Albert A. Azarmi

Dark Alleys of Tehran Albert A. Azarmi

Dark Alleys of Tehran is a tragicomedy in a picaresque tradition in the post WWII era of Iran--a nation of chaos, poverty, and contradiction. Unlike picaresque novels where the main character finds his home at the end, here the main character,despite all his physical and mental hardship, comes to realize that in an insane world a mental asylum is an ideal and practical place for survival. Ironically, in a mad world to enter into a mental asylum one needs to prove his insanity. The main character, Doctor (a name given to him at birth, the family hope that one day the boy would study medicine to become a medical doctor) by submitting his identity and character to other characters comes to recognize he needs to keep his sanity and learn how to survive, instead of saving others. By placing the reader in an animal-like mind, he or she comes to realize that beyond the innocence of the main character and his overuse of hyperbole, there seems to be no character to express any redeeming social qualities. The characters of this narrative are named by their social, physical, and professional behaviors--this is done deliberately to maintain the local color, as well as universal qualities.