Turns out I prescient in picking this up from my TBR pile, as not long after I started reading it, the Mahsa Amini story and related protests propelled Iran into the headlines again.
Poets & Pahlevans is Marcello Di Cintio’s travelogue of his journeys through Iran in the early/mid 2000s (post-9/11 but still during the Bush years). He styles himself a romantic, driven by the twin ‘p’s of the title- poetry and wrestling, as well as a fascination with persian language and culture. Di Cintio is from my hometown of Calgary (not a huge Iranian population) and without an inherent connection to Iran (no family background although apparently at one point an Iranian woman he was interested in impressing)- all of which meant I could have used more information on what exactly drove him to repeat visits to a country that was pretty low down people’s radar in the mid-aughts. [That is not to say that Iran isn’t worth visiting, or that I don’t understand the draw- it is on my list and I would love to go- but rather his fascination, bordering on obsession, could be better explained.] It feels like his initial trip is in part driven by the desire to be special, a risk-taker, etc. (fine but less compelling to me as a travelogue); I’d like to know about the pre-planning, what he hoped for and expected and then how that compared to what he found (his repeating mantra seemed to be that it was mostly as he expected- people were very welcoming and friendly; great to find as a traveller, less compelling as a travelogue, where I want some growth and learning).
Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair, as Di Cintio lays out what he is searching for in the title of the book- poets and wrestlers. I’ve heard of Iran being a big poetry-loving country (I’ve heard the same about a lot of countries- the Arabic world, some latin American countries, parts of China and Japan, etc.) but the wrestling part was new, and I could have used some good historical background- why is Iranian wrestling in particular so interesting to Di Cintio (who is a wrestler himself)? Is it one of the birthplaces of wrestling? One of the few places where wrestling styles have continued uninterrupted?
I feel like I’m being really negative but I don’t think its Di Cintio’s book in particular as much as my growing frustration with travelogues generally- I want there to be something more than hearing about someone’s vacation, like a self-awareness arc, or something new and unexpected about the country being travelled, or really beautiful prose. DiCintio’s book didn’t hit any of these for me: he left pretty much the same person as he’d arrived; I think I’d read enough news stories about Iran that I didn’t get the ‘new and unexpected’; and his prose was fine but not memorable.
Did I learn more about Iran? Sure. I lost a number of hours googling the myriad places Di Cintio was travelling, and then occasionally getting lost in Wikipedia articles (he goes to Bam twice- once before and once after their 2004 earthquake in which 30,000 people are killed; I had no idea there had been such an earthquake at all, so that was a rabbit-hole). My issue was that I wasn’t getting a lot of the history from Di Cintio, aside from where it related to a poet or a wrestler/wrestling style (tell me more about Bam’s fortifications, or its role on a desert route, or how that influences the character of the city!).
I would pick this up if I was planning a trip to Iran (not anytime soon with the protests, unfortunately) or if I had my own interest in Iran to stoke, or if I had a love of any travelogues, however meandering. Beyond those, I would leave this one in your TBR pile.