Memoirs from the moment the Iranian combatants taken as captives

Summer of 1369 (1990)

Mahya Hafezi
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevissan

2023-10-18

The book "Summer of 1369", written by Morteza Sarhangi, has been published by Soorah Mehr Publications in 1401(2022) in 1250 copies. The hologram price of this book is 94,000 Tomans and it has 324 pages. The book's cover reminds the color of the combatants' overcoats, and the color of its name evokes the yellow color of the summer. An old photo, one corner of which is folded and the other corner is torn, stands out next to the name of the book. The photo of two combatants walking on a road; one is holding a weapon behind the other and the farthest combatant has his hands up in sign of surrender.

This book recounts forty memories from the moments the Iranian combatants were taken as captives. The author has witnessed the release of prisoners in the Khosravi border in the summer of 1369. In a note at the beginning of the book, he wrote: "One day, I said to myself, it is a pity that these moments of captivity, which have a lot of variety, remain unread..." The author checked the list of the books about the memoirs of the captives and came across about 360 book titles and he has had a journey to the text of these memories.

Since the summer of 1398 (2019), he has borrowed the books one by one from the specialized library of war in Art Center and found the moments of captivity of each book, marking with a pencil. After three years, forty memories have been collected. Then, the memories have been "titled". For each memory, he wrote an "About". If he found a sweet or bitter memory from the text of the book, he added it to "About" for the reader to read.

Morteza Sarhangi, a researcher in resistance literature and the founder of the Office of Resistance Literature and Art, who was a journalist in Islamic Republic daily during the war, witnessed the liberation of prisoners closely, and after that he has been and is active in the field of captivity and war literature. At the end of the book's introduction, he wrote that after forty years of working in war literature, he chose these memories and did not think that he would be able to write words about them in that hot summer when he saw the prisoners of war with those small sacks and thin bodies. With this book, he wanted to tell the captives that captivity literature is one of the souvenirs that they brought to Iran at the price of their youth. Now they have jobs and are with their families; But they still imagine themselves at night behind the cold walls of the cells in Iraqi camps and see the nightmare of those days.

In each chapter, the memory of the moment of the narrator's captivity has come first. Then the author has given memories, notes and information about it. The memories of this book include: Mother soil, Agha Seyed's letter, Zolfi family, Waiting letters, Mercenaries, Those two fingers, At the foot of Soren mountain, Descendant of Naynavar, Pilot's letter, Ten minutes to nine a.m., Birthday party in cell, Souvenir money, Ali Tehrani, War with clod, Kindred with Bullets, Artillery Watch, A letter for diamonds, Opportunity to be scared, American Mohsen, Laf Paper, Captivity of a guard, Troubles of a name, Boyeh, Badri's appearance, Prison monster, Gorji biscuits, Laughter in prison, Haj Reza Moradmand, In friendly clothes, A sack of flour, The stolen ring, Tricksters, A barking dog, Captivity with pride, A cavalier from Gilan, Wailing for water, We were waiting for you, The storyteller colonel, That rainy night, When you came back... and Goodbye... .