Our Common Text 2004-2005

Sacrifice in House of Sand and Fog

Public lecture delivered to Writing and Literature I

students and faculty, and RIT community on

Wednesday 12 January 2005

By

Babak Elahi, Assistant Professor

Department of Language and Literature

College of Liberal Arts

Rochester Institute of Technology

Introduction: Hearts of Darkness

What does Andre Dubus’s novel tell us about Iran? In answering this question, I want to begin with an analogy between this novel and another one that you might have read in high school: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The controversy and debate surrounding this book might be a useful way of thinking about Andre Dubus’s novel. Conrad’s novel, as many of you know, described a journey made by a European down the Congo River, into the heart of Africa. In response to this novel, the African novelist Chinua Achebe argued that Conrad was a racist. Achebe felt that Conrad depicted Africans as subhuman savages. Conrad, as a European, produced a lens or a template through which Europeans could see and imagine Africa. Africa was dark, evil, trapped in some earlier stage of human evolution. Caryl Phillips, a Caribbean novelist, has challenged Achebe’s reading. Phillips argues that Conrad was not a racist, but that he led his readers not only into Africa, but into the darker heart of colonialism and imperialism, and, ultimately, into the darkest heart of all—the human heart and its most horrifying potential. Indeed, in reading this novel Europeans did not so much look through a lens or a template as they did a mirror.

This may be what happens in Dubus’s novel. Not only do we see the worst potentials and possibilities in ourselves when we see the downward spiral of these characters, we also witness how two cultures come face to face, and see each other like someone standing in front of a funhouse mirror, her own features distorted so that the self looks alien and strange.

How does this happen in House of Sand and Fog? Just as Conrad’s novel tells us something about Africa, this novel tells us something about Iran and Iranian exiles. But more importantly, it shows us something about America, and, ultimately, about the human heart and, tragically, the human heart’s tendency toward error. How often we get things wrong.

Martyrdom at Karbala

In considering these questions, I want to begin with a picture: the portrait of the martyrdom of Husain at Karbala that hangs in the Behranis’ living room. We also see a similar portrait in a flashback, when Behrani remembers his vodka drinking sessions at the home of General Pourat—his friend and mentor.

The martyrdom at Karbala took place in A.D. 680. After Mohammad’s death, the leadership of the Islamic community became contested. The majority of believers followed the Umayyads—a line of Caliphs whom this majority argued had been hand picked by the Prophet to succeed him as the spiritual and political guide of this radically new religious and social movement. A minority of the faithful, on the other hand, called themselves the Partisans of Ali (Mohammad’s son-in-law), or the Shia of Ali, or, simply the Shia. This group pledged their loyalty to the direct descendents of Muhammad, and claimed that he had chosen Ali, not Omar or Abu Bakr as his successor.

This struggle for power came to a head in a massacre in the desert of Karbala, an event that is commemorated today with passion plays. According to these passion plays, known as tazyia, the noble and righteous Husain and his followers are slaughtered by Yazid’s forces. In the second generation after Mohammad, Ali’s son Husain, and his followers challenged the leadership of Caliph Yazid. Husain’s caravan—some 70 men, women and children—set out on what mourners describe as a holy mission to lead the people of Kufa, a city in present-day Iraq. However, on a hill in the desert of Karbala just outside Kufa, Yazid’s army—numbering in the thousands—attacked the small contingency of Shia. The story includes horrific events such as the slow murder of Abbas, Husain’s half brother, and the killing of children. Husain and his followers were massacred.

This became a foundational moment in the history of Shia Islam. The event is still commemorated in the Middle East, especially Iran, on the holy day of Ashura the 10 th day of the month of Moharram. Memorial events on this day include passion plays and spectacles of self-flagellation. In the Iranian revolution of 1979, Muslim students and activists opposed to the Shah and, by extension, to those serving in the Shah’s military like Behrani, used Ashura and the symbolism of martyrdom to rally forces around Ayatola Khomeini. Khomeini himself depicted the Shah as the evil Yazid—the Caliph whose army massacred Husain and his followers. A key event in the 1979 revolution was a two-million person march in Tehran on the day of Ashura And in 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, Khomeini famously said: “Every day is Ashura, every place is Karbala.”

