QASHQAI – The nomads of Iran, a nation within the nation.
The Lions Club Terre di Mezzo, in collaboration with the Lions Club Alto Canavese and the patronage of the Municipality of Castellamonte presents the new book by Anna De Stefano “QASHQAI”.
Elisabetta Signetto, writer and journalist, writes: The images and texts in this book take you on a journey among the nomadic tribes of Iran: the Qashqai.
A journey, at times, almost back in time, imagining being there, with them, inside their tents in the Iranian desert. Or around a fire that lights up the night, sipping tea, under a starry vault, while the chief tells the story of his people.
Why a book about the Qashqai nomads?
I tried to tell with words and images the story of the Qashqai people who have always aroused great curiosity in me. I tried to get closer for the time I was allowed to a reality that in previous trips to Iran made my heart beat when Amir, guide and friend, pointed out women in colorful clothes and men with flocks who stopped or walked on the horizon: "look, they are the Qashqai nomads" and from the car window I followed them until they disappeared from my sight trying to capture the image in its totality and I thought of a possible journey that would have led me to meet them.
I ate with them and slept in their tents, waking up at dawn to see the men and the flocks moving away as the sun rose. I tried to capture all the images that everyday life brought me, the silence that enveloped us and the sounds of a life that must take into account time, the journey, the mountains, the plains, the waterways.
I observed the Qashqai women in their colorful dresses, with their proud, tired, sleepy eyes, their thoughtful glances, their slow and capable gestures due to experiences that have roots in the past, their welcoming smiles because words, theirs and mine, were only an obstacle.
I listened to Amiri talk about the importance of nature and respect for it, he showed me the trees planted by his ancestors, the hives with bees for honey production, he took me to see a field with stones that marked the boundaries of his childhood school. He told me stories of a past world, of the English, Germans and Russians, of when they moved with horses in transhumance. A world that no longer exists and that continues to change bringing new and different difficulties for its people and for the animals.
Continuing the journey north to reach the Iranian city of Tabriz, passing near the border with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan, I thought of them, of the flocks and the dogs, with concern on days when an inclement sky poured down powerful thunderstorms and always of them when passing through the mountain passes with the freshly fallen snow.
A book to talk about the Qashqai, to fix in words the emotions I experienced and to tell the traditions and culture of a people that emerges from the folds of time. I tried to do my best.
Elisabetta Signetto writes: In telling her journey, Anna De Stefano manages to go beyond a simplified and widely shared vision, because clichés would distance one from contact with Otherness. The attitude, or rather the perspective of the narration, embraces filia. It can also be perceived in the language: the Qashqai lemmas reported in quotation marks in some chapters. And the photographs in the pages highlight even more this “instantaneity” aimed at preserving not only the image linked to the memory of the journey to be shared with the reader, however. Because the shots, together with the texts, do not represent so much the effort to preserve a snapshot in memory, as a testimony. And to preserve the Otherness of “a Nation within the Nation”.
Saturday 8 March 2025 16 hours: 00
At the Martinetti Congress Center, via Educ 59, Castellamonte
