By ROYA HAKAKIAN
My earliest memories of the Shahnameh, the greatest work ever written in the Persian language, belong to my childhood in Iran. I and other girls in my elementary school recited verses of the epic poem, rounding out our chests and puffing our cheeks in our best effort to strike the pose of peacocks brimming with pride. Too young to grasp the book’s literary merits, we nonetheless understood it to be the deed to our nation’s glory.
If it were possible, Iranians would raise the Shahnameh on flagpoles and swear allegiance to it. No other book captures so much of Iran’s history while revealing the innermost workings of the Iranian sensibility and preoccupations. The Shahnameh has attained its revered status not only because of the truths it speaks but also because it embodies something that goes unspoken: the struggle of Iranians to maintain their identity.
