Iran

It was the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution this month a fact that would probably have passed me by except, due to one of those weird coincidences, we got an unrelated research request on an Iranian in early February. It made me realise how little I knew about the event despite the fact that the Revolution is probably one of the first world events I remember. I was seven at the time and it made an impact mostly because some friends of my parents, showing particularly bad timing, moved there in 1978.

So I've read four books on Iram since, the names of which are downstairs and I can't be bothered to get. Two general histories, one starting in ancient times and ending in 1996 and the other focusing on the last fifty years to 2005. The other two were specific, a diary of the nine-months leading up to the Revolution and a collection of essays on the Iran-Iraq War written about halfway through the conflict. They were all very interesting but it was very obvious that they had all been written for and by outsiders. This was very much Iran through Western eyes although not (entirely) unsympathetic ones.

The least sympathetic was the account of the Revolution which was written by a retired English diplomat who, at least at the time he wrote the diary, perhaps less so when he edited and published it, didn't seem to have grasped the fact that the era of Empire was over. He actually referred to his gardener, his representative of 'the people', as simple. That is 'salt of the earth simple' rather than 'special education simple' but that pretty much sums it up really.

The author the general history was much better but she had this whole theme of the competing aspects of the Iranian soul (Islam and Persia) which got tedious and prompted me to re-read the introduction to Orientalism.

The articles on the War were interesting, although partly for reasons unrelated to Iran. Written in about 1984 the thing that struck me the most was how large the Soviet Union loomed in the analyses of the situation and the phrase 'the two superpowers'. I remember the Cold War but it has been over for twenty years and the knowledge/attitude that the USSR was moribund and toothless for its last few years is so widespread that I had forgotten how things used to be.

So I am now a little bit better informed about how little I know about the Middle East.