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A Persian Letter

by Dr. Nasser Shojania

526 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0902; ISBN 1-4120-3075-7; US$39.50, C$45.00, EUR32.50, £22.50

Armed with a magical microscope and a pair of reversed binocular, a poetic Persian physician looks at the colourful cross-sections of his symmetrically bisected life‹35 years spent in Iran and 35 years in Canada‹to narrates them with the incisive prose of an anatomic pathologist to produce a modern Persian epic in the form of a segmented letter to his dead mother in Iran.

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about the book about the author sample excerpts & Table of Contents catalogue info

About the Book

Like a fish who does not know it's always submerged in transparent water until it is out of it, I did not know that I had a culture until I landed in Canada and found myself in a sea of various cultures, some of which richer than mine. Once I discovered this truth I included it as good news in my letters to entertain my aging mother who was always sitting, cross-legged and perhaps bored, after having successfully raised her nine fatherless children, in the house of one of her two daughters in Iran.
Once I learned that in addition to my mother those who went to visit her were also enjoying my letters and were invariably asking her "haven't you received any new letter from Nasser?" when they run out of topics for conversation, I decided to write a book in English, employing the same simple and respectful tone of voice with which I was writing to my mother in Farsi, but in English, for the rest of the world to enjoy.
A Persian Letter, even though it's written to entertain my mother, is an informative book for the entire world to read because it answers questions I've been asked about Iran in the last 35 years in various occasions, mainly in the cafeterias of the hospitals in Canada where I've worked. These questions and answers are more acute and more relevant now than they were seven years ago when I began the book. Now, the entire world wants to know more about the way of life, beliefs and thinking of the Muslims in the Middle East and what the differences between them are. In this regard, in the book, in chapters 73 and 74, for examples, I show the differences between myself; as a Muslim Iranian pathologist and a Muslim Pakistani Pathologist when I had gone to Boston for my continual medical education in September 2001, titled
Amjad, an American Pathologist from Pakistan
And in chapter 74, I compare myself with an Iraqi pathologist, met for the first time in another Pathology meeting in Boston, the next year; on 2002, titled:
Ali, an American Pathologist from Iraq."
The book is composed of 82 essay-like short stories and letters, the latter simulating the last letter I had written to my mother, tongue-in-cheek, with the broad-tipped reed pen that I had plucked with permission from the reed yard of my wall-less neighbour in Victoria in the fall of 1989, and the re-hydrated black ink that I had painstakingly brought from Tehran to Winnipeg in the summer of 1965, when I came to Canada as a simple physician to specialize in the specialty of psychiatry.-- But soon had to change my mind and jumped to the opposite end of medicine to become a pathologist, when I discovered that trying to diagnose insanity in cultures so different than mine was not compatible with the working of a sane mind.
Despite being written by an anatomic Pathologist, A Persian Letter is not a detective or mystery type of book. It is a Plotless book. My job is to unravel the mysteries, not to further complicate them.
Besides being composed of many letters, A Persian Letter is a eulogy for the dying art of letter writing that my mother was so good at.
As the only book that I have written in my long life, A Persian Letter is also the expression of the gene for single-book writing which I must have inherited through my mother. She did not write any book, but her older brother and her father did. The older brother's name was Colonel Abdullah Khalvati, but the Tehranians had given him the dubious nickname Sarhang Sharabi, meaning, Colonel the Wine-stricken because of his heroic and sometimes foolish actions when he was young. In 1942, in the middle of WWII, three years before the establishment of the United Nations, he wrote a book and named it SOS meaning "Humanity is danger and the world badly needs an international institution to solve its problems by words rather than swords. He made a colourful cover for it and put his own skeleton beside the door of that imaginary building. I have borrowed several pictures from that book, and have covered the back of my book with the front cover of SOS, to have shown my appreciation. My appreciation, because all his life Sharabi lived in a rented house in the Little Bazaar of Asheikh-Hadi in Tehran, and near the end of his life sold his unfinished house in the prestigious Pahlavi Avenue to self-publish his book to send it to the influential people around the world, free of charge, to do something for the sickness of the world.