Given the strategic and symbolic use of this event in the revolution that exiled people like Massoud Amir Behrani, I find it puzzling that a portrait of this event is so prominently displayed in the Behrani house. However, given the fact that the portrait appears four times and is presented from at least two different points of view, it is undeniably a significant image in the novel. Many reviewers of the novel—and our own Professor Price—have discussed the elements of classical tragedy, especially tragic irony, that characterize this novel. In light of this image of martyrdom, I would add that this irony is made even more complex and cuts even deeper when viewed in terms of what has been called the Karbala paradigm.

The first reference to this scene of martyrdom in House comes early in the novel when Beharni describes the extravagant décor his wife employs in their home:

Of course I argued many times for a more reasonable place to live, but Nadi fought me; we must keep up our appearance. We must act as if we can live as we are accustomed. All because it was the time of hastegar for our Soraya, when young men from good families send roses to her and our family … Meanwhile, Nadi had to make certain our daughter did not attract any common Persians; she ordered all the best furniture and lamps and carpets. On the walls she has hung French paintings, and the mosaic-frame portrait of the battle of martyrdom in the Karbala. (19)

Dubus refers to the martyrdom, here, in a deeply ironic way. An image meant to represent self-sacrifice, martyrdom, the desperate defense of justice against attack from despots becomes an adornment, a status symbol, a centerpiece to a display of conspicuous consumption and extravagant wealth. Behrani was and continues to be loyal to the Shah, so it is all-the-more ironic for him to display the portrait of the martyrdom at Karbala so prominently in his house. Behrani would, undoubtedly, have been aware that Muslim students had used the mythology of Karbala to attack the Shah and his military.

Dubus alludes to Karbala at least three other times in this novel. He mentions it again when Behrani recalls his interaction with his mentor and friend, General Pourat. This scene involves a detailed description of the formal rituals of courtesy that Iranian men observe in drinking sessions, and is rich with cultural connotations. There is something here that recalls the poetry of the Sufis—Islamic mystics who used the images of wine and drunkenness as metaphors to symbolize the ecstasies of communing with the divine. In this scene, the drinkers are military men, and among them is Bijan, a member of SAVAK, Iran’s CIA-trained secret police organization, a group that was directly responsible for arbitrary arrests, torture, and murder of anyone opposed to the Shah. The men meet in Pourat’s home, a palatial affair that Behrani remembers for its architecture and its decoration—including an illustration of the martyrdom at Karbala:

In winter, there was a fire burning in the tall stone fireplace behind us. Two or three musicians and a singer would stand in the far corner softly playing songs more than a thousand years old and still only a third as old as our country. Hanging on the east wall was a long woven tapestry of Hazrat Abbas and his holy companions charging down the sand hill of Karbala, racing to the thousands of enemy soldiers who would yield them to martyrdom. (59)

Again, as before, the saintly and self-less act of these warriors is contrasted to the reality of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. Dubus juxtaposes the method of the martyr with the techniques of the torturer. More importantly, the torturer is associated with the United States, where Behrani now finds himself. So, again, there is a deeply ironic consideration of the question of justice, patriotism, national and cultural belonging. In this flashback, Behrani learns that Bijan—the torturer—has been trained in the United States, in New York, in fact. Hearing this, he asks what Bijan learned there, and Bijan is brutally honest: “If you want real information, you must take their children. Make a subversive watch his little one lose a hand or arm and they will tell you everything.” Behrani refers to this young man as a policeman, so that later, when an American policeman threatens to do harm to Bahrani’s own son, he finds himself in a bizarre mirror image of a SAVAKI prison. This is made even more burdensome in that Bijan is trained in America by the CIA—a detail that Dubus has taken from the historical record.

