How My PhD Topic Found Me
Iran wasn’t exactly the place to be in 2020. I had been there for nearly a year, but the looming threat of war, coupled with the tangible threat of COVID, meant that I needed to return home to Australia. By the end of the year I had completed my language course and cobbled together enough Persian to get by whilst living alone in a foreign country.
The day before I flew out, I took a cab directly to a book market, hoping to test out my freshly minted Persian skills and buy some key books for my upcoming PhD. Iran is filled with book markets — these precious slices of heaven on earth — each brimming with books in every conceivable field. Persian books? Of course. English books? Easy. Compendia from 10th century Baghdad that list books written on the genealogy of pigeons? Say less.
Armed with plenty of money and precious little time, I did what all book lovers would do: frantically rush into each store, search every nook and cranny, and ransack the place for every book that looked half-decent (which explains how I walked out with a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank and a history of early Islamic theology from the same store). With my arms weighed down by more bags than I could count, I trudged into a book shop right at the back of the bottom floor, on the right hand-side of the book market.
The owner was a large, bespectacled, middle-aged man with a thin moustache. Seated at the counter with a book before him, he barely noticed this foreigner stumbling his way into the store. Eventually he peeped up at me, noticed the ridiculous amount of bags, and intuited that I was a newbie.
“Where are you from?” he asked politely.
“Australia,” I replied, releasing my bags and pirouetting to get a better look at all the titles he had on offer. “I’m here to learn Persian for my PhD.”
He screwed his eyes more intently and began to inquire about my research interests. We discovered that we had some mutual friends, as his store specialised in philosophy and mysticism and was a go-to spot for researchers (if only I had known earlier). I purchased a few recognisable titles but didn’t have much space (or money) left for more books. I asked him for a final recommendation. He paused for a few seconds, and then pointed to a 3-volume set above my right shoulder.
“You’ll like those.”
I bought the set without checking the title, thanked the owner for his hospitality, and returned to my apartment. The next day I left Iran and flew back to Australia.
Fast forward to 2022 and I had begun my PhD on the Masnavi of Rumi, seeking to explore the philosophical commentaries written upon it. But I kept crashing into dead-ends and was unable to formulate a clear thesis. In my frustration, I did what all book lovers would do: frantically rush to my home library, begin re-arranging books, and look for lost gems amongst the mess.
As I was doing this, I came across a 3-volume work that I had forgotten I owned. As I scanned the contents and parsed through the book, I began grinning from ear to ear. It covered all my research interests: mysticism, poetry, religion, philosophy. It had only been published in complete form in 2020, which meant that it had been almost untouched in the academic literature.
I contemplated for a second where I had purchased this book before it hit me: it was the same book recommended to me by the bookshop owner a few years earlier, that I had purchased without even bothering to check its name. I spoke to my supervisor soon after that, and completely changed the direction of my PhD.
When people ask me how I found my PhD topic, I usually shrug my shoulders and reply that it found me. It still boggles my mind that had I never walked into that particular book store in 2020, and had the owner not pointed at that specific book, then I would not have been doing my PhD on this topic. In the search for a PhD topic you can devour all the books and articles in your field, pepper your supervisor with questions, and dig frantically for any potential gaps in your research field. But somewhere along the line, an unseen emissary from the far-flung lands of serendipity will leave a door slightly ajar, beckoning you to enter it. At the time you won’t understand how or why it is important. You might never understand it. But you must trust it.
The bookshop owner to whom I am indebted, Sayyed Mohsin, sadly passed away shortly after I returned to Australia. It upsets me to know that I can never personally thank him. I pray that one day we will be reunited in heaven to talk all things books and research. If you’ve reached this far, then please recite a prayer for him.