´Then the Fish Swallowed Him´

´There was no God in Evin´.

Life under despotism cannot be free of political meaning. The refusal itself of being part of a political establishment or to be involved into political processes - such as elections - is political because it is an open statement against the participation to the life decided by the political decision makers of the anti-democratic system. You are just a small fish that anyone can swallow...

Yunus Turabi, the main character of the American debut novel by Amir Ahmadi Arian Then the Fish Swallowed Him, is an apolitical bus driver. At 44, he has 25 years of career, driving the citizens of Tehran around the city. At the invitation of a colleague, he accepts to take part to the discussion group of the Bus Drivers Union, where Western authors sympathetic with the fate of the working class were discovered. 

As an accidental participant to the citywide bus strike, he is arrested and under pressure, including 20 days of solitary confinment, he is condemned to 4 years of prison in the prison of Evin, known for its high concentration of political prisoners. 

Yunus is a perfect victim of the randomness of despotism, search for human empaty and connection even with your interogator which in this case is playing both the good and the bad boy. A lonely character, the apolitical bus driver is set in a middle of a nest of spies - the usual CIA, Mossad, George Soros (you meant George Sorel, will ask innocently Yunus, when his interrogator is dictating him whom to include as perpetrators of chaos in his confession) and other foreign agents, probably the Saudis - that brought money in the suitcases and used people like him against ´our people´.  A people colonized not by foreign powers, but by their own people, their rulers.

The mechanisms of terror and manipulation in Iran is common to all dictatorships. Apolitical victims are the favorite targets of such games when the scape goats pay with heavy years of prison in order to maintain an official narrative. What is terrible in Then the Fish Swallowed Him is the persistent destruction of the human network. Friends and neighbours are turned into ´sources´ for the oppressive regimes. Saving your skin may involve accepting to record on camera testimonies incriminating friends and even relatives for the imaginary crimes a despotic regime needs desperately in order to survive.

May be that the perpetrators are so infatuated with their job that they may ignore completely the evil work they are doing. After Yunus was beaten, sent to solitary confinment for 20 days and abused psychologically, his interogator - that once in a while have to take a break from the room as he needs to answer the calls of his children and wife - asks him ´What are your thoughts about your stay here?´.  

Amir Ahmadi Arian worked as a journalist in Iran and based his book on his journalistic experience as well as stories from people he knows that went through similar encounters. 

The book is not for the faint of heart and one needs to understand the everyday realities in a dictatorship from a more complex perspective than the usual simplistic black vs. white approach. The change of roles and the fluidity of the system of values - in opposition with what the political decision-makers want you (from outside and inside) want you to believe - is not only hard to understand, but hard to accept. The realities are as complex as the human nature. Dictatorships - the religious ones including - pervert the human nature therefore there is no clear line between good and evil, victims and perpetrators. 

I wish I am living in a world where there is no source of inspiration for such book.

I had access to the audio version. 

Rating: 4 stars