Ultimately, rather than feeling like a martyr or a self-less patriot, Behrani feels implicated in these inhumane actions of the regime that rewarded him so generously:

I did not like to think once again that America, with whom I did close business in the purchase of fighter jets, had such a hand in all this; I did not like to think this was the manner in which our king retained his throne and our way of life; but, most of all, I did not want to accept that General Pourat was correct when he said the young policeman and I were colleagues, so once more, I drank more vodka than I should have. (62)

And he does not like to think of these things precisely because they are true, for as he says shortly after this, “it is I who should apologize; it is I who have helped to fly us so far off course” (63). Again, the image of the martyrdom at Karbala is tainted by Iranian—and by American—realities.

There are two more instances in which the painting of the martyrdom appears, and I want to touch on these briefly before moving on. In one scene, we see the image of Karbala from the point of view of Kathy Nicolo. For Kathy, the painting simply portrays “bearded men in robes on horses” (75). This shallow response to the image underscores Kathy’s sometimes-infuriating ignorance—that she mistakes Iranians for Arabs, for example. But it also underscores how alien any notion of martyrdom or self-sacrifice has become to Kathy, despite the fact that she has given up a great deal because of depression, addiction, and loss of self-esteem. Kathy’s view of this image allows us, as readers, to see the importance of understanding other cultures, and the potential danger in not understanding them on their own terms.

When Lester comes calling on the Behranis to threaten them with deportation, he also sees the portrait of the martyrdom at Karbala. This time, point of view becomes interesting in that we see Lester seeing the portrait from Behrani’s point of view. Behrani takes note of Burdon’s every move, of the details of his uniform, even his body language. The colonel notices that “The policeman regards the painting of the battle of martyrdom on the wall, stepping closer to view the framed photograph of myself and General Pourat with Shahanshah Pahlavi.” Beharni moves to the door and says “I will remove the sign immediately, sir,” as if he is referring both to the for sale sign he has posted and to these images of martyrdom and of national identity. This is a complex set of relationships between images and signs. First, we have the image of the martyrdom, a founding image of Shia Islamic identity and a symbol for the core value of martyrdom in war and sacrifice in life. However, this Islamic image is contrasted to the image of General Pourat and Mohammad Reza Shah—both representing a regime that spent oil revenues in an orgy of excess and a spectacle of royal anti-Islamic power. Finally, these are subtly linked to one last sign—a sign that says “For Sale.” Both Behrani and Burden find themselves caught in this complex web of signs that ultimately pose the question. Will you sacrifice your self, your own desires, your own pursuit of wealth or of grandeur, or will you sell out.

Esmail’s Sacrifice

The Karbala mythology uses the martyrdom of Husain as the ultimate expression of righteousness and justice in the face of corruption. Martyrdom, then, involves the giving of one’s life in the struggle or effort—jihad, if you will—not of war, but of faith and of justice. The novel uses this symbolism of martyrdom ironically, to suggest that Behrani has transgressed Shia Muslim notions of justice. Related to this notion of martyrdom is the notion of sacrifice. Sacrifice is more often a test of faith—a test of one’s willingness to give up what one has or even what one is in the name of something bigger, be that God or even the American dream. Again, as with martyrdom, the novel uses the notion of sacrifice ironically, to suggest that Esmial’s death, specifically, is a sacrifice not to prove Behrani’s faith, but a sacrifice for the sins of Behrani and of others.

Behrani says that in America one’s sacrifices are returned one hundredfold. However, because his self-sacrifice is offered in bad faith, Behrani suffers the ultimate sacrifice: the death of his son whose name, Esmail, has important significance. In the Old Testament, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, a request that is mercifully retracted at the final moment. However, in the Islamic tradition it is Ishmael—or in the Arabic and Persian pronunciation—Esmail whom Abraham is asked to sacrifice. In fact, this is an important narrative in Islamic historiography. Islamic scholars suggest that since both the Qoran and Bible refer to Abraham’s only son, then this reference must be to Ishmael and not Isaac.

