Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan
By Nicholas Jubber
getting down to achieve perception into the lives of Iranians and Afghans this present day, Nicholas Jubber is shocked to discover the legacy of a colourful pre-Islamic Persian tradition that has persisted even in occasions of the main enthusiast non secular fundamentalism. Everywhere—from underground dance events to non secular shrines to opium dens—he reveals strong and unbreakable connections to a time whilst either Iran and Afghanistan have been a part of an analogous powerful empire, while the flame of Persian tradition lit up the world.
even if via his encounters with poets and cab drivers or run-ins with “pleasure daughters” and mujahideen, many times Jubber is drawn again to the eleventh-century Persian epic, the Shahnameh (“Book of Kings”). The poem turns into not just his window into the region’s earlier, but additionally his hyperlink to its tumultuous current, and during it Jubber profits entry to an Iran and Afghanistan seldom printed or depicted: inside-out worlds during which he has tea with a warlord, is taught find out how to stroll like an Afghan, or even discovers, on an evening packed with bootleg alcohol and dancing, what it capability to drink arak off an Ayatollah’s beard.