Arash Hejazi's interview with his shadow

"If I have decided that I should write, It is only because I should introduce myself to my shadow–a shadow which rests in a stooped position on the wall, and which appears to be voraciously swallowing all that I write down." from The Blind Owl, by Sadeq Hedayat.

I am having a very sincere and straightforward interview with my shadow, or he is interviewing me; the excuse being the imminent release of my memoirs, the Gaze of the Gazelle. This is neither stunt or satire; but an attempt to organize my never-ending internal monologue and controversies. I'm trying to gain the courage to ask myself the questions I have always had in the back of my mind, but never dared to answer. No interviewer in the world could find out about these darkest corners of my mind and ask the relevant questions, so the task is up to me. Why made it public, I want witnesses, so I can't deceive myself. This is going to be a very long interview, in my attempt to rediscover myself.

The background and the book

The Gaze of the Gazelle: The Story of a Generation

By Arash Hejazi

408 pages,  5 x 8

ISBN: 9781906497903

Seagull Books, April 2011

On 20 June 2009, during demonstrations to protest the fraudulent presidential election in Iran, a young girl called Neda was shot to death in the streets of Tehran. Within hours, the video footage of her death, fortuitously captured on a roving camera-phone, had circled the globe. Outside the country, the incident was a nine-day wonder; in Iran it changed the course of politics for a new generation.

It was also the moment of choice for the young doctor who had tried and failed to save her. Within days he had left Iran to tell the world the story the government was denying: Neda had died at the hands of the pro-government militia. After this, any chance of returning home was gone; Arash Hejazi, author and publisher himself became a target.

But as Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, writes in the introduction to his friend's book: 'Arash's story is not summarised in that moment; now he has to tell the story of that generation.' The Gaze of the Gazelle is that story.

In a tale that mingles politics and the personal, mythology and history, he tries to answer the question 'How did it come to this?' His quest for an answer tells the story of the years since the Iranian Revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini back from exile to drive the Shah from his peacock throne and set up the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Against the background of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran and the prolonged and dirty war that followed, the author interweaves his own story and that of his family and friends with the machinations of mullahs and the manoeuvres of politicians who seek to control their lives. The joy of revolution turns to the sorrow of loss: of friends and family at the front and in the prisons of the regime, of hope in the future. And of the determination of a new generation to recover that hope in the name of Neda, who gave her life in pursuit of a freer and better world.

An interview with my shadow, or my shadow's interview with me

Q: You are only forty. Isn't it too early to write your memoirs?

A: A phase in my life is over. Yes, it might be too early, or not. I'm one of those people who, unlike many others, wish they could live forever. I have never had a death wish. But on 25 June 2009, five days after Neda's murdrer, when I finally spoke up about her death and how she was shot by an Iranian government's militiaman, I realized that I may never be able to go back to Iran. That part of my life was over. I was an exile. Two things might happen to exiles: They might cling on to the past and never move on, never get engaged in their new society, and are trapped in a purgatory for the rest of their lives, or they are brave enough to move on, learn the new language, get used to the costumes and the nature of the new society, in which case their memories from their previous life will gradually fade away. They try to remember, but their minds betray them, as a mind cannot bear two lives. One has to be no more than snapshots, pictures on the wall, not a living thing. You are only allowed to live one life and you have to mummify the other one. You are not authorized to 'live' it. The first group of exiles choose their previous lives and become mummies themselves. The second group choose the new life and decide to live with the fact that their previous lives are gone.

But I couldn't live in the purgatory, nor could I give up my past. A man without a past is a man without feet, and without feet, how can you walk towards your future? You can crawl, maybe, as the mind, this brutal sponsor of the journey, will not equip you with wheelchairs.

I wrote my memoirs, so I could always remember, and even if my memories started to fade, there would be people who would read my memoirs, and there could be a few, who would keep my memories, which are the memories of a generation, alive. Then I could move on. I could start living again, without the fear of losing the past. I could enjoy my surroundings, the new way of life, the new language, traditions, or the modernity.

