>>PREVIEW
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
Friday, October 13
Art Gallery of Calgary
Saturday, October 14
Vertigo Studio (Tower Centre)
I met with Marcello di Cintio to discuss his latest book, Poets and Pahlevans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran (Knopf Canada, 292 pp.) as well as his upcoming appearance at Wordfest. He is happy to be a part of the festival and happier still at his reception since 2002.
"It’s the best story," he says. "Someone from Random House was in Calgary and at Pages in Kensington. He asked the clerk if there were any up-and-coming local authors he should be aware of, and was given a copy of my first book, Harmattan, took it back to Toronto and read it. They sent me a letter asking if I was working on anything. I had just come back from Iran, so I told them, ‘yeah, I got a story about poets and wrestlers, set in Iran,’ thinking no one is going to be interested in publishing this. They said send it us."
That was two summers ago. Harmattan, di Cintio’s retelling of his travels in West Africa, had garnered him several writing awards, including the 2003 Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book, and inspired an interest in travel. When Marcello and I sat down, he had just returned from Turkey and Georgia and briefly talked of his plans to visit Algeria or Libya.
"Iran is unique even within the Middle-East. It’s Persian, not Arab. It’s not Sunni, it’s Shiite. It’s got its own thing going on. I was attracted to that, and as I was learning about it, coming across the poetry, I grew to respect that and liked the fact that the traditional wrestling styles are still practised today."
Poets and wrestlers, or pahlevans, may seem an odd combination, but for di Cintio, who was on the University of Calgary wrestling team, the fit seemed more natural. According to di Cintio, the battle-filled epic poetry of Iran’s Persian past was used to inspire wrestlers before their matches. A desire to explore these two traditions helped set his agenda.
"My guide to Iran was where the tombs of the poets are and the wrestling styles found in those particular areas. That’s how I planned my trip to go seek those phenomena out. I was pretty lucky. Looking for these things led me to some amazing places, even if I didn’t find the poetry or wrestling. Like the funeral in Kuhrang, on top of a mountain, or at a wedding in the southeast corner of the desert. I didn’t know these places existed, let alone where they were on a map."
As di Cintio notes, Iranian culture is not static, despite our images of the mullahs and their strictures. Throughout Poets and Pahlevans, his travels in an increasingly modern Iran often involved navigating a nebulous friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend network extending into rural and remote areas of the Iranian countryside, as younger wrestlers in cosmopolitan centres apologized for the "old ways" being no longer practised.
"There’s the revolution, when everything changed en masse," he says. "1979 was the end, when everything began anew. Everything that was lost was blamed on the revolution. I don’t think that’s the case, but these old men say, ‘well, the Shah supported it,’ but I’m not sure if the revolution had not happened that these wrestling styles would still be gone. The Shah was officially enamored of the west. Maybe it would have happened faster if the bars had stayed open. Maybe Turkey is the example of what Iran would have been like with a secular government. Because Iranians are so upset with the conditions they live in, everything negative in their lives is considered the fault of the revolution and everything before the revolution was so wonderful. We’re talking about people who weren’t even alive, who were children. They have no idea. The majority of people in Iran are under 30."
Still, the willingness and openness of Iranians to help him was a surprise. "I had read about the hospitality I would receive, but I couldn’t believe the level at which I received it. I had to fight off people giving me things. What also surprised me was how open and candidly people were discussing their own government. ‘I hate the mullahs,’ they’d say. I’d get nervous. ‘You can’t talk that way.’ But it was all they talked about. They’re extremely well-read – there are dozens of daily newspapers in Iran. They talk about what’s going on in the rest of the world with authority. I wish we were as well-read here."
Quick to return the favour, di Cintio took every chance to talk about how safe and well received he felt. During the extent of his two trips to Iran, only one moment stands out where his identity became important.
"Certainly during the Zarha Kazemi affair, my Canadian-ness became an issue. They treated me as if I had lost a member of my family and said, ‘now you know what it’s like to love this in this country.’ For them, the prison death of a journalist isn’t even news. Her face was on the cover of every newspaper in Iran. People on the street were approaching me like, ‘Now we have something in common, you and I.’" |
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