Bringing the tragedy of war to life

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs — A Memoir of Iran
By Christopher de Bellaigue
Harper Collins, 2004
280 pages, $35

REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs is a story of Iran told from the standpoint of someone who is both an insider and an outsider. Christopher de Bellaigue is British-born, but lives in Tehran, speaks fluent Persian and is married to an Iranian woman.

De Bellaigue tells the story of Iran in a journalistic rather than a personal style. In that sense it's not really a memoir. The author doesn't disclose much about his own life in Iran, with only passing references to his Iranian wife and young son.

De Bellaigue uses a patchwork of interviews with Iranian people and snippets of Iranian history interweaved with his own thoughts and observations of daily life in a country so much of us know little about.

There is a particular emphasis on the Iran-Iraq war, which began a year after the 1979 revolution and didn't end until 1988.

The weaving together of history and interviews with people who were involved in those periods of history is the thing I enjoyed most about the book, bringing the terrible tragedy of that war to life through the stories and suffering of the veterans who fought in it.

I finished the book with an urge to understand more about Iran, its people and their experiences. I followed it up with a perfect companion book — a very personal memoir of life in revolutionary Iran, Journey From the Land of No, by Roya Hakakian, who grew up at the time of the 1979 revolution. This book gives a vivid and tangible sense of the turmoil and excitement of the revolution as it unfolded.

From Green Left Weekly, April 20, 2005.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 623