We are talking about the men of John Al-Hadidi

When the episode about Robert Bly was broadcast on public radio by Bill Moyers, "a gathering for men," in the winter of 1990, it brought unprecedented waves of calls and messages from men and women who believed in the pain and confusion many young people of the era go through. "John the Iron" is the long-awaited book by Robert Bly, about male initiation rituals, and the role of the guiding mentor, and it is the result of ten years of work with men to reach the truths of masculinity that go beyond our stereotypical cultural molds. Bly took the story of John the Iron as the framework for his book, which is among what the Brothers Grimm collected in the early nineteenth century, but its core idea and theme go back thousands of years. In the story, an old man "thick-haired" — John the Iron — becomes a guiding mentor for a young boy; every event or adventure is a stage of maturity on the path to masculinity. With Bly's retelling of the story, he pauses from time to time to reflect on the initiation rituals that are still performed in some parts of the world, or preserved in some epics, like the Odyssey. As the book progresses, we see him build a rich, coherent picture of what it meant to transition from boyhood to manhood across ages.