Accustomed Soil

Abstract

One winter day in 1986, I received a letter from the army. I had finished high school one year before and neglected to register myself for the compulsory two-year military service. A horrible war had been going on between Iran and Iraq since 1980. Hundreds of thousands of young men, many in their teenage years, had been killed, many more lost body parts or were gravely injured by chemical weapons. A few years earlier, in my second and third years of high school, several of my classmates (16 and 17 years old) were martyred along with our theology teacher — who always came to class in military uniform. They had gone to the front as basiji, members of the volunteer militia, who provided the teenage ‘human wave’ in the war against Iraq. So many students from my school were killed that its name — Adab – was changed to Martyrs of Adab (Shohaday-e Adab).

There is hope, but not for us.

Kafka