Cards, Faces, Fields of Flowers Summary and Analysis

The author, Ryszard Kapuscinski, speaks of the mess in his hotel room. His tables are full of cryptic notes, notebooks, photos, cassettes and 8mm film. He is leaving Iran soon and must make sense of all of this fragmented media in his role as journalist.

International tourism has stopped in Iran, and he is the only guest in the hotel. Kapuscinski figures he is paying the salaries of the four staff members playing cards in the lobby downstairs.

As Kapuscinski and the staff sip tea (for alcohol is punishable by a whipping), they watch the ayatollah of Iran, Khomeini, address his followers from his home town of Qom. As Kapuscinski explains, Qom is a hundred miles south of the capital city of Teheran, and home to the most fervent religious fundamentalists in the...