Doug’s World

Last Book of 2005

We’re cleaning up the house for a little New Year’s party tonight, but I’ve been a bum because I’m also trying to finish a book I’ve been reading over the holidays: “We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs” by Nasrin Alavi.

I read Anthony Shadid’s excellent book “Night Draws Near” earlier this year, and “We Are Iran” reminds me of it in some ways. They’re both books about countries that the current U.S. administration has dubbed “evil,” and they’re both full of real words from real people on the street, instead of pontifications from pundits and politicians or the view from inside American military hardware through the eyes of young soldiers or the oxymoron of “embedded journalists.” With all due respect to those sorts of perspectives, I’m a lot more interested in what real people have to say about the things happening in their own back yards.

“We Are Iran” is mostly about the blogs coming out of Iran during the last two years. There is a rich, vibrant blog culture in Iran that has been a huge thorn in the side of the idealistic and disconnected regime. While those in power recite religious platitudes and make excuses for their corruption and ineffectiveness, men and women are risking their personal safety to get the truth out, and doing so under conditions of constant surveillance and heavy-handed “anti-terrorist” tactics employed by shady and unaccountable government and military organizations.

Oops, I digress. Back to Iran …

Iran’s blogging counterculture is largely unknown in the West, in part because many of the blogs are written in Farsi. Farsi is the fourth most common language for blogs worldwide, and there are more Iranian blogs than Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese or Russian blogs. Another reason for the lack of awareness of Iranian blogs is the fact they’re mostly opposed to the non-elected clerics who run the country, so there is no coverage of these people in the official Iranian media.

The book presents little summaries of political and cultural events in recent Iranian history, followed by excerpts from blogs that have covered those events. The format works very well, because many of the blog posts are things you’d not understand unless you know the background of the events being discussed.

A sense of humor is prevalent throughout many of the blogs, such as the quote on FaranGeopolis that translates into English as “God invented war so that Americans can learn geography!” Or this great post on “How to Liberate Iran” by Sharif N. Mashi. I felt much more hopeful for Iran’s future after reading the book, not least because it’s clear that the current generation has no respect for the hard-line Islamic fundamentalists who have presided over Iran’s economic decline. As in Cuba, it’s hard to keep the people happy with talk of anti-imperialism if the average family is worse off 20 years after the revolution.

After I finish this book, I’m going to read “Come Back to Afghanistan” by Said Hyder Akbar, the teenage son of Hamid Karzai’s chief spokesman Said Fazel Akbar. This guy was a Californian of Afghan descent, had lived in the U.S. his whole life, and then was thrust back into Afghanistan as part of the new post-Taliban power elite. Hyder’s perspective has been described as “heartbreaking and hilarious” — I hope that’s true. And as long as I’m studying the Axis of Evil, anybody know where I can find a funny political book by a North Korean these days?

OK, I can’t hide from the vaccuum cleaner any longer … finished the book, even blogged about it … nowhere left to hide, time to get cleaning …

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2005 at 2:51 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.