Review Meeting of the Book "I wish this bullet had not been shot"

Compiled by: Oral history website
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2024-7-17

The review meeting of the book "I wish this bullet had not been shot" by Mr. Asghar Kazemi was held on Monday, June 24, 2024 under the auspices of the Culture and Art Studies Center for the Sustainability of the Arts Center. According to the program, the book was to be reviewed with the presence of the host Mr. Hossein Jodavi and the critics Mr. General Saeed Mohammad Ali and Hojjat al- Islam Saeed Fakhrzadeh, but due to the absence of General Mohammad Ali, Hojjat al-Islam Fakhrzadeh alone and some of the audience, including Jafar Golshan Roghani, about the strengths and weaknesses of the book spoke.

By the author of the book, several books have been published before: Khorramshahr in the documents of the Iraqi army, the summit of 1904, Bamu, division one, and the book I wish this bullet had not been shot is his last published work. At the beginning of the meeting, Asghar Kazemi spoke about how his work was created and formed as follows: "The most important issue in documentary writing is teamwork. This book is actually not an individual work; collective work in the office of literature and art is resistance. A person like me is unlikely to be able to do a documentary book with camp documents, military documents and medical documents on his own. It is important that this work was done as a group and every person who was in the research group was involved in the production of this book. Is this book good or not? Will it benefit people or not? It is another matter. In fact, this book was the result of a sweet group work that lasted for several years. About the difference between the subject of this book and the books I have seen so far in the field of war, I must say that in this book we have told the effects and results of the explosion and shrapnel of a cannonball. It took several years because we had to know who was hit by these shrapnel." Pointing out that he was present when the bullet hit him at a distance not too far and about 700-800 meters ahead and he also heard the sound from behind him, he added: "It took several months to conduct this research, comrades and we should find our friends who were injured in that explosion or who were close witnesses of that incident so that we can learn about their observations. Then he talked about the many difficulties of finding them and mentioned the fourth person (Davood Sarlak) who was wounded there and because he had only been in the Ansar Battalion for two months, no one knew much about him until we were able to track him down through the Martyr Foundation. Thus, in the first step, we counted the names of the martyrs and the injured of the incident, and then we went looking for the address of them or their relatives. Regarding the difficulties of finding their names and addresses, Mr. Kazemi spoke about the anonymity of the volunteer forces: "How anonymous these forces are, and it fascinates me that they came and went in anonymity, and of course, the greatest joy of the job was finding these anonymous people." As an example, he mentions finding the name of the fifth person who, after 9 months of searching by the people of Ansar Battalion, finally found out that his name was Mohammad Taqi Qasimi, which, of course, made many survivors of Ansar Battalion happy.

Then he added: "The main problem of these volunteer forces was to lose heart from their interests. Most of these 7 people we see in this incident were volunteers. Even after being injured, they endured the hardships and immediately came to the war zone and did not stop the front, the revolution and their sacrifices.

Next, the host of the meeting asked the author: "You have a history of being in the front and fighting, and as far as I know, you were also involved in the Ansar Battalion." You have heard many bullets, why did you choose this one?" Kazemi replied: "The story of this book is detailed. One of the veterans of this incident named Mr. Hamidreza Asgarian (sixth person) brought his memories to the office for publication. I tried to publish his memoirs independently. It was rewritten two or three times, but the managers realized that because this book has many similarities, we will have trouble selling it. Therefore, the subject must be innovated and his memories cannot be published in this way. Because a part of his memories was devoted to the issue of this explosion, the incident of gunshots and its consequences became an issue for me and it occupied my and my friends' minds that in an explosion, how many people fall to the ground and get involved in it. As a result of these considerations, after the office came to the decision that it cannot publish his autobiographical memoirs, it is better to put this event under the microscope of comprehensive research. In this way, this topic was formed and the problem of the present research book found an identity. Mr. Kazemi emphasized that if even one of these seven people was not found, the content of this book would not have been formed.

