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The Colonel (Paperback)
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi; Translated by Tom Patterdale
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R318
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It's a pitch black, rainy night in a small Iranian town. Inside his
house the Colonel is immersed in thought. Memories are storming in.
Memories of his wife. Memories of the great patriots of the past,
all of them assassinated or executed. Memories of his children, who
had joined the different factions of the 1979 revolution. There is
a knock on the door. Two young policemen have come to summon the
Colonel to collect the tortured body of his youngest daughter and
bury her before sunrise. The Islamic Revolution, like every other
revolution in history, is devouring its own children. And whose
fault is that? This shocking diatribe against the failures of the
Iranian left over the last fifty years does not leave one taboo
unbroken.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, an Iraqi journalist is given
a tour of a military prison. He is informed by the major in charge
about what is expected of him: he is to write a fabricated report
about a murder that has occurred in the camp, in order to
demoralise the enemy soldiers. The journalist is unwilling to write
this story. In a long night of intense discussion at his home, he
speaks to the major of a historic conflict between the two
countries and tells him that he is writing a novel about a group of
soldiers trapped on a hill, dying of thirst as they compete for a
water tank with a group of enemy soldiers on the opposite hill. So
far the water tank has remained undamaged at the bottom of a rift
between the hills, but neither group has a hope of reaching it
without being shot by the other. Delirious, the soldiers await
their end: either being saved by a fabled female lion who feeds her
milk to all who are thirsty, or morphing into doves once they are
martyred. At the same time, in Iran, another writer remembers how
he first came into contact with a gun...In a narrative riddled with
surreal images, shifting perspectives and dark humour, Dowlatabadi
blurs the boundaries between the two warring countries as he
questions the meaning of national identity when confronted with
time and human suffering.
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