by Amir and Khalil, which is set in the aftermath of the 2009 elections that led to protests and several deaths. For fans of mysteries I would suggest “Tehran Noir” an anthology of crime stories set in the city edited by Salar Abdoh.
In the U.S. there are several prominent Iranian writers and intellectuals on the scene. The most famous is Azar Nafisi, whose book Reading Lolita in
Tehran tells the story of how Nafisi, after being fired from her job as an English professor at Tehran University for refusing to wear a veil, taught an underground literature class to seven Iranian women. Together, they read banned American literature, such as Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” to sustain their dreams of freedom amid severe repression.
Locally, we are lucky to have
Farnoosh Moshiri as a member of our literary community. She’s studied and taught at the University of Houston, composed for the Houston Grand Opera, and has a half-dozen books, including the novels “The Bricklayer” and “The Drum Tower,” both set during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and “Against Gravity,” which takes place here in Houston.
Another prominent Iranian American writer is the religious scholar Reza Aslan, who has dedicated his career to parsing and interpreting the nuances of Islam and Christianity in a series of popular books, including “No God But God” and “God: A Human History.” Speaking of religion, isn’t what got us to this point of near-war is an ideological difference born out of hardline religious fundamentalism. But what is religious fundamentalism but a failure to read well, to engage with the fundamental ambiguity of a given text (in this case, The Koran) and an unwillingness to acknowledge that any text is up for interpretation — and therefore imposing what you already know on a text, rather than being open to learning.
Call me naive. I remember the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I also know conflict is often over control of resources not culture. But it would seem, based on what I’ve outlined above, that we all — Middle Easterners, Iranians, Americans — still have so much to learn from each other. Maybe we can do that best by exchanging books, instead of rockets.
So, let me revise my opening statement to say this: to stop a war in the Middle East and Iran send poets…and literary critics…and maybe a copyright lawyer or two. I’m sure our President, a famous non-reader who has — ironically — published 20 books, would not be too sad to see them go.