Crisis Management on the 'Home Front': The Women Who Pulled Pieces of Life from the Rubble

The editor of the short story collection 'Davazdah Khan' said: We must first ask what 'anti-war' means. If 'anti-war' means opposed to war, then yes, we are certainly opposed to war and are not warmongers. But if 'anti-war' means anti-defense, then no. We were not a country or nation that attacked; rather, we were the country whose people, from its highest authorities down to ordinary citizens, were martyred by an invading enemy.

Iran's Ambassador of Arjan's Homeland and Resistance Service, Elham Ghasemi: War, beyond explosions and ashes, has layers of silence, anxiety and unfinished narratives behind it; Narratives that are often lost in the dust of history. "Twelve Readers" is a window to this hidden world; A collection of 136 pages in the form of stories, focusing on women's experience of the 12-day war, tries to distance itself from the conventional clichés of war by using the variety of viewpoints and modern narrative techniques and to represent new dimensions of the Israel-Iran war in everyday life.

In this interview, we joined the editor of this collection, Yalda Yazdani, to find out how to create a "single identity" and an "inner music" from among 11 different narratives, and address the bitter truth of war from a woman's point of view.

Creating a collection made of eleven stories with different perspectives has the challenge of creating a "unity in plurality". How did you manage to create a formal coherence between the huge variety of situations (from the ship in Bandar Abbas to the prison and the stable) so that the audience feels that they are facing a single "whole" and not a collection of scattered stories?

All the stories in this collection revolve around a collective experience. An experience that all Iranians who participated in the 12-day war, wherever they were, understood it. That unity in the multiplicity that you say is the common experience that created a single whole. The social, geographical and even age conditions of eleven writers are different and each of them has their own point of view. The story they wrote is like a piece of the puzzle of the whole book.

War literature is usually formed when the dust of the incident has settled. But in "Twelve Readers" you have gone to a very close event (the 12-day war in Khordad 1404). As a director, how did you manage the writers so that they don't get involved in "news" and slogans and can turn the "present moment" into "the depth of the story"?

That's what a storyteller does. That what he writes is not similar to news, report or even memory and that his work has elements of story. And most importantly, have an "it". It means that something changes in the audience after reading the work. By the way, the impact and durability of the story is just this dramatic change and action. The author of the story reads the news, takes interviews, does research, but he is careful to look at all of these as raw material for the story, not the original story!

In this work, we witness that the war has been taken to "non-stereotypical spaces" such as stables, ships and Imamzadeh instead of the "battlefield". Was this transfer of location an attempt to show the fact that in the war of 1404, "security" is a completely fluid and unstable thing? How important was it to you that "Dozhekhuan" was not a military book, but a "sociological" book from the time of crisis?

In this book, the author tried to tell a story. We did not want to advise the audience. We did not want to prove or disprove anything. If a writer wanted and was able to cover the battlefield, we would have no problem. But since "as a hundred comes ninety is before us", when the story is told correctly, it becomes a hundred times more effective. The story is not intended to be military or sociological or anything else. We wrote to stay these days.

In the official literature of war, we are usually faced with male heroes on the front lines. But in "Dovazdeh Khan", the camera was taken to homes, hospitals and civilian spaces and "female voice" was extracted as the central core of the collection. What was the reason for your selection and focus as an editor on "Iranian woman" in these 12 days? Do you believe that the "war" is actually decided and managed on the "home front"?

This was a requirement of the book. Mrs. Haji Ali Asghar and I preferred to work with friends we already knew. For this reason, all authors of the Essen series are women, and a feminine world has been created in the book. Perhaps, if the author was a man in this group, we would have encountered other subjects and views, who would have created their own world. By the way, it should be like this. That is, I wish other friends would try and write polyphonic. Let me give an example, for example, dual military, non-military. Where does this dualization come from? that military blood defending the homeland is halal and civilian blood is not. Now if someone can create a world and write a story where we see a soldier. A "that" story that is also ours. Without stereotypes and slogans, this is a blessed event.

