Shahr-e Farang to Lalehzar

Ahmad Sajedi
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2021-12-21

"Oral History" is one of the most valuable methods for registering and recording historical information. This important task is carried out through recounting the experiences, observations, and the personal memoirs and views of the individuals who have been the eyewitnesses of the events and incidents. An important part of the written history used by the people is created or evaluated by citing such oral sources.

Oral history is a useful way for preserving and keeping the memoirs, observations and knowledge of old people. Many old people have heard and seen many things that are very important and also audible at the same time. They have witnessed different lives of the past and the events of their time. Some of their statements and memoirs may not be found in any written source, but because they themselves have witnessed the events, their statements are often valid.

One of the works published in the field of "oral history" is a book called "Shahr-e Farang to Lalehzar". This book contains the memoirs of Mohammad Ghahremani, a revolutionary campaigner and an activist in the field of art and cinema. In this book, he recounts his memories and observations of the social conditions of Tehran in the forties and fifties of the solar calendar with a sweet and readable expression in six chapters from childhood to the acceptance of UN Resolution 598. Three parts of it narrate the pre-revolutionary period and the other four parts narrate the post-revolutionary period. 

About his motivation for preparing the book, the narrator refers to a sentence for the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, saying, "I remember that once the Supreme Leader in the sermons of the Friday Prayer said, "Those who compare the time of the monarchical regime with that of the Islamic Republic are often unfair and do not know what has happened in that period."

 In continuation, he added, " "It has remained in my mind ever since, and I have been concerned with giving the correct interpretation and understanding of that era to the new generation." In response to the reasons for choosing the name "Shahr-e Farang to Lalehzar" for the title of the book, he said: "I came to Tehran when I was 4 years old, and because my father was a cinema caretaker, I was acquainted with cinema since childhood and watched two films a day. There were two main reasons for choosing this name for the book; First, it refers to the subject of cinema and the story of the "Shahr-e Farang" that existed everywhere before the revolution, and in fact I wanted to say that the Pahlavi regime loved Farang (the west and Europe) very much and promoted that culture. On the other hand, Lalehzar also refers to the era of the sacred defense, which refers to the martyrs of that era, considering that the war zones are the footprints of many martyrs."

About the situation of Tehran before the revolution, the narrator writes:

"… The streets were closed to the public by the degenerates at night. Shahreza Street was closed to the public by the people going to nightclubs or casinos. If anyone dared to go to the streets, he or she would see that ordinary people, who were busy to their lives and families, would close their shops quickly and leave, and only the liquor stores were open. Lots of people went there, drank, inebriated, shouted drunkenly, stabbed, and sometimes lacerated each other. One of them fell into the runnel and the other fell wounded and beaten in the corner of the wall. No one could stop them. There were fights and drunkenness every night ... The political atmosphere was completely closed. Everyone who spoke against the regime had to deal with the torture of SAVAK agents. Therefore, no one trusted the other unless both of them were in the same structure. The more we went forward, the greater the difference increased ... »/ p.45

In the book "Shahr-e Farang to Lalehzar", the narrator describes the cultural and social situation of the pre-revolution years in a sweet and documented language and describes the hard and difficult living conditions of himself and other people in this atmosphere. This book is a very useful and instructive work for those who want to know the truth about the cultural, urban and social situation in Iran during the years of Pahlavi rule.

"Shahr-e Farang to Lalehzar" the memoirs of Mohammad Ghahremani, written by Tina Mohammad Hosseini, a student in Resistance Literature at the Faculty of Culture and Communication of the Sooreh University, has 202 pages and was published by Amirkabir Publications in the spring of 1400 (2021) at a price of 43,000 Tomans.