A Bridge Between Soil and Memory; A Review of the Book Soil and Memory, Written by Ahmad Dehghan
Mohammad Esmaeil Haji Alian, writer and university professor: If you are unfamiliar with Ahmad Dehghan, a simple search will lead you to text such as this: “Ahmad Dehghan was born in Karaj in 1966. He was still a teenager when a war broke out between Iran and Iraq. Like many of his peers, he went to the front and spent fifteen to twenty-two years on the battlefields. After the war, Dehghan began his university education in electrical engineering. He also studied social sciences for a while and eventually earned a master’s degree in anthropology. Ahmad Dehghan’s interest in writing and expressing his experiences of the war prompted him to take up a pen and write about war memories and events. Ahmad Dehghan’s first novel, ‘Journey to Heading 270 Degrees,’ was published in 1996. This book has garnered numerous awards, including Twenty Years of Storytelling, Twenty Years of Resistance Literature, the Fourth Period of the Sacred Defense Book of the Year, and Unknown Land. In addition to writing books, Ahmad Dehghan has also authored articles in his field of study, as well as theoretical discussions on literature, particularly memoir writing, especially concerning the Iran-Iraq War.”
And if you know him better, you are aware that he is one of the prominent and influential writers of Sacred Defense literature, whose two works, ‘Journey to Heading 270 Degrees’ and ‘I Am Your Father’s Killer,’ each could have been the culmination of a lifetime of writing. Ahmad Dehghan has also compiled numerous books in the field of memoirs and has been an expert in this area for many years. The outcome of these personal experiences, knowledge, and awareness, by this combatant of Iraq’s imposed war against Iran, has been published in a book titled ‘Soil and Memory’ in 2024, which is the subject of this article.
Scientific texts are broadly categorized into three types: the first is pure science, the second is pure experience, and the third is a bridge between science and experience, simultaneously. Each of these three kinds of scientific texts has its particular audience. Readers of pure science are scientists and thinkers who access and explore new and innovative scientific experiences within those books. In the second category, scientists and thinkers transmit their scientific experiences, which is a form of scientific experience writing, detailing a new discovery or understanding of science. However, in the third category, the approach is neither pure science nor pure experience; it is a bridge between scientific writing and experience writing. This category accounts for almost the majority of scientific texts. Ahmad Dehghan’s book ‘Soil and Memory,’ published by Khat-e Moghadam in 2024 and comprising 248 pages, which has entered the book market, belongs to the third category. It is neither pure science nor pure experience.
Ahmad Dehghan himself is a synthesis of both writing styles. Dehghan, who, as he states in this very book, is a war-experienced writer and a compiler of memoirs, having dedicated a lifetime to this field, offers the essence of his knowledge and experience to his audience in this book.
The book is structured into various sections. In the first section, the author’s note delves into the categorization of war memoir writing and introduces these categories with practical, illustrative examples from remarkable and prominent texts.
In the first chapter, the trajectory of memoir writing in Iran is examined under Dehghan’s keen and critical eye. It commences with the wound of the Tsarist Russian army’s invasion of Iran during the reign of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar and the struggles of Abbas Mirza Nayeb-ol-Saltaneh and his comrades against this aggression. That defeat on the front and the loss of significant parts of northern Iranian territory through the treaties of Golestan and Turkmenchay are attributed to the Iranians’ backwardness in scientific advancements, which was evident in the scientific achievements of the Russian forces, manifested by their use of firearms and their organized army.
This defeat marked the genesis of a movement to acquire new sciences and techniques from the West. The first travelogue from Europe, penned by Mirzā Saleh shortly after his return to Iran in 1819 (1198 Solar Hijri), is considered the first modern Iranian memoir writing.
Along this historical path from its inception to the present, a progression of Muslim travelogue writing from Iran is presented, along with the reasons for their creation, making for compelling reading. The narrative proceeds in this manner until it reaches the first modern Iranian memoir in style, namely the book ‘Iran-England War in Mohammerah’ (Khorramshahr) written by Yāvar Farāhāni; Khanlar Mirzā Ehteshām ol-Doleh, published in 1856 (1273 Lunar Hijri, coinciding with 1235 Solar Hijri), which is also highly readable.
