Soil and Memory; The Boundary Between Memoir Writing and Research in War Literature
Mohammad Esmaeil Haji Alian, writer and university professor, for the Homeland and Resistance Service of Iran Book News Agency (IBNA): If you don’t know Ahmad Dehghan, a simple search will lead you to a text like this: “Ahmad Dehghan was born in Karaj in 1345 (1966 AD). 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 finally earned a master’s degree in anthropology. Ahmad Dehghan’s interest in writing and expressing his experiences of the war atmosphere led him to pick up a pen and write memoirs and war events. Ahmad Dehghan’s first novel, “Journey to 270 Degrees,” was published in 1375 (1996 AD). This book won numerous awards, such as Twenty Years of Story Writing, Twenty Years of Resistance Literature, the Fourth Period of Sacred Defense Book of the Year, and Unknown Land. In addition to writing books, Ahmad Dehghan has also written articles in his field of study and theoretical discussions of literature, including memoir writing, especially memoirs of the Iran-Iraq War.”
And if you know him better, you know that he is one of the prominent and influential writers of Sacred Defense literature, whose two works, “Journey to 270 Degrees” and “I Am Your Father’s Killer,” each could have been the fruit of a lifetime of writing. Ahmad Dehghan has also compiled several books in the field of memoirs and has been an expert in this field for many years. The result of these personal experiences, knowledge, and awareness, by this combatant of the imposed Iraq-Iran war, has been adorned with the beauty of print in a book named “Soil and Memory” in 1403 (2024 AD), which is the subject of this article.
Scientific texts are divided into three general categories; the first category is pure science. The second category is pure experience, and the third category is a bridge between science and experience, simultaneously. Each of these three types of scientific texts has its specific audience. The audience of pure science is scientists and thinkers who have access to science and examine a new and novel experience of science in those books. In the second category, scientists and thinkers transfer the experience they have had in science, and it is a kind of scientific experience writing, about a new discovery or a new perception of science. But in the third category, the strategy is neither pure science nor pure experience; it is a bridge between science writing and experience writing. It accounts for almost the majority of scientific texts. Ahmad Dehghan’s book “Soil and Memory,” published by Khat Moqaddam Publications in 1403 (2024 AD) in 248 pages and released to the book market, belongs to the third category. It is neither pure science nor pure experience.
Ahmad Dehghan himself is a blend of both types of writing. Dehghan, who is himself a war writer, as he says in this very book, and a compiler of memoirs, having spent a lifetime in this field, presents the essence of his science and experience to the audience in this book.
The book consists of different sections. In the first section and the author’s note, he categorizes war memoir writing and introduces these categories with practical examples and striking and prominent texts from each category.
In the first chapter, the ups and downs of memoir writing in Iran are placed under Dehghan’s sharp and critical gaze. It begins with the wound of the Russian Tsarist army’s invasion of Iran during the reign of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar and the struggles of Abbas Mirza Nayeb-ol-Saltaneh and his companions against this invasion. That defeat on the front and the loss of large parts of northern Iran in the treaties of Golestan and Turkmenchay are cited as reasons for the Iranians’ backwardness in the caravan of science, which is evident in the scientific achievements of the Russian army, manifesting in their use of firearms and their organized army.
This defeat marked the beginning of the movement to learn new sciences and techniques from the West and Europe. The first travelogue from Europe, written by Mirza Saleh shortly after his return to Iran in 1198 solar (1819 AD), is considered the first modern Iranian memoir.
Along this path, from the beginning to today, a history of Muslim travelogue writing from Iran is presented, along with the reasons for writing them, which is fascinating. The narrative continues in the same vein until the first modern Iranian memoir, the book “The Iran-England War in Mohammerah” (Khorramshahr) written by Yavar Farahani; Khanlar Mirza Ehtesham-ol-Doleh, published in 1273 lunar (1235 solar/1856 AD), which is also very readable.