The book of the grandfather is leather-bound and picture-less. It's a twin book, half poems half prose. The poem-half is named Deevan-eh Nasseri and is mostly in praise of Nassereddin Shah of Qajar because he was the poet of his court. The prose-part is named Aadab-eh Nasseri, and is about ethics and morality in general and advice to the youth of his extended family if they wanted to be secure in society (by respecting the religion) and how to get elevated in the society by employing the tactic which he had employed in the court of the King: "The best trick is be truthful all the time."
The author has listened to both of the advices of his maternal grandfather. Even though the author is still looking for God, he wishes that there were a God and respects all religions, including that of his mother. The son is certain that without her religion, and five times praying per day, as well as her Tavakkol (Putting one's power in the hand of God, and making Him one's solicitor) his mother could not manage to raise her nine children so successfully.
While one is entertained during reading of this book, one learns, gradually and insidiously, about numerous other topics, including: theology; philosophy; Persian poetry, old and new; Islamic sufism and its difference with Persian Erfan; spirituality, atheism and agnosticism; Islam, particularly its Shi'eh branch which is the religion of my mother and the word is derived from Arabic word Tasleem, meaning to surrender and to give up by putting one's will power in the hand of God; Christianity, Isma'ilies and Agha Khan; Baha'i faith that grew, with difficulty, out of Iran; many Shahs of Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties; World War II in Iran and what happened to me when I was sent to buy silo bread in Tehran when Iran was occupied by allied forces; Dr. Mohammad Mossaddegh and nationalization of oil industry in Iran; Tudeh Party and its political demonstrations in Tehran university; personal stories about several new Persian poets who were friends with the author, including Akhavan, pen name Omid, and Kasraei, pen name Kowli; my poet cousins on the father side, the Ghahremans; anti-shah demonstrations in Tehran; Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic revolution that ended 2500 years of monarchy in Iran; the prevalence of conspiracy theories in Iran; subconscious of Iranian people and practice of psychiatry in Iran; pathology of human body and psychopathology of the phenomenon of nostalgia; the result of unsuccessful communist revolution and successful Islamic revolution in Iran; and many more topics, all expressed in a personal and private way but conveying universal messages.
This book is very original and no one but me could write it. At my retirement party, after my colleagues praised me excessively for having done forty years of uninterrupted pathology service in Canada, I thanked them for their appreciation but did not get credit for all those works, because firstly, one cannot practice pathology single-handedly, and secondly, if those works were not done by me another pathologist could have done them, perhaps even better. "What no one but I could have done," I finally said while holding up my soft-cover, flexible book that was self-published just three hours earlier, "is this book that I have been writing during the last seven years of my service."
I deliberately wrote my book during my work because I knew such a palpable and intimate book could not be written after retirement, when one is deprived of the energy generated out of contacts with warm and cold bodies.
Why write this Book?
I had to. Northrop Frye, the Canadian literary critic who seems to have read all the books in English language, once said regarding freedom and writing books something that I thought it meant: Freedom does not mean not to do what one does not like to do, but to do what one has to do.
I had to, because nobody else was in such a privileged position as I have been. Also I've done it because I thought I could do it. I am not a writer, but I have lived through interesting times, and if I could say what I have been experiencing in an interesting way, I could make it to a readable book. Not only the Iranians who have read my letters to my mother in Farsi expect me to write a book, but also the Canadians who have read my occasional essays. Why not write? I know it takes time to write well, but time is the only thing that I have too much of it and no matter what I do, I am still left with extra time: bored.
Also I am doing it to prevent waste by recycling my accumulated knowledge gathered in two rich cultures and countries. It is a waste to take all these knowledge to my grave. I have to recycle my knowledge and spread the wisdom of my mother. It is a pity not to spread the grey wisdom of my mother which is highlighted by the Red Wisdom of the martyred Persian theologian Sohravardi: The redness which is referring to the ephemeral colour of sky when it changes from black of night to white of the day, early in the mornings, just before the daybreak or dawn
