After the enthusiastic revolutionaries attacked Hoshanak's house and burned musical instruments, books, and all the things they considered forbidden, he decided to leave Tehran, taking his wife, Rosa, his two sons, Sohrab and Beta, and the third daughter, Bahar, to settle in a distant village, hoping Preserving their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the chaos of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution sweeping the country.
The fates of all family members change, and they are divided between pain and memory, between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the times, events, and narrative spaces that “Bahar” narrates intersect, mixing violence and brutality with mysticism, meditation, magic, and myths, invoking oral narrative traditions to confront cruelty with the power of imagination.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020, Green Plum Tree's Rise is a fascinating journey through Persian history and mythology, woven in the style of magical realism, exploring the fate of hope and dream in Iran today.
I mean: If that were the case, how much of our dignity, human solidarity, and sense of humanity have we lost until we became accustomed to the humiliation surrounding us, for ourselves and for others?! We have even come to accept this violence and inhumane treatment with which we or others are treated as we see it in life or when we read about it or see it on television. (We will ignore that we sometimes treat others in this way: our children, our subordinates, or those who fall into our hands among our enemies, for example, or the prisoners in our hands, assuming that some of those who carry out these tasks can read what I write).
Our habituation to this humiliation is reflected in the fact that we have come to accept that torturing a prisoner is a given. We no longer wonder about the effect of that torture on the prisoner-victim, even after his release from prison, just as we no longer wonder about the effect of torture on its perpetrator. Can he easily return to his normal daily life after leaving the torture room, as if he left the toilet to resume his life?
This is the first time I have gathered my thoughts on this topic after many attempts and articles scattered in more than one place.
