ABSTRACT
The recovery of ancient grandeur and purity constituted foundational concerns for Sadiq Hedayat (1903-1951) and for many of his contemporaries. Informed by an Aryanized account of Iranian history, like other nostalgic nationalists of the 1920s and the 1930s Hidayat scapegoated the Arabs as the destroyers of Iran’s ancient grandeur. He called them the corrupters of pure Iranian blood, who through miscegenation left behind “filthy Semites” (kesafat-ha-ye sami) who were held responsible for the dissemination of “cheating, treason, thievery and bribery.”1 Recognizing Islam as an Arab religion imposed on Zoroastrian Iran, like other modernists of his generation Hidayat sought to expose the false piety and religious duplicity of his “mixed-race” compatriots in critical anthropological short stories such as “Seeking Absolution” (Talab-e Amorzesh),2 “The Absolver” (Mohallel),3 “The Man who Killed his Ego” (Mardi Keh Nafsash ra Kosht),4 and “Madam Alaviyah” (Alaviyeh Khanom).5 While innovative in form, all of these narratives were intended to expose a Muslim piety that he thought masked criminality.