What I want to suggest here is that Esmail’s death underscores the tragic irony at the heart of this novel. What is ironic is that Behrani does, however unwittingly, sacrifice this Esmail, unlike Abraham who is spared the death of his son. Moreover, if Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son is an indication of his unconditional faith in Allah, then Esmail’s death may be read as Behrani’s loss of faith. Instead, Behrani believes only in fate, what he calls sarnevesht at the beginning of the novel. He lacks the opposite of fate—that is hope, hope that he can provide for his family with or without a broken and stolen piece of property taken from an equally broken woman. In short, God shows mercy to Abraham because he is willing to prove his faith through sacrifice. None of these metaphysical explanations of faith and mercy have much of a hold on Behrani.

He is unable to see beyond his possessions and his status, and any claims he makes to be making sacrifices for his family sound empty in light of his single-minded desire to save face, to demand respect, and to regain his social status. His wife, perhaps the strongest character in the novel and the film, asks him to be selfless and give the house back. When he refuses to return the house to Kathy, he says that he is doing this for his family, not for himself: “I do this for you, Esmail, because I am your father … What is it I have done but provide for my family.” But his wife does not accept this pretended selflessness and challenges him, saying: “You want this home for you. You. You could never live in the street because there no one would respect you, Behrani, and you need everyone to respect you, even strangers …” (285).

It is only after his son’s death that Behrani realizes his wife was right, but even then he is not completely selfless, and acts out of vengeance not in terms of self-sacrifice.

For our excess we lost everything.

I kneel beneath the window, turn to the east, and bow my head to the carpet which smells of dust, and I curse myself for ever weeping over my lost position, for the respect I had lost among strangers. (329)

He proposes to make a nazr, or a vow—a word that Kathy also utters in English. Behrani vows to give all his money to charity—as a substitute for the sacrifice of his son. But when his prayers are not answered, his true colors, what I called earlier his bad faith, come shining through. The note that he leaves for his daughter includes a postscript: “Soraya-joon, live here if you like, but if you sell it take no less than one hundred thousand dollars” (337). If in Islamic exegesis the name Esmail is a reference to the themes of faith, sacrifice, mercy, and forgiveness, then in this novel the name twists all this around. Esmail’s death emphasizes Behrani’s lack of faith, the absence of mercy (divine or otherwise), and an unforgiving fate. Esmail’s death also resonates with other images of sacrifice and killing. I don’t have time to go into these here, but consider Behrani’s flashback to his wedding night when his father slaughters a sheep and rubs the blood into the threshold. Also consider the death of Jasmeen, whose honor killing is also a kind of sacrifice, the sacrificing of a fallen daughter to save the honor of the family. When Esmail is killed, I, for one, cannot help but recall these earlier scenes, the three images of death resonating around the theme of sacrifice.

I cannot resist making another comment on Esmail’s name here before I move on, because in addition to alluding to a figure in Islamic scripture, the name also alludes to a key figure in canonical American literature. At one point Lester Burdon pronounces Esmail’s name as Ishmael, and Esmail corrects him. In the film adaptation, this is taken even further when Esmail says to Lester, my name is not Ishmael. This line alludes to and reverses the first line of Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, which begins with the narrator’s identification of himself: “Call me Ishmael.” In this novel, Esmail says to us, in effect: “Don’t call me Ishmael.” Is this an intentional allusion on Dubus’s part? Maybe one of you will be bold enough to ask him next week and prove me wrong. But whether it is intentional or not, for some readers it will ring a bell as it has for me. Now, why is it important that this novel makes a reference to this classic text? There’s not enough time here to go into a detailed discussion of the place of Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, but we can say this—Moby Dick can, itself, be read as a national allegory. It is a text that, according to postcolonial critics especially, allegorizes American imperialism. Both Burdon and Behrani strike me as possible versions of Ahab, the monomaniacal captain who seeks revenge from a great white whale that embodies all of the world’s evil according to Ahab’s fundamentalist cosmology. Indeed, some cultural commentators have argued that America is now playing out a bizarre version of Ahab—our war on terror akin to Ahab’s search for the white whale. If nothing else, this remark reminds us of the ways in which literature can act as mirror. This novel is doing so self-consciously, using the dual meaning of the name Esmail/Ishmael to bring an Iranian text face to face with an American one.