In the second chapter, it surveys the memoirs of the Revolution and the Sacred Defense, discussing the memoir-story “Moments of Revolution” by Mahmoud Golabdareh, and then “Lake Marivan Six O’Clock,” until it reaches the first book of memoirs of the imposed Iraq-Iran war, and briefly reviews all memoirs, self-written and other-written, of the first generation of war veterans.
During the 8 years of war, it examines 4 memoir books published at that time and even the first book of memoirs of the freed prisoners of war.
In the third chapter, titled ‘Memoir Writing, Continuation of Combat,’ it delves into the scientific-empirical discussion of memoir writing and explores it to formulate a guideline for memoir writers. In this chapter, instead of principles and dos and don’ts, Ahmad Dehghan narrates examples of memoirs and allows the reader to deduce the right and wrong, and dos and don’ts for themselves from reading the memoir examples. From this perspective, it can be said that this chapter will have a dual reception for both the general and specific audience, and each can take away something valuable.
The fourth chapter is titled ‘Understanding Memoirs,’ but in this chapter, with two main headings: ‘Elements of Memoir’ and ‘Memoir Documentation,’ it guides the reader to explore and understand memoirs. First, it lists several points and necessities of daily memoir writing, and again, similar to the previous chapter, it enumerates dos and don’ts with examples of memoirs. In this chapter, however, it also introduces bad examples and, with reasoning and documentation to the text itself, immediately presents a good memoir that lacks those flaws. Finally, it narrates an excellent eyewitness account from the memoirs of the imposed Iraq-Iran war, named ‘Epic of Yasin,’ memoirs of Seyyed Mohammad Anjavi Nejad, Tehran, Soureh Mehr, 1375 (1996 AD), which describes a memoir from Operation Karbala Five in Shalamcheh. Readable, precise, measured, and engaging.
In the fifth chapter, it discusses written notes. Initially, it addresses the impact of two factors, immediacy and reflection, in war narratives and explains them. Then, citing William Gass’s view that divides notes into three categories: Journal, Diary, and Notebook, it elaborates on three types of written notes: 1- Daily records, 2- Manuscripts, 3- Scattered notes. It also explains their how and why. From the examples provided in this section and the scattered notes, one can further delve into the content of this subgenre, as little theoretical discussion has been presented on this topic. Examples include the notes of Martyr Ahmad Reza Ahadi and Martyr Hassan Bagheri.
In the sixth chapter, it deals with oral history and oral memoirs. In this chapter, Ahmad Dehghan’s approach becomes more distinct, especially in the interview section, where we encounter a completely scientific and academic approach, not the empirical science we saw until the last third of the book. However, even without academic references, it emphasizes and outlines scientific text, which is almost an excerpt from existing Persian scientific sources in this section.
Overall, the approach of this book is not for researchers but for memoir users to enhance their experience and knowledge. One cannot use the text of this book for research citations, as it is neither solely the author’s experience nor the academic science of this field, but something in between these two. It is as if when it comes to dos and don’ts, the language of transferring experience and knowledge becomes halting, or too polished or too stiff, without the uniformity and intimacy seen before. Reading Ahmad Dehghan’s ‘Soil and Memory’ is essential and highly productive for all those who have experienced war and intend to write their memoirs, or who work in the field of memoir writing, oral history, and documentary filmmaking. Also, for those interested in various prose styles and the historical progression of Persian literature.
Finally, I must speak of a personal regret that is absent in our literature. Prominent works such as “Love of Strangers” by Niel Green, which narrates the memoirs of six Iranian students who traveled to Europe in Jane Austen’s era, or the book “Stalin” written by Edvard Radzinsky, which employ a mixed technique of memoir and biography with examples from the specific literature of that era, referencing golden novels of that period like Master and Margarita and Jane Eyre, achieving a delightful form of this literary genre. In Persian literature, no one has yet inclined towards this, which is certainly influenced by our cultural background. Or unique books like “War Has No Woman’s Face” and “Gulag Romances,” two readable works based on documents, letters, and past writings, have not yet been compiled and produced despite the vast volume of documentation from the combatants of the eight years of Sacred Defense. We hope this regret will soon be overcome.
May you remain!
