The Heartbeat Of Iran: Real Voices Of A Country And Its People, by Tara Kangarlou

In reading this book I cannot help but feel a sense of disappointment that this book was not better than it was. In seeking to present the best possible face for Iran, the author has chosen precisely the sort of voices to represent Iran that would be familiar to any leftist gathering. Not a single person in this book that is shown as a voice of Iran is someone who would be considered right-of-center in the United States, and all of them are likely considered to be highly strident voices of the left in the context of Iranian politics. It baffles me why the writer decided, at a time when there was the possibility of genuine cultural exchange between the United States and Iran, to focus on voices that would be acceptable to leftist audiences but that would not at all represent the tens of millions of Iranians who are religious or even devout, nor are the accounts designed at all to appeal to those American voices who are devoutly conservative. This book is written by a leftist journo (and sometime contributor to Al Jazeera America and the Huff Post) about leftist Iranians for a leftist American audience. There is something missing in that.

This book begins with a foreword and a short introduction, and then the rest of the book–about 300 pages or so–is divided into twenty-four chapters that express a wide variety of left-of-center people in Iran, some of whom have left Iran as of the time when this book was published and all of whom appear to have family members abroad and the temptation to move abroad for their own safety and well-being. I was not familiar with any of the names of the people in this book, so none of them are particularly famous, but one of the people is a notable pilot who saved the lives of almost two hundred people before running afoul of the government because of his hostility to the dangers resulting from sanctions. Another was the flag-bearer for Iran during the 2016 Olympics, still another was an activist for widows, while yet another was a blind Baluchi young woman who became an activist for the well-being of the blind in Iranian society. One of the people, perhaps the most relatable, was a pistachio farmer. Still others ran art galleries or owned restaurants or something of that nature, while the last couple of people were a gay man (with no last name given) as well as a transsexual, respectively, to show the attention to sexual minorities that the left tends to give, no matter what society they are interacting with.

The best essays are those which manage to rise above the partisanship of the author. The first few essays, with older Iranians who had experience in living before the 1979 Revolution, are the ones that come off the best, with their education and culture. Most of the rest of the people, though, are precisely the sort of people one finds too often in the West, checkbox diversity choices who do not want to marry or have children, have no strong religious foundation but only a vague cultural tie to minority status, and strong left-wing cultural identities. Others are activists for various causes–like the well being of widows, the blind, disabled, or various sexual minorities. A lot of them are interested in cinema, running NGOs, and writing, as well as art and food-related businesses. The book has an obvious point in trying to urge its American reading audience to turn against the sanctions of Iran because of the harm it does to people that the ideal reader of this book will see as being people like themselves. Yet I did not see in this book people like me–honest, devout people of religious faith and a strong hostility to decadence, nor did I see this book as being aimed at me or people like me. And that is a great shame. The author should have paid more attention to voices outside of those that would be obvious for a leftist to encounter and seek out. There is a great deal more to reality than the author has in her thoughts.