Mr. Fakhrzadeh, as a critic and reviewer of the book, began his speech as follows: "This book has about 600 pages, which is one of Mr. Kazemi's documentary works. He is neither a storyteller nor a memoirist. His method is more that he pays attention to a subject and records that subject accurately with all the details. In fact, it is called a documentary. In this book, he gets ideas from Mr. Asgarian's memories. So Haj Asghar decides to start his research on the dimensions of how a bullet was fired and undertakes a very extensive work. The place where this happens is the operation Beit al-Maqdis 2 in the west of the country with the intention of approaching Sulaymaniyah, Iraq." Mentioning the reason for deciding to carry out this operation and its timing in the winter and severe cold of the west of the country, he added: I have been to this area and passed the path where bullets were fired, which is a very difficult path. It is a high mountain where the comrades were able to forcefully build a road in the heart of this mountain, which was very difficult and tiring to walk on this difficult, muddy and steep path. Now Haj Asghar writes that these friends used to go on foot. Of course, this route and heights were far from the enemy's sight and they had no respect for it, and with the calculations they had made, they fired the cannon blindly, and sometimes, like this bullet, it hit the road and caused casualties. By describing the conditions of the region and operations, Mr. Fakhrzade criticizes the book for Mr. Kazemi's lack of attention to the expression of these issues and especially the description of the operation.

Then he said about the lack of precise targeting in content production: First, Haj Asghar found people with a lot of research. Help was received from various organizations such as the Martyr Foundation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Holy Defense Documentation Center, the comrades of the 27th Division of Muhammad Rasulullah, and telecommunications, etc. Here, it is not clear what Haj Asghar is looking for. If drawing and explaining the incident itself is important, why do they go to the documents, which are 50% of this book. If the issue is that we should investigate the incident from the point of view of what happened, how the bullet was hit, how the martyrs and the wounded were taken back, etc., then why do they go to the families of the martyrs and force people to tell about themselves. From childhood, birth, participating in operations, motivation to go to war and exploring their past. So it can be concluded that their goal was to use this incident as an excuse to address the situation of a series of people. That is, they aimed the bullet at the condition of the Ansar battalion. Because Mr. Kazemi himself was one of the forces of the Ansar battalion in the war. If we were not going to deal with people's lives, we should have passed people's lives quickly. In this case, what was the need for all these documents? It is true that a series of documents and documents are necessary in documenting and this book contains a lot of documents and documents (in different forms), but was it necessary to include this volume of documents in the book considering the importance of the work? What logical connection does it have with what we said in the book? Did we need to bring so many documents? Because the larger the volume of the book, the higher the price.

 He continued: Another point is that when he talks about this operation, he presents the geographical information of that area in a concise manner, which I myself had a hard time imagining even though I have visited the area. Therefore, if you could not draw the geography of that region correctly, what was the need to focus on geography so much? So it would be better if you pass it and start telling the story. But if that geography was important to you, you could have addressed the geography of the region much better and more beautifully so that the audience would fully understand the characteristics there. My guess is that because Mr. Kazemi has an emotional relationship with the Ansar Brigade; If it is possible for them, they will publish all the events of the Ansar battalion in the form of a book under various pretexts. Therefore, the present book is a personal essay that deals with the condition of the forces of the Ansar battalion, and their only excuse was this bullet. Therefore, from the point of view of the author of this book, it is definitely a valuable work, but the question is, what is the purpose of this book? Has he been able to explain the goals that the author had in mind for the general public? These are the questions that the author must answer. In addition, questions arise in the mind of the audience, such as the geography of the region, which is not explained, and these are all questions that create a certain amount of ambiguity, and because the audience establishes an emotional relationship with each person, they do not understand what the purpose of the book was. It means that there is no end to the story and the story ends with the finding of those people and the details about it.

Mr. Jodavi asked Mr. Kazemi to speak about his documentary history before answering Mr. Fakhrzadeh's questions.

Mr. Kazemi said: "I became interested in documentary writing after writing the book Khorramshahr in the documents of the Iraqi army, and in my opinion it is my best book and I am very happy that this book was published. The book is about the looting and destruction of Khorramshahr. I started documenting with the Khorramshahr documents book in the art and resistance office, followed by the book Bemo, and then other works. The importance of documenting is not hidden from anyone. The fact is that I wanted less to join the Ansar battalion. But I didn't know it was so hard to find Basiji forces. In this book, there was nothing that I had to say about the Ansar Battalion and the operation Beit al-Maqdis 2 itself. That is, for me, the Beit al-Maqdis 2 operation was not important at all. It was important to clarify the situation of one bullet out of 36 million bullets, how it landed and what casualties it left behind. Next, regarding the documents that Mr. Fakhrzadeh says, I have brought most of the medical documents, which are mostly related to the soldiers getting shrapnel from being hit by this cannonball. It has been important what this explosion of shrapnel has in the life of a veteran. If it wasn't for these medical documents, no one would have believed that Mohammad Taghi Qasimi would die of bone infection after two years of surgeries due to the injuries he received and the repeated amputation of parts of his injured leg, and would be buried in a normal mortuary, even though he died due to the severity of his injuries. Receipt. Or that the medical documents brought from another veteran of this incident, named Abdullah Khodaei, who has undergone 150 surgeries, says that due to the presence of Dr. Jalil Arabkhordmand, the book's medical consultant, it becomes believable that this number of surgeries were performed on his body. and other documents about other injured people. Therefore, the content of the book is related to the explosion of cannonballs in this incident. The first sentence read in this book is that 36 million cannons were fired in these 8 years of war. The article I wrote on the back of the cover shows the generality of this book, and I tried to make this book general and not specific to any specific operation.