Q: But REALLY? Is this the only reason you wrote them?

A: I was sad. I was extremely sad. I had to do something. I thought if I went through everything again, I might find something that would help me keep going on. I was lost. I had to go back to the beginning, to see where I could find my Ariadne's thread again.

Q: And did you find it?

A: I definitely did.

Q: And what was it that helped you?

A: Rocky Balboa.

Q: Rocky, Silvester Stallone?

A: Yes.

Q: How?!

A: It was the first smuggled film I saw on the video-player we bought from the black market. I was 15, and I had lost my way then, too.

Q: And how did Rocky help you?

A: It might sound ridiculous. After reading tons of high-bro literature and pearls of wisdom, Rocky was the only one who really helped me. I watched and watched, I don't know how many times. I became angry that Apollo won the match on points, although Rocky had fought so hard, until I discovered the truth. It wasn't the winning itself that Rocky was after. Not being knocked out for one more round was his ambition. That was what I had to do. I had to make sure that I wasn't going to be knocked out. What happened after wasn't important.

Q: Ok, so you dug into your past on a self-rediscovery journey. But why do you think the world needed to know about your journey?

A: It wasn't only my story. It was the story of my generation.

Q: And who made you the representative of your generation?

A: No one. But I had the means to tell the story. I could write, I could get it published. When the my current agent approached me, I was half way through the book, and then I thought, ok, the world had seen the videos, the news headlines, and photos coming out of Iran during the protests, they had been shocked by the eyes of Neda staring into the camera just before she died, but they never had the chance to really understand what was happening there. What was it that took those young men and women into the streets, ready to give up their lives. It wasn't just because of the rigged election. There was a story behind those eyes, and I felt compelled to write about it, and I felt that I owed Neda to tell the story of our generation.

Q: And you thought you were the right person to do it?

A: Yes. I believe in myself. I love writing and no one can stop me from writing. After speaking up about Neda, the government of Iran seized my assets, shot down my publishing house in Iran, banned my books, prosecuted me, and tried to accuse me of treason. But they couldn't stop me from speaking up. They couldn't stop me from writing. And I had to make sure that I wasn't going to be knocked out in this round. The rest was up to the publishers. If they liked my book, they would go for it. If not, at least I hadn't been knocked out and I was ready for the next round.

ًQ: But tell me the real reason.

A: Why don't you stop repeating the same question over and over again?! I told you the reason.

Q: Yes you did. But what's the real reason for someone at forty, sitting down and writing about his past.

A: OK, I was bleeding. I was wounded. The bullet that pierced Neda's chest took her life away, but ripped my life apart. She stared into my eyes and died. She couldn't say anything. But it was as if she was telling me: 'Do something!' and I couldn't do anything. Those eyes are following me wherever I go. Those eyes keep my heart bleeding. I lied when I said that memories fade away. Some don't. A few years ago I saw the film Memento by Christopher Nolan. There, Guy Pearce has lost his short-term memory after a blow to his head, during an attack on himself and his wife, during which his wife is killed. The last thing he remembers is the look on her wife's face, while life is slipping away from her body. From then on, his brain cannot keep short-term memories, so time does not pass from the horrible moment. The memory doesn't fade away, so he can't heal.

I couldn't heal. The memory of those eyes did not leave me. They haunted me, asking me to 'do something'. I spoke up about her, thinking that she will leave me. I talked to BBC, The Times and other media, when I realised that the Iranian government was trying to conceal her death and then blame it on foreign service. But she still didn't leave me. I had to do something else, or else I would have bled to death myself. So I wrote, and when I wrote, I felt better, and the eyes became kinder, and the bleeding stopped whenever I resumed writing. She wanted me to tell her story, the story of the generation, she wanted me to tell how it came to that moment… I wrote, because I was in pain, and telling the story eased the pain.

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