In the second chapter, it surveys the memoirs of the Revolution and Sacred Defense, discussing Mahmoud Golābdarrehi’s memoir-story titled ‘Moments of Revolution’ and later the book ‘Marivan Lake at Six O’clock,’ eventually arriving at the first memoir book of Iraq’s imposed war against Iran and reviewing scattered memoirs by the first generation of war veterans, both autobiographical and written by others.
Over the course of 8 years of war, it delves into the 4 memoir books published during that era, and even the first memoir book by freed prisoners of war.
In the third chapter, titled ‘Memoir Writing as Continued Combat,’ it engages in a scientific-experiential discussion regarding memoir writing and explores it to formulate a practical guideline for memoirists. In this chapter, instead of merely stating principles and do’s and don’ts, Ahmad Dehghan narrates examples of memoirs, allowing the reader to discern right from wrong and what should or should not be done from reading these examples. From this perspective, it can be said that this chapter will offer a dual understanding for both the general and specific audiences, with each able to glean valuable insights.
Chapter Four is titled ‘Understanding Memoirs,’ but in this chapter, under two broad headings, ‘Elements of Memoir’ and ‘Documents of Memoir,’ it guides the reader toward exploring and understanding memoirs. First, it enumerates several key points and the necessity of daily memoir writing, and again, consistent with the previous chapter, it lists do’s and don’ts through memoir examples. However, in this chapter, it also introduces poor examples and, with justification and documentation from the text itself, immediately presents a good memoir that avoids those shortcomings. Finally, it recounts a truly excellent exemplary memoir from Iraq’s imposed war against Iran, titled ‘Yasin Epic,’ memoirs by Sayyed Mohammad Anjavi Nejad (Tehran, Soore Mehr, 1996), which elucidates a memory from Operation Karbala-5 in Shalamcheh. It is readable, precise, deliberate, and captivating.
In the fifth chapter, it addresses written notes. Initially, it discusses the impact of two factors—immediacy and contemplation—in war narratives and clarifies them. Then, citing William Gass’s perspective, which divides notes into three categories (Journal, Diary, and Notebook), it elaborates on three types of written notes: 1. Daily logs, 2. Manuscripts, and 3. Scattered notes, also enumerating their methods and rationales.
From the examples provided in this section and the scattered notes, one can further explore the content of this sub-genre, as theoretical discussions on this topic are limited, citing examples such as the notes of Martyr Ahmad Reza Ahadi and Martyr Hassan Bagheri.
In the sixth chapter, it delves into oral history and oral memoirs. In this chapter, Ahmad Dehghan’s approach becomes more distinct, especially in the interview section, where we encounter a thoroughly scientific and academic methodology, rather than the purely experiential science that was prevalent until the final third of the book. Nonetheless, even without explicit academic citations, the emphasis is on drafting a scientific text that is virtually an excerpt from existing Persian scientific sources in this section.
Overall, the orientation of this book is not primarily for researchers but for users of memoirs seeking to enhance their experience and knowledge. The text of this book cannot be effectively utilized for research citations, as it is neither exclusively the author’s experience nor the academic science of this field; it is something in between these two realms. It seems that when discussing do’s and don’ts, the language of transferring experience and knowledge becomes somewhat constrained, or overly refined, or quite rigid, lacking the prior uniformity and intimacy. Reading Ahmad Dehghan’s ‘Soil and Memory’ is considered essential and highly beneficial for all those who have experienced war and intend to write their memoirs, or who are active in the fields of memoir writing, oral history, and documentary production. It is also recommended for enthusiasts of various prose genres and the historical progression of Persian literature.
Finally, I must voice a personal lament about a void in our literature. Notable works such as Naylor Green’s ‘Love of Strangers,’ which chronicles the memoirs of six Iranian students who studied abroad during Jane Austen’s era, or Edward Radzinsky’s book ‘Stalin,’ where a combined technique of memoir and biographical writing is employed with specific literary examples of that period and relying on golden novels of that time like ‘The Master and Margarita’ and ‘Jane Eyre,’ have achieved a captivating form of this literary genre. In Persian literature, no one has yet shown an inclination towards this, which surely our cultural background has not been without influence. Or unparalleled books like ‘War Has No Woman’s Face’ and ‘Gulag Romances,’ two engaging works based on past documents, letters, and writings—despite the vast volume of documentation from the combatants of the eight-year Sacred Defense—have yet to be compiled and produced. We hope this longing will soon be fulfilled.