Sohravardi had published the Red Wisdom to show the trapped Bird-man the way out of the trap. The trap is this visible and palpable world that Sohravardi had previously described in his Arabic sounding book, Ghorbateh Gharbi, meaning Exiled-in-the-West. The west here means the entire visible universe, not the west side of the globe of earth. He names this world west because this is the place where the real light, which is coming from another world, dies. And since the light of sun dies every night in the west, he considers this world west.
Even though Sohravardi has been dead for several centuries, he appears in my book on several occasions, the last being early after the Islamic revolution when Ayatollah Khomeini is scolding his post-revolutionary President or Prime Minister, on the national Radio, for failing to ameliorate the economical and other conditions of the country by saying something like this: Why follow the west in every aspect of running a country? We too have had scientists such as Ebneh-Sina and Razi, or thinkers like Sohravardi.
Many Iranians have been aware and proud of the first two above-mentioned scientists and have been bragging about them for centuries, but the name of Sohravardi was never mentioned in speeches whether before or after the revolution. He was a person to be studied by theologians and universities. So, the next day, after Ayatollah Khomeini mentioned that name, when an educated Mullah from the religious city of Ghom found faults in the saying of the leader of revolution by reminding him that Sohravardi was strangulated for his blasphemous saying, Ayatollah Khomeini--or a dictated tape from him--went back to the radio to scold that Mullah by saying something like this: The struggle against these few dry-minded individuals will be harder than bringing down the last Shah of this country along with its 2500 years of monarchy.
Another, but un-intended reason for writing this book is this: When Mr. Khatami was elected as the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, about seven or eight years ago, he was asked on Television, "When are you going to make up with the west and the rest of the world, especially America?" President Khatami replied, "It is first up to the Iranians who live outside of Iran to show their rich culture, and learn from the good parts of other cultures, then, the officials might begin to talk about it."
Why re-cycle knowledge?
To save time for human being, especially the children: Human beings, as German philosopher Nietzsche has observed, have progressed a lot in everything since they came out of caves, but human babies are still borne primitively. Primitively, in the sense that they don't know anything at the time of birth, and have to learn everything including the control of their bodily functions and emotions from the scratch. My book will save them time by teaching them the ability to learn from the mistakes or successes of others rather than experiencing the painful ones themselves. It will keep them quiet as well while reading it.
I know, there are many books containing more knowledge and much deeper wisdom than my book; but none of them has the right combination of the two that A Persian Letter has.
Definition of the book: No amount of words less than the number of words employed for the writing of A Persian Letter can describe the book completely.
The next best thing for its definition is to print its Table of contents. Before doing so, however, I should add a note of caution, "Don't let the thickness of the book frighten you. It's thick, I know, but there are no extra or unnecessary words in it. Each of its eighty-two lean and delicate chapters is written with the obsession and economy-of-words that I have previously employed in my two previous award winning literary essays. To tell you the truth, I was planning to make the book even longer; up to hundred chapters to be exact, but it became truncated when two passenger airplanes run into the Twin-Towers of the world. This is why the book ends with the powerful poem of An Agnostic's Prayer subtitled And a Peaceful Prophecy that condemns that earth-shaking man-made disaster, and promises a more peaceful future for most of mankind with its last line:
If everybody's mother had behaved like mine
The world would have been already a better place for many and a worse place for a few.
The following is a paragraph from the middle of that poem:
Everybody was in the middle of doing something good when it happened
I was in the middle of writing a letter to my dead mother in Iran
When I saw a silent bang, and then another one
Out of the blue came two aluminium matchsticks
To turn the Twin Candles of the world into a pair of crumbling chandeliers
"Oh, no!"
"My God!"
"My God!!"
Glowing skeletons
Progressive collapse