Further, Mr. Fakhrzadeh said: "In this book, the audience is faced with some fragmentation in the subject. If it was looked at from a medical point of view, a medical team should have published it. One of the things that Mr. Kazemi has done is that he has written all the text that should be discussed from a technical point of view. In terms of editing, would it be better to pay attention to the style and look of the narrators and the interviewees or not, to show the beauty of the work? I consider this book a confusing book that cannot find a general audience. He has collected a lot of details about axes that can later be considered as studies in the fields of social sciences and even literature. It is definitely a good source, but not as a public book and it is not used."

The host of the meeting stated: "I have read this book and I thought who could be its audience?" In my opinion, it is useful for documentaries and I suggest that it reaches the hands of politicians, military commanders and commanders who make decisions for this country, who at important moments, considering the sufferings of war, especially the effects of artillery fire on individuals and people, decide whether war to happen or not. According to Mr. Judavi, this book can have two audiences: 1. Politicians and military men 2. Future generations. Because we are still in the atmosphere of the holy defense years and we don't seem to feel the importance of this book.

Jafar Golshan Roghani from the audience of the meeting raised several points about the strengths and weaknesses of the book and raised some questions as follows: "I have been doing historical research for thirty years. I try to be rational in my work and deal with issues in a scientific manner, but inevitably there are feelings in human existence. The great advantage of this book is that it is a very valuable work in terms of historiography, and I have never seen anyone write a book on such a topic in the history of Iran, either in the contemporary history of Iran or in the past history of Iran. So it is completely pristine and valuable. Emotionally, the content of the book involved me in such a way that I actually cried in some parts of the book. I really enjoyed it and gained a lot of knowledge and data. Very valuable data for different fields of research in the field of war, whether sociological, psychological, social, cultural and even historical for this land. For this reason, the book is very valuable. Therefore, the production and publication of this research in the field of art is a worthy task, and the field of art, in addition to publishing the memories of the years of holy defense, should also be responsible for the production and publication of such research works in the field of holy defense. Especially because a number of people from the Ansar al-Rasoul battalion from the subdivisions of the 27th division of Muhammad Rasoolullah are working in the study center. Therefore, with the existence of these loved ones such as Mr. Asghar Kazemi, Mr. Nadali and Mr. Davood Amirian, with their presence in the war and their observations and hearings, they have formed a group of experts from the battalion in the field of art, who can talk about many aspects of that battalion. So, I think that the production of such works with the presence of these people will be very valuable for the arts center. He raised the following points by reading the name of the book in a beautiful and excellent manner and raising the question of how this name came to Mr. Kazemi's mind and he chose it.

1. There are about 10 typos in the entire 600-page book.

2. In some footnotes, no additional explanation is given to the reader especially the explanatory subtitle on page 21 about the Mawot of Iraq. I wish the audience was told about Mawott in those war conditions.

3. In addition to the fact that generally bringing photos and placing them in the book is great and adds to the audience's understanding and closeness, of course, in some places, you have brought pictures that are wrong. Like the photo of Martyr Ayub Selgi on page 76, which seems to be incorrect, and page 136, where the photo was published on this page without any reason.

4. In this book, the word "liberation" has been mistakenly used several times for Iraqi cities including Azadsai Faw on pages 89 and 195 and the liberation of Mawat Iraq on page 411. It seems that the use of this phrase is wrong because these areas belonged to the enemy and the Iraqis. So liberation has no meaning. The liberation of Khorramshahr is absolutely correct because this city belonged to Iran and was occupied by the Iraqis, and then we took it back again and liberation took place. In the research work about war, we must use accurate and correct expressions.

5. On pages 211 and 112, the words "disposable containers" are mentioned. The question is whether we had disposable containers in the war. You, dear warriors, help us and answer and describe its existence and use to us.

6. At the beginning of the book, the name of Mr. Mohammad Sadiq Faiz is mentioned as the editor on the birth certificate page, but in the footnote on page 240, Mr. Mohammad Mehdi Aqabi is mentioned as the editor. Which one is the editor of this text in every sense?

