Where Hajji Baba Has a Lot of Jobs

The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isfahan by James Morier
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I generally like stories set in Persia or Arabia or lands near there, with adventurers making their way in the world, crossing deserts and seas. A Thousand and One Nights, fantasies with Middle Eastern-inspired settings, pulp fiction, Harold Lamb historical novels--love them all. I hoped to love this, too, but I just sorta liked it. A little.

So, IMO, it's okay. Written in the 1800s by a British member of an embassy to Persia, a man who spent years there, it shows his interest in the lands from Afghanistan to Turkey, and in the people, including their neighbors in Georgia and Armenia and Russia and India. It is filled with detail that makes the story seem plausible and real, giving the reader one perspective on that part of the world in the early 19th century. Whether the author is fair towards the people or shows prejudice I can't really say; it seems like he has a lot of affection for the topic, the place, and the people.

There's an aspect of it that put me off and made it hard to just sit down and finish this book. (I spread it out over 5 months.) This same issue is fully present in a lot of stories with similar settings, including the stories in A Thousand and One Nights, and that text, at least, did not come from the pen of a Western man, so maybe the depiction is accurate. But bit by bit, it destroys my interest in any of the characters.

I'm talking about the way everyone in the story seems to be working for their own self-interest at all times, in a way that feels very unethical and underhanded, though it's treated as normal and even wise throughout. No matter what job they have, what responsibilities, what career, the characters are all trying to take advantage of everyone else. Hajji Baba, the protagonist, is a decent man, no better or worse than anyone else, and he is pretty good with his friends, but over the course of the novel has any number of jobs, and in every job he finds a way to enrich himself in an unethical way. He and others get in trouble when caught out, some even being put to death, but nobody really thinks they did anything wrong. It's treated as wisdom to demand bribes in government positions, and skim a little off the top, and cheat the customers.

In addition, Hajji Baba is incredibly focused on status, on showing others that he has moved up in the world, and every time he gets a small advantage he struts and lords it over others. Sometimes, when it goes wrong, he seems like he has learned a small lesson, but then he forgets. Everyone around him is doing the same. Even the mullahs and dervishes, men expected to be more holy than the others, are shown to be self-serving, practicing on the credulity of others.

I paint it a little dark, probably, but this is the aspect of the novel that made it hard to finish. I was rooting for Hajji, who feels like a picaresque hero making his way in the world and learning how to be a better person, and that's the framing that I imagined organized the story. He's a barber, then a a cigarette seller, then a captive of the Kurds, then a physician's servant, and it goes on and on. But he doesn't grow much. Instead, he's a kind of George Costanza, who is pretty much the same at the end as he was at the beginning. He's sort of a rogue (proved by the scene in Istanbul when he convinces a beautiful widow that he's rich enough to marry her), and sometimes a fool (well, same scene, but lots of other times, too), but despite his tricks, he's just virtuous enough that we keep hoping he'll come good in the end.

This is meant to be satire, of course, though the tone of the novel is adventurous and hopeful, which is what tricked me--and what allows me to give this a 3/5 instead of a lower rating. Oh, and the fact that the edition, a 1937 hardcover with drawings and color paintings all through it, is beautiful. That helped.

Apparently, in the sequel, when Hajji is part of an embassy to England, the author satirizes that country instead. I don't think I'll be joining him on that journey.

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