About the Author

Borne in March 1930 in Tehran, Iran.
Soon after he was born in the capital city of Iran, Tehran, he was taken along with the rest of his large family to the dusty city of Torbat Heidarieh and the religious city of Mashad-- two cities in the eastern province of Iran, Khorassan, near the rusty mountains of Afghanistan-- to spend his formative years of infancy.
1936: Brought back to Tehran at the age of six, where he did all of his formal education and went through the elementary school of Kherad, high school of Sharaf, Faculty of Medicine, and Ghasr prison. The latter happened when he was in the fifth year of medical school while he was also in the army. It happened because of his eagerness for freedom and disagreement with some of the policies of the last Shah of Iran.
Summer of 1955-- He was freed simultaneously from prison, the army and revolutionary thoughts to finish the last year of his medicine. He became a physician on October 1957.
1957 to 1959--He did his two compulsory years of out-of-the-capital-city practice in the cement factory of the city of Dorood in Iran.‹ later married Mitra, the beautiful daughter of the builder of that Factory, Mr. A.J. Khazaei, when he was not the head of that factory anymore.
Returned to Tehran in 1959 and opened his private clinic in Shemiran on the lap of the chain of Alborz Mountains that separate Tehran from the sandy shores of the Caspian Sea. He saw his few private patients in the evenings. He worked as a general practitioner for the medically insured workers in the mornings, and practised psychiatry in the afternoons.
Summer of 1965--Six years later he took the hand of his wife and picked up their eighteen-month old son, Kamran, to immigrate to Canada to specialize.
He moved straight from Tehran to Winnipeg and did four years of residency in the department of pathology at Winnipeg General Hospital, long before it changed its name to Health Sciences Centre, and became an anatomical pathologist in 1969.
1969--After graduation he went to Cranbrook in the province of British Columbia as the only pathologist and the head of the laboratories of Cranbrook District Hospitals, responsible for the laboratory works of six surrounding small cities: Cranbrook, Kimberly, Ferni, Creston, Vindermir and Golden. He lasted there for one year, before he was called back by his first teacher, Dr. D. W. Penner, to Winnipeg to become part of the teaching staff and stayed there for about five years, until November 1974, or up to becoming an Associate Professor of Pathology, when he moved to Victoria.
He calls Victoria his "Last City" and plans to die there eventually rather than going to another city.
Literary background:
Coming from an aural society where one is immersed in the ill-defined space of hearing and memorizing and dependence on oral stories and rumors, rather than belonging to a visual society where one reads numerous books or printed matters, I am neither an avid reader nor a prolific writer. This is why at the age of seventy-five I am publishing my first and only book.
Most of the things I know have been absorbed by osmosis through immediate contact with my poetic or knowledgeable friends, relatives or teachers. In this sense I am similar to many Iranian of my period and this similarity is what makes the book more about Persian culture and Iranian sub-conscious than mere personal history. Perhaps it is because I have not read many books, whether in Farsi or English, that has imparted a singular originality to my book.
I am such a late-bloomer that it justifies the Iranian belief that reed never blooms
I did not write any book in Farsi either when I was in Iran. All I did in Farsi was to translate the book of "The Fisherman of Island " by a French writer by the name of Pierre Loti, from French to Farsi, and translated the book of Medical Emergencies *in contradistinction with surgical emergencies‹from English to Farsi, while in Prison.
In English, I have written less then a dozen short articles, the first two winning the first and second literary award, respectively.
1‹the first was titled The Tale of Three Cities in which the author compares and contrasts the three cities he has spent his life in: Tehran, Winnipeg and Victoria. It happened in 1985, in a literary contest among ethnic Canadian who are not already established writers or English teachers, in the periodical of Canadian Scene, in Toronto.
2 ‹ the second was titled In Praise of the Middle in which the author compares and contrasts moderation and mediocrity with extremism and radicalism and despite his past revolutionary ideas and his competitive nature, prefers the former. This happened in 1986. The literary contest was in the now folded MD Magazine, and the participation was limited to Canadian doctors. Had I not defended the second position in a contest so convincingly, I am sure the panel of judges would have awarded the first prize for my second essay as well.
I was not surprised when I won those prizes. I knew they were going to win. In fact, I had already told my prediction to my children. I knew it not because I was sure of my writing ability, but because the essays had delivered what exactly the title of them promised to do. You can ask my children about it. They remember it because out of the five hundred dollars that was the first prize, I gave hundred dollars to each of the three; Kamran, Keyvan, and Nima, for their editorial help and encouragement me to write.
Interview with Peter Gzowski
Both those two-paged articles were spotted by the eagle eyes of Peter Gzowski: The man who loved Canada and had a lot to do with holding its ten provinces and more than two territories, with often diverging points of view, reasonably together with his gravely voice. He granted me an interview on the long running, Morningside Program on CBC Radio on 11-March-1986. After reading my colourful description of the inside of human body on the national radio and expressing surprise that I had found beauty even inside human body, Peter asked me the following three questions.
1--Did you experience the proverbial culture shock when you moved from Tehran straight to Winnipeg?
--No, Peter. Actually I experienced more of a shock moving from Winnipeg to Victoria than from Tehran to Winnipeg.
2--What was the first difference you noticed between Tehran and Winnipeg when you first stepped on Canadian soil?
--Lack of walls around the houses, Peter. In Iran houses are made of walls; here the houses are surrounded by nothing, as if the walls have been internalized.
3--Are you a Canadian now?
--Peter, twelve years ago when we came to Victoria, we bought a two-story house with unfinished landscaping. The first thing that I did to it was to plant three small trees in its backyard, smaller than the smallest of our three sons. Now those trees are taller than the roof of our house. As those trees grow, Peter, I feel that it is me who is growing roots in this land.
Too bad Peter died of shortness of breath just before my book was nearing the end. I bet if he was still alive he would have granted me another interview because A Persian Letter is the extended and expanded reply to his third question.
This book would tell if I am a Canadian or an Iranian.

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