Letters completed by memoirs

Mohammad Ali Fatemi
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2019-10-22

The book “Sweet Love: Oral Memoirs of Qassem Zibaee Pour” has been published by Nekoo Afarin Publications in the northern city of Rasht in 2019. The 304-page book has been compiled in the Art Center of Gilan Province with an interview and writing done by Mir Emadeddin Fayazi.

In his reference to the book, Fayazi has reminded, “Qassem Zibaee Pour was born in 1960 in the village of “Asiabsar” in the rural district of “Taher Gourab” in western Soume’eh Sara. He spent his youth in the midst of the Islamic revolution. His father was a farmer and the village elder of their neighborhood. He had a difference of opinion with his father over the Land Reforms of the Shah’s White Revolution. Class differences and the different living conditions of the people were questioned for him and he was against his father’s views. He spent high school years in Marzan Ababd, a town near Chaloos at the home his military brother, and since that time, contributed to the formation of popular movement for revolution in proportion to the understanding and necessity of the time. Although he married in the early years of the revolution, and served late in the military, he was captured during an operation by the enemy forces at the end of the imposed war. He was not introduced to the Red Cross and recognized as missing in Iran.  He spent more than two years of his captivity in one of the concentration camps in Iraq’s Tikrit. Finally, he returned to the country and continued life with a different mood and the ups and downs of the time continued for him. One day in the mid-eighties, years after the end of the imposed war, I became the guest of his memoirs in the form of the project “Ravian-e Noor” or the narrators of light. During my acquaintance with the narrator, I felt that the writing of his memoirs was worth reflecting on the issues experienced by contemporary humans. The issue remained in mind till several years later in mid-nineties when in the opportunity of writing the memoirs, I went to find and ask him to tell his close and distant memoirs with more detailed. That day in the mid-eighties, he recalled memories of the past with a more concentrated sense than the mid-nineties. However, since he had a language in poetry and a hand in pen, he had written some parts of his memories after our first visit. This important event helped the interview to reread the forgotten parts of his mind in recounting the memoirs of close and distant years. I deem it necessary to recall his esteemed wife, Mrs. Mahnaz Rajaee who helped keep track of some of the events and the back and forth of the narrator’s mind in ordering the date of the events through holding the letters written during the war in the front. Now, I have used some of the letters whose publication was possible. The narrator’s prose and his method of writing were preserved in using the letters so that the feeling of days of presence in the front is transferred as has been in the letters, but at the request of the publisher, the orthography of this writing was considered in the letters”.

Oral memoirs of Qassem Zibaee Pour have 46 parts, an attachment titled “The Composition of Dirt Road”, an album of the narrator’s photos and an index. He expresses his memoirs of the years of the Iraqi imposed war against Iran from page 109. He left for the front in 1987 and along with memoirs of theses day, a number of letters written for his wife in those days have also been published. The memoirs of the narrator’s captivity by the Saddam army and the period of his captivity have been written from page 212. The final part of book deals with the end of his captivity and return to home and a reference to his post-captivity period.

Therefore, the memories of Zibaee Pour consist of four points: pre-war, war, captivity and post-captivity. The common characteristic of the memories of these points is that it has been tried what was special for the narrator and his views are narrated.  The result of such an endeavor is the retaining of memories in the minds of readers who read other diary books about the sacred defense and times of captivity. That to what extent such an accomplishment have been achieved, readers of "Sweet Love: Oral Memories of Qassem Zibaee Pour" should share it with its creators.