Mergan and his children gather corkwood, farm the land, herd camels, and clean people's homes.

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When local landowners decide to modernize their agricultural methods with the help of the central government, Abrau gets to drive a tractor. Mergan resists giving up the piece of land she and her husband have been farming, land which for them is "God's land," belonging neither to the government nor to the village elders.

In short and concise sentences translated beautifully by Rastegar, Dowlatabadi allows the readers to get a glimpse of Mergan's thoughts:. Smooth and soft as the belly of a mare. A fallow, windy place.

Perhaps this was why they called it God's Land. Soluch's plot was bordered by those of Morad, of Ghodrat's father, and that of Ali Genav. To the left of God's Land, the fallow lands continued on, while to its right a stream cut into the earth. Its upper limits bordered on the Kolghar valley, below which, as far as the eye could see, was land, land, land, and more land.

This was God's Land.

Missing Soluch

In a frightening scene, Abrau ferociously confronts his mother. Driving the tractor towards her, he tries to force her to give up her hold on the land. The young man's rage, fueled by his peers' shaming him over his mother's unbending stand, reads like a universal tale of youth's rebellion against the parents. Dowlatabadi's powerful writing allows the reader to feel Abrau's pain and recklessness at the same time that we are gripped by the mother's steadfast resistance.


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  6. Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s “Missing Soluch” - Words Without Borders.

For Dowlatabadi, human beings are always subject to nature. The setting of the village is one where land and animals can break or make their masters.

Miss Invisible

Mergan's second son's, Abbas's, entanglement with a crazed camel leaves an enduring effect on the reader:. He shook his body in defense, but the camel's teeth continued gripping his shirt and jacket. The flag of death was rising.

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Abbas sent the last of his strength to his knees, but it was already too late. The crazed animal was like a tent above him. Now he grabbed at Abbas' head. The crazed scream of a human echoed across the fields.


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  • Abbas throws himself into an empty well and knocks himself out. Upon regaining consciousness, Abbas realizes that the wounded camel has covered the opening of the well and snakes are moving on his body as drops of camel's blood cover his face:. That was Abbas' experience. He was circled by snakes. If one was to breathe the fire of its breath at you, you'd be ashes. From this simple premise, the novel radiates outward to transport the reader across a landscape of densely interwoven lives set against the backdrop of an impoverished rural Iranian village called Zaminej.

    An ensemble of characters, settings, and events comes together to evoke some of the social and psychological conditions of life, love, and loss among a marginal people navigating the unpredictable contours of history. A grinding poverty has started to affect the lives of landless peasants and small and large landowners alike. The novel is also marked by its reliance on an idiom that is both poetic and notable for its inclusion of colloquial aphorisms, including such gems as: Goats have hair, and sheep have wool. Out of stark human drama, Dowlatabadi meticulously draws connections between the harsh economic conditions and social realities facing the inhabitants of Zaminej and the ongoing evolution of their familial and social relationships.

    Mergan, the pivotal character in the novel, is both a compelling and a contradictory woman, seemingly abandoned by her husband, scorned by some members of her family and her community, yet persevering in order to maintain her livelihood, her sanity, and some measure of control. At times, she is successful; other times, less so. Dowlatabadi situates Mergan at the epicenter of those disruptive forces producing memory and forgetfulness, loss, survival, and individual responsibility.

    Missing Soluch: A Novel - Mahmoud Dowlatabadi - Google Книги

    The evident ease with which Dowlatabadi and his characters move from the most banal activities necessary for survival all the way up to the heights of existential anxiety and revelation creates dramatic tension throughout the novel. The pressures induced by clamorous individual identities and desires are nicely posed against the restrictive but also productive forces of social and familial relationships and obligations.

    As transformations in land tenure, irrigation, and agricultural production push Zaminej inexorably toward modernity and progress and their attendant displacements, social relations in the village shift. The earth, his home, his brother and mother, these all had new meanings for him.