Memories of a Newsboy

Memories of a Newsboy
Mohammad Ebrahim Ranjbar Amiri
Published by Shadrank
Release date: 2013
Price 160,000 IRR

"Memories of a Newsboy" encompasses the memories of Iran's oldest newsman alive. Born in 1928 in a village in the northern Mazandaran Province, Mohammad Ebrahim Ranjbar emigrated to Tehran at the age of 9 in 1937. He stepped into the news selling business soon after he entered the Iranian capital with support from two friends who resided near his place. Ranjbar has remained a newsboy for 83 years and has set a record for selling newspapers in Iran. The book sheds light on his memories since the 1920 Coup through the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The work entails first-hand information about those days in a fashion which is unprecedented in the hisotriogrphy of the revolution and the contemporary history of Iran.

Books like this can for sure be regarded as valuable resources for historiography of the common people in the society. The development of Iran's press during various eras is clearly sketched in the book that casts a novel look at the history of press in Iran by accounting for its untold details.

One of the features of the book is the way it looks at how the general population of the society reacted to different historical events that took place in the country. The book's writer, Ranjbar, puts forward a novel view of the general mass and the publication difficulties that the press was entangled with during various eras.

A session has recently been held in Tehran in assessment of the book. During the session, an official with the Organizations of Iran's National Library and Archives, Gholamreza Amirkhani, said he knew a book needed to be published to cover Ranjbar's memories after he heard his detailed recollections of key historical events in the contemporary era.

"When I heard his stories, I knew they must be published in a book. This could be the first book of its kind which has successfully cast light on a section of the history of Iran's press," said Amirkhani.

He argued that the book's most prominent feature is that it reviews the history of the society from the viewpoint of a low-level citizen who happened to be in contact with all walks of the society, which was very rare in the historiography of the country.

The 272-page memoir is in fact a collection of the stories and memories Ranjbar offered Ettela'at Haftegi magazine in Iran during numerous oral history sessions. The stories were published on a weekly basis and are now published by the magazine in Iran.

"14 years ago, I came over Ettela'at institute to see a friend of mine," said Ranjbar speaking of how he began the book. "I saw this cleric in one of the rooms who politely asked me what I wanted; and I said I was looking for this friend of mine and that I am a newsman. Then, he asked if I could recollect something about the 1953 Coup in Iran, and I told me a number of stories which impressed him and asked this other guy to come over the write down whatever I had to say about the incident. From then on, I began writing the book by telling them my memories. A book is what is left after one is dead, therefore, I decided to collect my memories in a book. It has a lot of mistakes because it was its first print-run which will be fixed in the second and third runs, I hope."