“…or a 26-year-old Rhodes Scholar’s poignant, funny, eye-opening story of teaching in Iraqi Kurdistan”.
” I have been in Arbil for three great celebrations.
In 2005, when Jalal Talabani was named to be president of Iraq, people took to the streets for a mass, moving party. Buses ventured up from Kirkuk and construction trucks crawled through the streets, filled to the point of oveflow with ecstatic young men. Taxis were rented out to the day, flags attached to the mirrors, and horns taped down.
In that same year, I joined some friends for part of the week long celebration that composed Nowrez, the Kurdish and Persian new year. Driving out to the region’s tourist destinations, we passed picnic-goers parked on the side of the rode, some linked hand in hand, the fabulous outfits of the women sparkling, as they moved in the circles that often compose Kurdish dancing.
Both events seemed to celebrate Kurdish distinctiveness–the rise of Talabani, the coming of the Kurdish new year–yet both took place within an Iraqi framework, be it political or via the echoes of the historical past.
And so with tonight. Again, young men hung out of cabs. Cars swerved on both sides of the new six lane road, flashing brights in celebration. One young man, flag in hand, sat atop one of the city’s buses, a gift from the Koreans.
The cause–a celebration of Arbil’s skill, yet also reminder of the Iraqi connection.
The score–Arbil 2, Najaf 0. ”
Book Description
In the spring of 2005, Ian Klaus, a twenty-six-year-old Rhodes Scholar, traveled eight hours from Turkey, via broken-down taxi and armed convoy, to reach Salahaddin University in Arbil, the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan. Elvis Is Titanic is the poignant, funny, and eye-opening story of the semester he spent there teaching U.S. history and English in the thick of the war for hearts and minds.
Inspired by the volunteerism of so many young Americans after 9/11, Klaus exchanges the abstraction of duty for an intimate involvement with individual lives, among them Mahir, a rakish Kurdish pop star whose father, an imam, disapproves of music; Ali, an Anglomaniac professor of translation devoted to the BBC, with whom Klaus has a public showdown over Hemingway; and Sarhang, Klaus’s bodyguard, whose interest in American history is excited by Mel Gibson’s performance in The Patriot. Among the Kurds, a perennially oppressed but seemingly indomitable people, Klaus encounters both openhearted welcome and resentful suspicion—and soon learns firsthand how far even a trusted stranger can venture in this society. With assignments ranging from Elvis to Ellington, from the mysteries of baseball to the aperçus of Tocqueville, Klaus strives to illuminate the American way for charges initially far more attuned to our pop culture than our national ideals.
These efforts occasion Klaus’s own reexamination of truths we hold to be self-evident, as well as the less exalted cultural assumptions we have presumed to export to the rest of the world. His story, as full of hope and discovery as he finds his students, offers a slice of life behind the headlines.
About the Author
Ian Klaus, who now lives in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote for publications across the United States while he was in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in history at Harvard.
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