MY UNCLE NAPOLEAN BY THE IRANIAN WRITER, IRAJ PEZESHKZAD, turns on the machinations of the patriarch, Uncle Napoleon, to uphold the honour and ‘centuries-old unity’ of his large extended family. He is insecure and, to overcome his own failures in life, fantasises about being the French Emperor. He presides over the family with false claims of participating in the Constitutional Movement for Democracy and against insurgents (seen as British agents).
Dick Davis, the translator, has successfully rendered in suitable English idioms the nuances of the Parsi language.
The inter-familial feuds unfold in a garden shared by the three households. These are fuelled by Uncle Napoleon’s increasing paranoia of the English. He believes that he is a target of their assassination attempts. The rapidity of events, and the twists each takes, make the book the very stuff of a television sitcom. It was, indeed, made into one of the most popular television series in the history of modern Iran.
There’s an echo of Cervantes’ Don Quixote in that Uncle Napoleon, like Quixote, tilts at windmills: in his case, the English and Mash Qasem, his servant, is a Sancha Panza-like figure. The difference being that Mash Qasem feeds Uncle Napoleon’s pathological suspicions of the English and fantasies abouthis glorious battles against the British.
Also, like Dickens, the writer uses stock phrases for some of the characters. Comparable to Dickens’ ‘Barkis is willing . . .’ we have Mash Qasem’s opening gambit, ‘. . . why should I lie . . . to the grave it’s a ah . . . ah . . . ah . . . ah’, and also ‘. . . there’s this man from my town . . .’
Asadollah, a playboy who injects irreverent humour to the pompous proceedings of the family councils dominated by Uncle Napoleon, coins the circumlocution, ‘going to San Francisco’, meaning sex, and prefaces his speech with, ‘moment, moment, moment’. The family doctor, Naser al-Hokama also has a signature phrase, ‘Your good health.’
The book challenges our perceptions of Iran as a hotbed of Ayatollah fanatics, hand-amputators and adultery-stoners. It reveals a rich vein of humanistic, tolerant and un-ideological individuals rooted in a social milieu, yet capable of eliciting our sympathies. They are fond of drink and their attitude to sex is pragmatic not moral – when 13 year-old Qamar gets pregnant (by her stepfather, Dustali Khan), there is no condemnation of her personally, only a desire to avoid scandal, nor any repugnance over abortion. Indeed the book is built on the outrageous complications of plot arising from a strong sense of status and prestige – beginning with a ‘dubious sound’ that interrupts the harangue of Uncle and produces a vicious family quarrel. For example, to resolve the issue of the ‘dubious sound’, the family holds a kangaroo court, presided over by Shamsali Mirza, older brother of Asadollah and a retired magistrate.
It is inconceivable that a ‘respectable’ member of the family can be held responsible for the ‘dubious sound’, and Mash Qasem is alternately cajoled, blackmailed and bribed to own up to it. There are many misgivings about the low-status butcher, Shir Ali, being present at family gatherings.
The detective, Deputy Taymur Khan, also bears the brunt of the family’s snobbery when he investigates the apparent ‘disappearance and murder’ of Dustali Khan. He constantly reminds various members not to insult and ‘obstruct’ a ‘government official’ in the course of his state duty.
The women seem to occupy a secondary status. For example, Qamar, who is ‘simple minded’, is perceived as a passive foil, to whom the ‘dubious sound’ can be attributed. Uncle Napoleon also tries to force her to abort for the family ‘honour’. Similarly, Uncle Napoleon’s wife and the mother of the narrator are shadowy figures who have little impact on their husbands, the main protagonists in the internecine quarrels. Layli, the daughter of Uncle Napoleon, with whom the narrator falls in love, is also a passive receiver of his attention.
The book is not political but captures the unease of a nation whose destiny (in the early stages of World War II) is being shaped by colonial powers (Britain and Russia), who plunder its natural resources. Indeed the dominant tone of the characters is an endless anger over real and imagined slights and, in Uncle Napoleon’s fury over the machinations of the British, his pathological reaction is a farcical projection of a very common Iranian trope.
The narrative is shot through the eyes of an unnamed 13 year-old narrator, whose love for his cousin, Layli, catapults him into the family turmoil. His desperation to prevent Layli from marrying Puri, the son of Uncle Colonel, leads him to confide in Asadollah. The latter’s rakish suggestion that the narrator should ‘go to San Francisco’ with Layli is lost on the innocent and romantic lover. He instead resorts to discrediting his rival. When a meeting is arranged between Puri and Layli, the narrator sets off fireworks. Puri faints and is again taken to hospital. This episode plays on the farcical portrayal of Puri as an almost inverse image of Uncle Napoleon. Puri graduates from the military academy but does not fire a single bullet and collapses at the sound of gunfire.
The narrator’s saint-like devotion to his Layli is a classic chaste love and is in poignant contrast to the outrageous promiscuity of others, notably Asadollah, who acts as a cicerone to the world of love to the narrator.
The book creates its own fictional universe at a certain remove from Iranian reality, in the same way that P. G. Wodehouse’s world is both recognisably English and sui generis. The title, My Uncle Napoleon, plays on the historical reality of the French Emperor being the most hated enemy of the English. The narrator and Uncle Napoleon are drawn from Iraj Pezeshkzad’s own life experiences.
– Golden Langur
