Corona and "Corona Daily Notes"

Alireza Kamri
Translated by: Fazel Shizard

2020-4-21

In these days, it has been seen and heard that some groups and institutions have invited the victims of Corona Virus (including patients, patients’ observers and self- quarantined people) to write a memoir about this event. This invitation and the attempt to fulfill it, of course, includes the benefits and effects that we preferably don’t mention them here. However, it is worth noting that everything now being written in the face of this phenomenon falls into the category of "daily notes" and not "written memoirs." A written memoir is a writing that brings to mind words and phrases that are related to past. In writing memoirs, bringing "past" in mind that occurs in the "present". That is, there is a distinctive temporal distance between past and present and, more precisely, the bio-cultural / discourse difference that makes the past events a "memory" for present time. Therefore, what may be written in these days about those who suffered from Corona Virus, and encouraged some to write it down, is not a memoir, but a "daily notes" and a "daily writings". Of course, daily notes /calandergraphy are more valuable in terms of accuracy in transmitting and recording details than written memories. Meanwhile, day-to-day notes on the subject and content are tied and limited to author's / writer's mentality and perception on the same day, and thus writing based on "present memory and observation " should not be equated with memoirs. This type of daily notes has also been called the "daily news of memories" (see: Etemad al-Saltanah’s daily news of memories).[1] It is worth noting that the written memoirs based on daily memoirs describe the minutes and details of past events the narrator's observations and hearings and narration are more accurate and safer in passage of time. The daily writings / daily notes, of course, can include the self-speech and current situation of writer, and a report of narrator’s external objections. In this sense, daily notes can be considered as a kind of individual reporting from soul to the world. I ask God to save everyone from this ordeal and great hardship through his help and kindness. "If a wound touches you, a similar wound already has touched the nation. Such days we alternate between the people so that Allah knows those who believe, and that He will take witnesses from among you, for Allah does not love the harm doers."(Quran)