This chuckle a minute memoir is by an Iranian `expat' who armed with a degree in Street Theatre from London lands in Salt Lake City just in time for the Iranian Hostage Crisis.


Camel Jockey Go Home is the story of an Iranian `expat' whose begins his career teaching American English (as in grammar) to American kids during the 444 days of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  It is a gut-funny, colorful, first-person narrative of a Persian `blue blood' in his early 20's, navigating a new life and career in The Mormon Zion, Utah.

After barely finishing mime and Clown College in London, the author lands his first  summer job in America as a bus boy for President Nixon's cabinet.  Nixon's resignation finds the Author ripped suddenly from the luxury of gilded office suites to a parking garage job deep underground leaving him feeling especially victimized and betrayed by Woodward and Bernstein for the loss of the 2.75/hour job.

"I was a victim of Watergate scandal too!!!"

Nevertheless, the Author is inspired by the experience and by the politicians to whom he served food and drink.

In his short time in the company of greats like Ford, Agnew, George Wallace, Kissinger and others, the Author develops a passion for politics and an especially intimate appreciation for the art of bullshit.  "The Founding Fathers called the freedom to bullshit, `freedom of speech' to make it sound nicer.  Among all the politicians, Ted Kennedy was the master bullshitter. He became my role model."

Sharp-tongued political commentary throughout the book juxtaposes the politics of the "corrupt old Muslim thugs" and the old-boy politics of Washington. and its own equally brutish US foreign policy.

...

A giddiness seeps through the narrative from the knowledge that the Author's own cynical assault on everything sacred would, in his former country, earn a stoning at best

The Author tells his own colorful life story through the recounting of others' stories collected many waves of new Americans who came to Utah over the past 3 decades; from Iranian war criminals and their victims, to Bosian concentration camp survivors and their Serbian captors, from The Lost Boys of Sudan to the heirs of Latin American drug smugglers, teachers, butchers, doctors, judges, musicians, farmers and soldiers.

Camel Jockey Go Home contains some of the most amazing stories of our time, told by people displaced and uprooted from every corner of the world.  But he does more than just teach them English. He helps them heal and become their own story-tellers.