Mirrors of Identity

This double meaning of Esmail’s name—as an ironic allusion to the stories of Abraham and, perhaps, of Ahab—is only one among a set of images that do double duty—that signify Iranian national identity while at the same time saying something about American national character. These images function in some ways as mirrors, reflecting aspects of the Iranian characters in the American ones, and, by extension, reflecting America back to itself as it looks at Iran.

For example, when Kathy Nicolo comes to the Behrani home the second time, this time to have a woman-to-woman talk with Nadi Behrani, Mrs. Behrani tells her: “You could be twin of our Soraya. You look as her, you see?” (192). Kathy herself does not see this. She sees herself as older, less attractive, and totally lacking in self-esteem: “I couldn’t believe she’d said that. I was probably fifteen years older than her daughter, and even at twenty or twenty-one I never had that kind of light this girl let off. And it wasn’t just her physical features; there was an air about her, even in a photograph, of being something special and knowing it, one of the chosen, and at that age I was married to a welder from Charlestown, both of us snorting white snakes until I guess we felt chosen” (192). What Kathy sees, and perhaps what she points out to us, is not so much a clear mirror-image as a distorted reflection.

This mutual misinterpretation is taken even further when Nadereh asks Kathy if she is Greek or Armenian to which Kathy simply replies: Italian. In fact, one of the themes of this novel is the contrast between America’s new immigration which includes Iranians, Panamanians, and Vietnamese, and the older now-forgotten story of Kathy Nicolo’s immigrant past. On the one side: American immigration that was guided by a “dream” that still made sense in the early twentieth century. On the other: immigration as a nightmare in which refugees and exiles come to America because of national crises precipitated in part by U.S. intervention. This contrast between immigrant dreams of the past and the American nightmare of the present is set up early on when another immigrant character, Irish Jimmy says to Kathy: “ America, the land of milk and honey. Bot they never tell you the milks gone sour and the honey’s stolen” (38). Kathy’s own loss of her father’s dream plays this out in her loss of her house. Here, in fact, the notion of sacrifice is something that Behrani and Kathy share. In recalling her work with her father when he had his linen business, Kathy recalls not only his but her own sacrifices: “I kept burning my fingertips as I fed one piece of linen in after the next, but he seemed so content sitting on the other end of the roller from me, quiet but maybe proud he had such a useful daughter, that I never told him about my fingers because they seemed beside the point to me, and they always felt better when he’d buy me a cold Coke at one of the restaurants after and I’d put my fingers into the ice” (204). Clearly, as she gets older, her craving for Coke takes on different ramifications. But it is clear from these examples that it is not just the house on Bisgrove that is built on sand and obscured by fog, it is, perhaps, the American dream itself that is threatened with obscurity and collapse.

When Nadereh offers her own daughter as a mirror to Kathy, all that Kathy sees is what she lacks. In the daughter’s image, she sees her own absence. A similar phenomenon occurs for Lester as t he father-son relationship between Behrani and Esmail reflects back the absence of a father in Lester’s own life. For Lester, Esmail’s relationship to his father stirs up all kinds of regret and doubt about himself as a son, as a father, and as a man in uniform. The fullness of Behrani and Esmail’s relationship points out Lester’s own sense of lacking something. Even Les’s name implies lack—he belongs on the minus side of Kathy’s ledger. He becomes aware of his own lack when he looks at a framed photograph of father and son in Esmail’s room, a photograph that functions for that moment as a kind of existential mirror, reflecting back Lester’s emptiness. And this emptiness is not limited to the absence of the father, but of everything—psychologically speaking—that the father represents: law, order, discipline, even the nation, itself. When Lester kidnaps the Behrani’s, locking them in their own bathroom, he goes into Esmail’s room briefly. It is as if he has gone into a room he never had as a child. On Esmail’s bedside table he sees