7. The explanation given under the title "Gardeh Resh" on pages 82 and 83 is next to the explanation related to the condition of the second person. It seems that it would have been better and more correct that it was given at the beginning of the book and during the geographical explanation of the region.

8. On page 202, it is mentioned about the sale of bananas in the 1980s, did we have bananas in Tehran in the 1980s?

9. One-sixth of the book belongs to Mr. Asgarian's memoirs, while praising the content of his memoirs, it seems that there was no place for this volume of memoirs in this book.

Mr. Kazemi, without explaining or answering the points raised, listed one of the most important criticisms of his book as follows: "Perhaps the biggest criticism they gave me was that you said here the French 155 cannonball." Military experts and soldiers say how do you know that the 155mm cannonball was French? We have come to this conclusion by putting together the evidence and written the French 155 mm cannon. Of course, we tried to reduce the errors, but there are possible errors in the text. For me, the location of the bullet explosion was the most important, that's why I didn't include the article "Pollen Rush" at the beginning of the book. Because in the first chapter, there were general things that I had to say and then I got to the details."

Mr. Fathullah Nadali, one of the veterans of the Ansar al-Rasoul battalion, gave the following explanations: "It seems that both the arts center and the organizations that are responsible for publishing and explaining the holy defense, their duty is not only to publish the holy defense based on audience measurement. Regarding the holy defense, it is a set of parts that we have the duty to say all of these parts. If we can tell all these parts of the war and when they are put together, the face and appearance of the war will be drawn. Apart from the outer veil of war, the inner veil of war is another face of war, which is also important and gives us hope in the human sphere. Based on this, Mr. Kazemi's book about this "stray bullet" has been able to depict the hidden curtain of the war and tell what happened to the soldiers with the explosion of this bullet, and what happened during such situations during the war, and what mental states and It has made a mental and intellectual impression on the attendees. As a result, the veils of ambiguity in war should be told and passed on to the future generations, as Haj Asghar was able to pass this on.

In the final part of his speech, Mr. Nadali spoke in support of the use of disposable containers in the fronts.

Davood Amirian was also present at the meeting and said: "Mr. Kazemi's work is very valuable and details are very important to him and he pays attention to them. His work is in the documentary genre, and there are documentary works in the world, and it is very attractive."

Mr. Hamid Ghasemi, one of the soldiers of Ali Akbar Battalion, also said: "The documents in this book have somehow made the work believable. It is true that it added to the volume of the book, but it also added to its credibility. For this reason, those documents may be very valuable in the long run. By reading this book, the next generation will realize the realness of those moments recorded in this book."

Hojjat al-Islam Saeed Fakhrzadeh said in the second part of his speech: "We are not saying not to publish this book." We say what to do to make it better. Our motivation is to provide the work much better. Our goal should be clear from this book. In this book, due to the narration of the sufferings inflicted on the veterans and the families of the martyrs of the cannon explosion incident, I see the sadness of the soldiers. But we all know that the front was a mixture of joy and sadness, and the entire front was not sad. When I say to define the audience of the book, it is so that we can define the content of our book accordingly. At least 50-60% of this book is not understandable for the general audience. But as a research work, it is a document of a source book. If we know what topic and what goal we are pursuing, after all these efforts, we could have a much smoother, more attractive and possibly wider resource."

In the end, the host asked Mr. Kazemi: "Many medical documents are printed in this book." It is the first time that I see so many medical documents and explanations in the field of holy defense. Is it attractive for the audience to read it? And can understand that event? In response, Mr. Kazemi said that If we did not present the medical documents, no one would believe that 150 surgeries were performed on the fifth injured person, but it is the medical documents that made this believable.

In conclusion, Hojjatul Islam Saeed Fakhrzadeh said: "When we write a book, we are not supposed to answer all the questions about a topic or topics, but we try to answer specific questions."

In conclusion, Saeed Fakhrzadeh said: "When we write a book, we are not supposed to answer all the questions about a topic or topics, but we try to answer specific questions."

The host of the meeting, emphasizing that the story of ordinary soldiers in this book and not the commanders, is one of the remarkable points of this work, emphasized the need to translate such works into other languages ​​so that their readers, especially statesmen, understand that by producing and selling weapons What kind of calamities have they brought on humans in wars. In the meantime, it is necessary to state the result of the sale of chemical weapons to Saddam's regime and the great harm caused to Iranian fighters. Mr. Jafar Golshan also mentioned the vastness of the unworked ocean and the unresearched topics in the field of holy defense and pointed to some interesting and attractive and important parts of the book such as the martyrdom of several warriors or the type of food and the way of distributing food in the war.