Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan

by Nicholas Jubber

Book Overview

An engrossing blend of travel writing and history, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard traces one man's adventure-filled journey through today's Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and describes his remarkable attempt to make sense of the present by delving into the past.

Setting out to gain insight into the lives of Iranians and Afghans today, Nicholas Jubber is surprised to uncover the legacy of a vibrant pre-Islamic Persian culture that has endured even in times of the most fanatic religious fundamentalism. Everywhere--from underground dance parties to religious shrines to opium dens--he finds powerful and unbreakable connections to a time when both Iran and Afghanistan were part of the same mighty empire, when the flame of Persian culture lit up the world.

Whether through his encounters with poets and cab drivers or run-ins with "pleasure daughters" and mujahideen, again and again Jubber is drawn back to the eleventh-century Persian epic, the Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"). The poem becomes not only his window into the region's past, but also his link to its tumultuous present, and through it Jubber gains access to an Iran and Afghanistan seldom revealed or depicted: inside-out worlds in which he has tea with a warlord, is taught how to walk like an Afghan, and even discovers, on a night full of bootleg alcohol and dancing, what it means to drink arak off an Ayatollah's beard.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306818841
• ISBN13: 9780306818844
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Da Capo
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A look at Iranian culture using the Shahnameh as its centerpiece

This is a memoir of a British man in his mid-twenties living in Iran (and visiting Afghanistan) and discovering a culture he never expected. The contradictory nature of Iran is explored with Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (an epic poem about Persia's ancient shahs written about 1000 years ago) as its axis -- through his understanding of the Shahnameh, and its importance to Persians, he comes to better understand Iran itself as well as Iran's place in the Middle East. That is, how it is similar, but also how it is set apart, and especially in how the Persians themselves view themselves as apart from many of the cultures surrounding them. I won't say you get a complete, unbiased representation of Iranian thinking -- most of the people he encounters are the intellectual elite -- but it certainly taught me more about the Persian way of thinking than many of the other books I've read on the country and culture. If, ultimately, Jubber comes off as having a somewhat sentimental view of Iran, it is only because he is reflecting how the Persians themselves view their country, their culture, and their history.