a framed color photograph of the colonel in full uniform holding a toddler boy on his lap in a deep leather office chair, the green, white, and red stripes of the Iranian flag encased in glass on the wall behind them, the man and little boy smiling widely into the camera. Lester looked away quickly and switched off the light. (276-7).

Lester looks away and turns off the light so that he doesn’t have to see what is reflected back to him in this picture. The picture shows a father’s love for his child, but it also shows Behrani’s full uniform, Iran’s national flag, and a plush leather office chair—emblems of discipline and order, of nationalism, and of power. Lester’s father, you will recall, is an INS officer—a defender of the national border, and also a man in uniform. But of course, he is an absent father. This absence of the father is part of the psychological baggage that makes up Lester’s burden, a burden he attempts to ignore. However, in ignoring his psychological baggage, Burdon ends up making errors of judgment that taint his own uniform. Not only does he, like his father, fail his family; he also fails his legal and professional obligations to the State. In a number of situations, culminating in his invasion of the Behrani home, Lester goes against the very purpose of his uniform—the law, order, and justice it represents.

The image of Behrani holding Esmail in his lap can be contrasted with a the image of Burdon trying to save Esmail’s life. At the moment when Esmail is shot holding Burdon’s service revolver in his hand, Lester’s own paternal instinct finally kicks in. He has just agreed to let Esmail come with them into the county tax office, which happens to be across the street from the Hall of Justice building. Burdon agrees to let the boy come because Behrani leaves him no choice and because he himself knows “he’d never leave his son like this either” (317).

The film adaptation handle’s this scene beautifully. In the film, Lester’s uniform is disheveled and his shirt un-tucked; as an emblem of his authority and of the law, the uniform’s disarray underscores Burdon’s inability to restore order. He kneels down in an attempt to stop Esmail from bleeding to death. But it is too late, not only for Esmail, but also for Burdon. He is unable to reclaim his identity as policeman or as father. I ask you to see this image of Burdon trying to save Esmail’s life alongside that earlier image—of Behrani holding the infant Esmail in his lap. In that earlier image, the father and son are integrated into a picture that includes a national flag, the father’s uniform, the trappings of power in an office. In this image of Burdon attending to the dying Esmail, the picture is integrated into emblems of the State: the steps of a county Hall of Justice, other police officers, the paramedics. Ultimately, both Behrani and Burdon have failed, and in their failure is the sacrifice of Esmail

I want to suggest that it is for the sins of Iranians and Americans, alike, that this native son is sacrificed. Esmail’s character is barely developed in this novel. He is an iconic figure, and as such can function as both Iranian and American; he is a blank screen onto which both national characters and cultural longings can be projected. His death indicts both sides of the equation. Both Behrani and Burdon are more concerned with winning, with defeating the other, and securing their own identity as victor than with law, or order, or justice.

Qom Sweet Qom

One last mirror image. In this novel, Iran’s holy city of Qom is reflected for Behrani in the Hall of Justice building in Corona County. Earlier in the novel, after Burdon threatens the Behrani’s with deportation, Behrani goes to the Hall of Justice building to seek justice. In his first glimpse of this building, Behrani is reminded the holy city of Qom, the heart of Islamic Iran mirrored in this official American institution of law and order:

The Hall of Justice building is eight or nine floors tall, across the street from a courthouse whose roof is a very large dome of stained glass. It momentarily reminds me of a mosque in Qom, its mere sight bringing me a comfort and sense of confidence I have not otherwise been feeling. (183).

