Mehdi Bahrami

Berceau des morts Mehdi Bahrami

To escape the father's house, two brothers join the army and leave their village immediately for the war zone. But the war is harsher than they expected, for even comrades are ready to sacrifice their closest ones just to survive. Then comes an outrageous "solution" which allows their frustrated battalion to survive a little bit longer, but the fear and anxiety caused by this "solution" are so high that the two brothers flee the war and seek refuge in a neighboring country. There they work in a mine, one during the night and the other during the day. In order to keep their intimacy, they decide to write their memoirs in a notebook that they keep with utmost care from foreigner's eyes. But a fellow citizen and ruined writer, also working in the mine and also fleeing his past, finds the notebook. Years later he publishes their life story in a novel. But the person who served as the battalion commander during the war and who is now a celebrated veteran and a powerful prosecutor, is concerned that the author's novel might disclose his role in "the outrageous solution". So as a precautionary measure, he tries to prevent the discovery of the truth first by encouraging the two brothers to sue the writer for breach of trust and second by narrating the events during the war in a poetic and hallucinating style. What we read is the result of his efforts. Can we, the readers, find the truth? The book describes our inability to confront the war and deals with the relation between war, patriarchy, the media, and the truth, in a poetic language typical of the Persian.