BOOK REVIEW 'Searching for Hassan' attempts to explain Iran

The book captures the ambivalence of a country that wants to be a part of the world, but apart from it too.
By ROB STOUT
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
"Searching for Hassan," by Terence Ward (Houghton Mifflin, $23).
Twenty years after an Islamic revolution swept Iran, most outsiders still see the country as a hotbed of anti-American rhetoric, terrorism and fanatical repression.
Certainly, state-sponsored hostage-taking and public chants of "Death to America" did little to alter this image, nor does its role in what has been referred to as "the axis of evil." However, after the election of the moderate cleric Mohammed Khatami in 1997, the government began to loosen some of the edicts passed down from the hard-line regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, including restrictions on travel to Iran aimed mostly at westerners.
Author lived there: Ward, who came of age in Iran during the 1960s while his father was employed by the National Iranian Oil Co., saw this as an opportunity to return to a country that had, for him, taken on a mythical proportion since his adolescence.
It also provided Ward and five family members the chance to find their missing Iranian caretaker, Hassan Ghazemi, described affectionately by the author as his "Persian father."
After the Wards left Tehran, Hassan fled to a small village that could not be found on any map. Going on guesswork, they re-entered the country in 1998 and began wandering through villages Hanzel and Gretel-style, mentioning Hassan's name and flashing an outdated photograph. By the book's midpoint, he is eventually found, but their emotional reunion seems almost secondary to what the author witnesses along the way and what he later reflects upon.
In an attempt to create a clear-eyed portrait of this historically misunderstood country, the author becomes too caught up in the bizarre mix of Persian tradition, religious fervor and pop culture that is present-day Iran.
Gratuitous detail: Through his desire to raise this account above mere travelogue, Ward proves to be a very literate tour guide, but the resulting gratuitous detail sabotages what for many will be a first time sense of the country.
Certainly, Ward's strong grasp of Iranian history and culture does provide much of the illumination for his numerous distinctions, both ancient and modern, made throughout the narrative. The Iran of his youth was "intoxicated by the west" from the Shah and his court right down to the lower classes. Now he carries a list of helpful travel phrases that include: "Thank you very much for showing me your marvelous gun" and "It is exceptionally kind of you to allow me to travel in the trunk of your car."
Way with words: Although the text can start to drag from this overly conscientious attempt to contrast the then and now, readers will alternately be rewarded with an evocative passage that shines like a gem. Describing the summer, he remembers "the sun's suffocating heat falls over Tehran like a thick wool blanket and melts the asphalt into soft pools of black gelatin." The table set by Hassan "groans with vegetables and spices."
Miraculously, the Wards travel without incident, a testament to the vibrancy and hospitality that the revolution could not erase. Hotel managers are overly helpful, university students seem unafraid to practice their English, and newspapers are filled with pictures of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
Such paradoxes have always permeated the identity of Iran, a country that has wanted to become as much a part of the world as apart from it.
"Searching for Hassan" captures this ambivalence in a grand and humane way, but for all Ward's attentiveness toward reaching the essence of his experiences with Iran and its people, readers may feel at a distance with much of the memoir and, unfortunately, no closer to understanding the complexities of a country that is once again standing center on the world's stage.