Review by Corinna on show 3rd Feb
This book is a journey into the soul of Persia (Iran) It encompasses an historical depth, beautiful sentiments but a harsh message to the reader with several explicit examples of brutality and behaviour.
Reza, a young Kurdish boy grows up in the high Zagros mountains amongst his close-knit family and kinsmen.
The Shah’s army roves around nearby and the Kurdish men attempt to fight them for supremacy of their land. Reza’s father and uncles are captured and killed, but Reza a handsome young lad beguiles his captors and is bribed by the opportunity to possess a gun and shiny army boots into joining their army.
Turning his back on his countrymen Reza becomes a ruthless, ambitious soldier, rising to the rank of captain. He is not admired by his fellow soldiers in particular when he betrays them to the higher command.
In Tehran, having become rich he buys himself a bride , Meena a Tehrani girl. With no love or respect for one another they have 6 children and set out into the country where Reza is put in command of a military outpost with the purpose of subjugating the local Kurdish community. This is a difficult task since his striking appearance signals to the locals that he is one of them. With his loyalties drawn back to his roots he is a tortured man, whilst still engaged in committing various atrocities to the local people.
This cruel tale nevertheless portrays in poetic detail the magnificent contours of this ancient land “Mesopotamia: her plates long buckled into mountain ridges, hoary and high; rivers and streams,silken kraits that line the land in silver and blue”
At the end of the book. Reza, an old and embittered man says to the Shah “I have marched, shah oh shah, once with the Kurds, once with you, once alone with the thrush of starlings at my fingertips, and still I am an orphan of this earth, left behind by her slow spin “
Eventually all of Reza’s children spread their wings to other parts of the world , the Shah is no longer, fled into exile, and Persia has an ayatollah at the helm.
Laleh Khadivi was born in Iran and after the Islamic Revolution her family fled first to Belgium and eventually to the U.S.A. where she now lives in New York directing documentary films. This book is planned to be the first of a trilogy. It is unusually graphic but at the same time gripping. A different kind of read !
review by Corinna
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