In America the road trip is a rite of passage,in Iran it’s a behind trip into the past. Bijan Roghanchi searches for his identity down that road. All photos from his upcoming book Becoming Iranian There is no greater calling to American youth than the road. In tall school English lessons we read John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and rode with the Joads along the migrant route to California. At universities across the country, freshmen follow Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. Over generations, and the American road trip has grown into a rite of passage.
Baptism by travel in Iran is different. It is written in rhyming couplets and memorised by the masses. In 1010 Ferdowsi captured 1000 years of Iranian identity in the Shahnameh. Two hundred years later Saadi travelled like a vagabond between city states that no longer exist. Their poetry has become sacred texts,their stories fixed in memory and passed down generation to generation as a collective experience.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com