The Book Review That Wasn't

More like the mental landscapes I found myself traveling while reading Delphine Minoui's I'm Writing You from Tehran. By J.G.P. MacAdam.

Paradise. The word—the ideal—comes to English from French which comes from Latin which comes from Greek which comes from the ancient Iranian, or Persian, pairidaeza, which means "garden" or "park" like the one that used to surround the Tomb of Cyrus the Great.

The ideal of paradise, the tale of it, the loss of innocence, the perhaps tragic hope of regaining such a thing, if it ever existed in the first place, continues to echo down the ages. No less today in Iran itself. 

I'm glad that America did not invade Iran following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. You remember those days? We invaded Afghanistan, then we invaded Iraq, and there was a lot of talk, as part of the so-called Axis of Evil, of invading Iran itself. Crazy, right? Insanity. But still, today, there are people in America who when they think of Iran think only of an enemy—of ongoing geopolitical standoffishness, proxy fights, drone strikes, an almost assured eventual nation-on-nation showdown. Regardless of the fact that—despite the media propaganda machines in both countries—people in both Iran and America would prefer a normalization of relations, of travel, of exchange. If freedom should come to everyday Iranians, it can only come from within—that's what this splendid book by Delphine Minoui taught me. You can't force freedom on people—that sounds like a no-brainer but it's remarkable how susceptible any of us can be when it comes to slogans like "fighting for freedom" or "fighting for God…"