Book Description
From the Publisher With a love of travel, Alison Wearing invites us to journey with her to Iran--a country that few Westerners have a chance to see. Traveling with a male friend, in the guise of a couple on their honeymoon, Wearing set out on her own at every available opportunity. She went looking for what lay beneath the media's representation of Iran and found a country made up of welcoming, curious, warmhearted, ambitious men and women. With humor and compassion, Wearing gives Iranians the chance to wander beyond headlines and stereotypes, and in doing so, reveals the poetry of their lives--those whose lives extend beyond Western news stories of kidnapping, terrorism, veiled women, and Islamic fundamentalism.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

With a love of travel, Alison Wearing invites us to journey with her to Iran--a country that few Westerners have a chance to see. Traveling with a male friend, in the guise of a couple on their honeymoon, Wearing set out on her own at every available opportunity. She went looking for what lay beneath the media's representation of Iran and found a country made up of welcoming, curious, warmhearted, ambitious men and women. With humor and compassion, Wearing gives Iranians the chance to wander beyond headlines and stereotypes, and in doing so, reveals the poetry of their lives--those whose lives extend beyond Western news stories of kidnapping, terrorism, veiled women, and Islamic fundamentalism.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

To blend in on their recent visit to Iran, journalist Wearing and her gay roommate pose as a married couple, complete with wedding rings and a forged marriage certificate. Wearing also purchases a chaador (literally "tent"), made of heavy black polyester, which she wears throughout her journey--110-degree heat notwithstanding. From that point forward, the friends can't go anywhere without receiving copious offers of gifts, dinners, invitations into people's homes, free taxi rides and fruit from Iranians who are delighted by the Westerners' attempt to understand and appreciate their customs. The characters Wearing meets are extraordinary in their ordinariness, and the author deftly shows that our opinion of the Middle East is really our opinion of Middle Eastern government. She seeks out the most intriguing of the people around her, then steps back and lets them take center stage. Tip, for instance, spent 12 years in California. Now in his early 20s, he's been stuck in Iran doing odd jobs for three dollars a day, so to save money he started a side business selling opium. Another Iranian they meet, deeply religious, explains to them why Iran is superior to the West, while other Iranians apologize profusely for the conditions of their country since the fall of the Shah 20 years ago. Wearing lets readers glimpse the anti-Americanism, oppression and miserably inefficient bureaucracy portrayed in the American news, but again and again she demonstrates the generosity of the Iranians. With this engrossing account, Wearing casts a sympathetic eye on the real people of Iran, so often invisible to the West. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

Wearing and her gay friend Ian, with Canadian passport and fake marriage license in hand, traveled Iran for five months in 1995, almost 20 years after the Shah's departure and six years after the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Their purpose was to touch the people of the country. Wearing produced, from that experience, a series of personal essays that will be of great interest to students of the Middle East and women's studies, and to the ordinary reader who is curious about the people in a part of the world that has burst into our consciousness. She vividly characterizes a people who are generous and open-handed and who are devoted to family and to Islam. Early in their tour, several women shop with Wearing to find the black scarf and manteau that will be her outer garments for the duration, and for the chaador, heavier and all encompassing, which she must wear to sacred sites or on holy days. She finds that she must monitor and adjust these garments constantly to achieve the requisite covering, but they give her anonymity and a freedom that she would not have had otherwise. She and Ian endure debilitating heat, stay in cheap hotels, and are invited into homes where they eat the customary food, see children, and observe relationships. She visits with women who affirm their lives even as they know that others in the world have fewer limitations, and with men who are eager to tell how unsettling and abusive life was under the Shah and how life now, though poorer, is more righteous. She talks with unexpected persons: an Anglican priest in love with life, a young drug dealer who grew up in America, and a divorced German woman who must live in Iran or never see her children. The authorand Ian, and sometimes she alone, are taken on impromptu trips and spend days with people whose sense of time is agonizingly different from theirs. Always they are asked what they are doing there and what people in the west think of Iran. They find that what the average person "knows" about the west is how materialistic and decadent we are and that crime and moral decay are rampant. A special delight in the book is Wearing's ability to reproduce the language she hears. Almost everywhere they go, Wearing and Ian find Iranians who have studied in the west, have studied English at school, or who have married a person from the U.S., from Mexico, or from Germany. Wearing has a strong sense of the history and politics of the area and notes, too often, the signs and chants that say "Death to America," even as many Iranians ask how they can go about emigrating to Canada, to the U.S., or to England. Minor criticism: The reader is never told the date of the trip; after an offhand reference to a date, this reviewer had to look up Ayatollah Khomeini's death date and add six years. Also, the word purdah, used in the title, appears only once without definition. It means "a state of seclusion or concealment." The only character in the book whose characterization is somewhat wooden is Ian. Stresses wear down their relationship, and they part at the end of the trip. His name, oddly, is missing from the acknowledgements paragraph at the end of the book. Category: Travels. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, St. Martin's, Picador, 322p. map., $14.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Edna M. Boardman; Minot, ND SOURCE: KLIATT, March 2002 (Vol. 36, No. 2)

Library Journal

One can only applaud Canadian journalist and travel writer Wearing for her evenhanded reportage of a five-month journey through Iran. Traveling in the company of pseudo-husband (her gay male roommate), Wearing sets out to explore a country replete with contradictions and to record her experiences with compassion, humor, and objective observation. The natural hospitality of the Iranian people is a constant thread throughout the author's journey; for example, new acquaintances go in search of candy as a busload of people cheerfully delay their departure to accommodate the casual query of the Canadians for a place to buy chocolate bars. All is not wonderful in Iran, and Wearing doesn't gloss over the restrictive atmosphere that particularly affects women. Through her stay, she agrees to address as an Iranian woman despite the discomfort of being swathed in fabric from head to toe. The moments of high humor are delicious, as when Wearing's "husband" is informed by telephone, "Mr. Canada, we take your wife. We make her cold" when a kind family takes her for a drive in the countryside to cool off. This is a very special travel, both entertaining and enlightening. Highly recommended.-Janet Ross, Sparks Branch Lib., NV

Robert Irwin - Times Literary Supplement