| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 6, 2000 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Inside Iran PERSIAN MIRRORS The Elusive Face of Iran By Elaine Sciolino Free Press -- 402pp -- $26 Elaine Sciolino got her start covering Iran when her editor at Newsweek told her to accompany Ayatollah Khamenei on his triumphant return in 1979. She has been journeying there ever since, most recently for The New York Times. Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran is her memoir of those journeys. The title refers to multifaceted mosaic mirrors at the Shah's Marble Palace in which it is difficult to make out a whole image. Unfortunately, there's an unintended aptness about the title, since Sciolino's effort is similarly unfocused, providing takes on everything from President Mohammad Khatami's shoes to the Iranians' deep attachment to medieval poetry. What does it all add up to, the reader may ask? One answer is that the boorish image that the outside world has of Iran does not do the country justice. It is an enthralling land, one whose creativity was never quite snuffed out by the Islamic revolution. For example, local talent, along with government subsidies and low costs, have helped turn Iran into a cinema hot spot. Like a number of other Iran experts, Sciolino believes the country could one day become a force for democracy in the Middle East and the Islamic world. Unlike most of the neighboring Arab states, it has a serious commitment to parliamentary government and has managed to avoid becoming a dictatorship. In fact, Iran is constantly roiled by power struggles among players such as President Khatami and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei--none of whom can consistently deliver what they want or promise. Many of Sciolino's best insights and sharpest images come from small details or glimpses behind the scenes. She reports that when she first met Khatami she knew he was a different breed of mullah because he wore ''beautiful...finely stitched black leather shoes,'' not the blue plastic sandals favored by Ayatollah Khamenei. That was a clue to her that the President would try to reconcile the sacred and the secular, the traditional and the modern. Later, Sciolino attends a dinner of his close female relations and creates a family spat by describing in print the hair and makeup of the President's mother--a great beauty in her day. Khatami apparently was annoyed at his mother for allowing such details to get into the Western press. Deeply offended, Khatami's mother apparently didn't speak to him for days. But Persian Mirrors isn't all lighthearted fun. Sciolino has the best account I have seen on the 1998 stabbing deaths of dissidents Dariush Forouhar and his wife. Their crime: on-air radio criticism of human-rights abuses. ''Repression is the dark side of the Islamic Republic,'' Sciolino says. Indeed, following Khatami supporters' big parliamentary election win earlier this year, hard-liners jailed many of his supporters and closed newspapers that backed him. Sciolino says in her preface that she has ''no predictions'' for Iran's future. Who can blame her? It is a particularly unpredictable place. By STANLEY REED _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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