Till Tabbas (To Tabas, 1959) is Finnish-Swedish author Willy Kyrklund's (1921-2009) account of a journey through Iran in the 1950s. While ostensibly the object of Kyrklund's text is modern Iran and early Islamic Persia, on an ideational level To Tabbas explores existential issues that are most readily associated with certain intellectual environments in post-war Europe. In one sense, the Persian "Orient" is to Kyrklund an archive of texts and images, which he uses in a discussion about what he sees as the terms of human existence. Kyrklund discusses the terms of human existence by emphasising the perceived sameness between the modern Western subject and the Persian Muslim and the masters of Sufi poetry. He uses the concept of "man" to refer to the common ground that he imagines exists between them. However, as this essay shows, "man" as an abstract category functions as a placeholder for the post-war European male intel­lectual, desperate in his longing for a higher purpose, and certain that no such higher purpose exists. This tendency of semantic ambiguity is discussed from a postcolonial perspective in the last section of this article.