Eminem and Dion; peas and yogurt

With a few free hours on hand this past week, I decided to indulge my crush on Iranian culture by sitting down with a new book by a Jamie Maslin, an English backpacker who traveled the country a couple of years ago, and recently published an informal account of his journey. Despite its joyfully lowbrow title – Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn – it soon proved to be an infectious read, combining a whimsical and idealistic travel philosophy (that feels increasingly remote to me as I sink into middle-aged care and love of planning) with a range of observations on Iranian etiquette, generosity, driving patterns and dating habits.

And, I should say, Iranian musical tastes, because Maslin is repeatedly struck by what you might call the unexpected heterogeneity of the sounds that flow from taxi sound systems and teens’ computers in Tehran and Shiraz. Instead of Koranic recitations, it’s often Chris de Burgh, the Irish crooner who peaked in the 1980s and who is deemed acceptable by Iranian mullahs because of a song called “There is Only One God” – a title that happens to neatly reflect Shi’ite dogma. Maslin’s also struck, though, by the ubiquity of a German pop duo named Modern Talking: a group virtually unheard of in England or the U.S., but given entire subsections in Iranian bookstores (Maslin even purchases a bilingual transcription of lyrics from songs by Modern Talking). Then, too, the teens he meets also listen to, and sing along with, Eminem, and Celine Dion, when they’re out of the public eye. Indeed, it’s the teens’ ability to move seamlessly from rap to ballad, and from ballad to technopop, that ultimately impresses Maslin as most notable. One minute, a kid in Tabriz is rapping about life on the streets of Detroit; the next, his voice is soaring as it accompanies the theme from Titanic.

I’ll remember that observation. To be honest, though, the musical promiscuity of Iranian teens didn’t strike me as that unusual – perhaps, I think, because I spend a good deal of time around a toddler. And toddlers, of course, specialize in the very sort of jarring combination that Maslin encounters in Iran. Peas and yogurt? Oh, yeah. Insisting on brushing her teeth while taking a warm bath? Totally typical. As a result, I’d be more surprised if Cleo dressed herself conventionally than I was when she decided, the other day, to try on a second pair of pants, after managing to partly don a first pair, backwards.

Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to compare Iranians to toddlers. Rather, it’s just that there may be a simple joy or beauty, often overlooked, in the juxtaposition of normally sequestered forms. Genres can result in artificial walls; conventions can restrict; a sense of propriety can limit daily pleasure. Or, to put it slightly differently (as the Persian Sa’di did, in his sublime Gulistan), “if a camel will go mad with pleasure at a desert song, and a man not feel it, he is but an ass.”