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Thursday, June 14, 2012

The Priest, the President and the Persian Peugeot, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents
The Priest, the President and the Persian Peugeot
By Saif Shahin
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
By Hooman Majd
Penguin, pp 272
3.5 stars

“If you want to know us, become a Shia first.” That is what Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, an ayatollah and a former president, told a foreign visitor to Tehran. But if the picture of Iran that emerges from ‘The Ayatollah Begs To Differ’ – journalist Hooman Majd’s travelogue-cum-reflections about his homeland – is to be believed, you could do a pretty good job of that by simply being an Indian.

Majd lives in New York, and he attempts to offer an affectionate glimpse of Iranian life to people who have for three decades viewed Iran as a mortal enemy. On every other page, he reminds his American readers just how vast is the cultural gulf between them and his compatriots, how difficult it is for them to sometimes even tolerate, let alone comprehend, Iranian social customs and practices. (Hence the need to be patient when dealing with Iranians – like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)

But to an Indian reader, many of these civilisational concepts – the good, the bad and the ugly – will appear eerily familiar. Take, for instance, the laat. He is the Iranian neighbourhood tough, not quite the Sicilian mafioso shooting his way around Chicago streets, but very similar to the dada who commands respect at knifepoint in the bylanes of many an Indian town and city. The laat can also be easily recognised in the formulaic hooligan-with-a-soft-heart roles played by countless Bollywood actors ranging from Amitabh Bachchan to Sanjay Dutt in the 1970s and 80s.

http://newageislam.com/the-priest,-the-president-and-the-persian-peugeot/books-and-documents/d/1783



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