Amir Hassan Sheltan: “Love in Cairo.” review – culture

Let’s say, today’s generation of grandmothers was, reliably, constantly informed by the West German popular press about the marital drama of the last ruler on the Peacock Throne, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. However, only since Soraya Esfandiari Bakhtiari, half of German descent, became his wife in 1951 and is also allegedly his great love. After a tragic separation due to childlessness, public attention soon turned to hereditary successor Farah Diba, but Soraya remained prominent as the “sad princess of the Aircraft Group” until she was buried at the Westfriedhof in Munich.

But who remembers her predecessor? Fawsia, the beautiful sister of the corrupt Egyptian King Farouk I, married the heir to the Persian throne in 1939 to strengthen ties between the two countries. A daughter was born, but Fosya was no longer interested in having males. In 1945 she left the Shah and returned to Egypt, where she had to wait another three years for a divorce.

The presence of a small street in the back of the mind increases the pleasure of reading Prince Hassan Sheltan’s new novel “Love in Cairo”, which must certainly be in the intention of the inventor. To some extent, the title and setting represent a turning point in the work of the Iranian, who was born in 1956 and who after a few years in long-exile returned to his homeland, where most of his books are either not allowed to appear at all or they are only censored. As a novelist, he had previously documented important stages in Iranian history, from the early eighteenth century until the Islamic Revolution of 1979 until the present day, and above all described the capital, Tehran, in changing times in a multifaceted and colorful way, the city of the Arabs. The world, is at a historical but relatively recent stage when the complex relationship between Iran and Egypt once again passed a critical stage.

Gold of Love: Defender of the Cultural and Spiritual Supremacy of the Orient

In the fall of 1947, an Iranian diplomat known by the name of “Ambassador” took up his position in the Egyptian capital with urgent tasks: he had to persuade the dissident Fossia to return and had to ensure that the body of the Shah who died in South Africa, and returned – a father, who was temporarily stored in a Cairo mosque , is transported to Tehran, including some valuables. The goal is also to ensure that Saudi Arabia and Iran resume diplomatic relations after four years of the Ice Age. All this against the backdrop of the dangerously escalating conflict in Palestine and the cholera epidemic that is receding only with hesitation. But though his tasks, save for the third, are difficult or hopeless, the ambassador, a man of fifty, does not seem to be at full capacity: between negotiations and dispatch, conspiratorial meetings and elegant receptions, he still finds entertainment, a legitimate Sexy traces its origins back a decade and a half.

At that time he had met an American Sanskrit student in Paris, who fascinated him not only because of her external charm, but also as a struggling heroine for the cultural and spiritual superiority of the East. The moderately Western ambassador took the opposite position, but above all lamented that the “beautiful gazelle” had an affair with an older and very ugly Indian philosopher. Fate says that this couple, now married, now resides in Cairo. The connection is renewed and Ambassador Fadl wins the lady, who is now forty and mother of a daughter, but she has not lost any of her beauty and spirit. In the course of this case, the notorious womanizer becomes embroiled in feelings that increasingly worry him.

Here, too, Prince Hasan Sheltan incorporated a wealth of stories into conversations, debates, and walks through the city, passing on knowledge in a relaxed way: about historical ties and controversies, about the relationship between Islam and Judaism, about a region of the world so rich in culture as the coveted raw materials and politically a powder keg. In addition, the author succeeds in a literary trick. The ambassador is a character you don’t really want to have anything to do with: dismissive sexist, racist too, arrogant bloated right down his casually mentioned “belly”, and also suspicious qualities that favor diplomatic careers in troubled nations. Sheltan has a few self-confident women who stand up to him. Otherwise he leads his hero through Cairo on the threads of ridiculous distance and manages to please people to follow him despite everything, in his walk between the office and the royal palace and private retreats as well as in his thoughts, conversations, and emotional affairs. .

Until at some point you feel stuck in a waiting loop, just like an ambassador, where nothing new will happen anymore. Then, through thick and thin, the envoy has to change state again and the reader of the book. Even if the ending was quite newspaper-ready, it left a few things in the air: world history continued unchecked.