Qom , a word that sounds so much like home, is charged with Behrani’s longing for his former life. Behrani refers to the city of Qom four times in the novel—once at the beginning, twice toward the middle of the novel including the passage I’ve just quoted, and once at the end. At the beginning, he remembers Qom as “our holy city before it became the headquarters for the mad imam” (or Khomeini) (19). In the middle of the novel, in addition to the quote above, Qom is mentioned in dinner conversation between Nadereh and Soraya’s new mother-in-law who long to return to an earlier time and place. At the end Behrani recalls Qom during his mercy-killing of his own wife: “My eyes fill and she blurs beneath me but I tell to myself it is only a small suffering she must endure before she is free to join our son, before she is free to return to the flowers of Isfahan and the mosques of Qom and the fine hotels of Tehran …” (336). Thus, Qom is home, but it is also the city of justice, especially religious justice.

Qom is not merely any holy city; it is the site of a modern massacre.

In January of 1978, religious students gathered in Qom to protest the Shah’s scandalous accusations against their spiritual and political leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. In response to this peaceful demonstration, the Shah sent out the police who gunned down at least twenty of these students. For the Islamic revolution of Iran, these victims became modern-day martyrs in the struggle to gain justice in Iran. It is ironic, then, that Qom comes to symbolize both home and justice for Behrani, a man who was a defender of and a warrior for a regime responsible for this kind of massacre. Ironically, as an exiled supporter of a former regime who has turned its back on Islam, Behrani is haunted by Qom as a reminder of his own lack of faith, and his connections to injustice. Qom was the city that gave birth to the revolution that exiled Behrani, it was the center of revolutionary organization, and it was the city that the Shah most feared.

It is also ironic that the Burdon’s unjust means of pursuing what he sees as just ends come to a most unjust conclusion in front of this same building, the Hall of Justice. Burdon has prided himself on “wearing the mask and cape,” as Kathy puts it. He has bent the rules for what he calls “the greater good.” In this way he reflects the American nation as the policeman of the world, as the nation that often makes exceptions and breaks international rules on torture—or rewrites those rules—for what it deems to be the “greater good.” The novel asks us to consider the potential danger of following unjust means to achieve what seem to be the most just ends.

Earlier I said that Esmail dies for the sins of Behrani and of Burdon, and by extension he dies because of the sins of Iran and America. It is clear that Behrani’s sins, and the sins of his nation have been to turn his back on faith, faith not in the strictly religious sense, but in the broader sense of hope that he can hold his family together without committing an act that he knows to be morally wrong even if it is legally sound. What then is Burdon’s sin? Burdon’s sin is not so much his abandoning of his family or nor is it his extramarital affair. Rather, his greatest sin is transgressing his own vows as an officer of the law for what he calls “the greater good.” His planting of cocaine in a wife beater’s bathroom and his entry into the Behrani home are all of a piece. These acts can be characterized by what Kathy says about her own situation: “it’s so wrong to invade someone else’s home” (183). I suggest we pay close attention to this statement because it says a great deal about these characters and their tragic story. More importantly, we might read the statement allegorically. Both on an individual and on a national level, we might echo Kathy’s sentiment: it’s so wrong to invade someone else’s home.

Works Consulted

Achebe, Chinua (1988). “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Anchor Books (1-20).

Armstrong, Karen (2000). Islam: A Brief History. New York: Modern Library.

Dubus, Andre, III (1999). House of Sand and Fog. New York: Vintage Books.

Fischer, Michael M. J. (1980). “ Qom: Arena of Conflict.” Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Harvard University Press (104-135).

Glasse, Cyril (1988). The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. London: Stacey International Publishers.

Melville, Herman (1976). Moby-Dick or, The Whale. 1851. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Phillips, Caryl (1999). Introduction to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. New York: Modern Library.

Said, Edward (1994). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.

Maintained by Susan Mee