The female characters in this collection are not passive; They are managing the crisis. Whether it is a nurse, a mother trying to calm her child, or a girl caught in a security situation. How important was it to you to show these women not as "victims of war" but as "small-scale crisis managers"? Was this your look, a response to the stereotypes that see women in the literature of war, only in the role of "waiting" or "mourning"?

This book is the story of ordinary people. The story of people who are trying to live with all the ups and downs. But the tyrant and aggressor comes and destroys their lives. Grief comes with war and no one can deny it. War tears life apart and nothing is the same as before. These stories are the mirror of this life. But they have passed through a filter; From a feminine point of view. The women in this collection of stories have both roles; They are sad and hurt. But the main actors are themselves. Now you have called it crisis management. These women are grieving people who fight to pick up the pieces of life from the ruins of war.

The present work is a combination of stories at the moment of the explosion and post-war stories. In your opinion, what message does this confrontation have for the reader? Was the goal to record a futuristic historical event or to show the human reaction to an "unexpected event" such as war?

When the storyteller starts writing, he should think about telling his story as best as possible and what the story requires. However, the character must go through a process to complete the cycle of the story. That is, that dramatic change must take place. It is not a question of the moment of the explosion or after. The issue is telling the story and respecting what is in the service of the story. So we have to see what the situation of the story requires.

In the process of compiling this collection of stories, did you encounter an author whose viewpoint is in conflict with the "main theme" of the collection (women and war)? How did you manage to turn that contrast into a "constructive diversity"?

No, thank God. Our team of writers were very helpful. Of course, people's political views and ideologies were different and not everyone thought the same, but in writing the story of the whole unit, the common bitter experience brought us all together to write.

The book takes war from "event" to "human experience". In your opinion, what in the "language of the authors of this series" made the disaster turn from a news report into a lived pain?

War does not happen. War is not even floods and earthquakes. War narration is different from any natural event. Even natural events have a story, but war is confrontation. A tyrant has come and invaded a country. It has left a nation in mourning. Pain is woven into the taropod of war and cannot be separated. And what better way to tell and show pain than the language of stories.

Consider this collection of stories as a "map", where does this map take us? To the heart of the battlefield, or to the hidden layers of the soul of those who have returned from the war?

In the 12-day war, it was the heart and battlefield, home and life of people. The field was in Tehran. Even like the Ramadan war, a front like the south was not particularly involved. So, each story of this collection is somehow showing us the battlefield. The battlefield here is the setting of the story and a character is leading it. The author brings the camera closer to the characters and does not stay on the surface. And this involves the deep layers of the human psyche.

How should an anti-war work be? Can Twelve Readers be considered an anti-war work?

What does the term "anti-war" mean? If "anti-war" means against war, yes! We are definitely against war and are not warmongers. But if "anti-war" means anti-defense, no! We were not the country and nation that attacked, but we were the country that made martyrs from its highest officials to its ordinary people. And not in a two-sided conflict, but by attacking people's private houses despite the presence of family members. Now, if I come here and tell a story with the concept of "no to war", that would be great, but I should have considered that "no to war" is not just for us. What should be done against the aggressor? I think the stories in this series, while being "anti-war", represent our right to defend ourselves.

Saeed Hamidian, professor of Persian language and literature at Allameh Tabatabai University (RA), said in the commemoration ceremony of Hafez Shirazi: Hafez research has been associated with valuable achievements in our time, but along with these studies, wrong perceptions and hasty interpretations have also spread about Hafez's poetry and thought, which should be addressed with a scientific and critical perspective.

The editor of the story collection "Dawaze Khan" said: What does the term "anti-war" mean? If "anti-war" means against war, yes! We are definitely against war and are not warmongers. But if "anti-war" means anti-defense, no! We were not the country and nation that attacked, but we were the country that made martyrs from its highest officials to its ordinary people.

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