Tales of the
Boir Ahmadi
Wisdom from tribal Iran

Girls of the Bior Ahmadi collecting wild vegetables in the Zagros Mountains.

In the oral traditions of every culture one can find folk narratives which in deceptively simple and unassuming form, state nothing less than a basic philosophy of life. In these stories, fantasy is used not so much to create an escapist ideal world, where goodness triumphs over evil, poverty turns to riches, power is applied justly and beauty reigns supreme, but to make plain statements about the workings of the real world.

Things are presented as they are, not as they should be or might be if conditions were different. One finds no righteous indignation about hardships or injustice in them, no moralistic finger-pointing, neither pious complacency nor glee. Soberly, the world is faced head-on. These are not grand tall tales of heroic exertions, but short, concise stories populated with antiheroes whose combined follies and wisdom amount to a commentary on the human condition that everybody can recognize, regardless of cultural background.

Unlike complex narratives, where messages about life often are coded, transformed and hidden behind symbols, these little stories can be taken at face value. In them, the rules for the struggle of daily existence in a humble world are laid out openly.

Human existence is projected directly onto a plane where people and animals coexist by understanding each other, and everybody acts true to form, predictably, and stereotypically.