Intertextual memory and singularity of traumatic truth: a visual story in two panels

The novel's opening pages deliver a visual jolt, confronting the reader with isolated statements drawn from classical and canonical Persian cultural heritage set against blank pages. These ambiguous lines, emphasized by their stark contrast with the surrounding emptiness, stand out as key thematic anchors. This design not only underscores the authority and significance of these statements but also transforms them into visual symbols contributing to the narrative's depth. By employing this blend of intertextual references and visual storytelling, the novel immediately challenges traditional methods of representing traumatic events, compelling the reader to engage with the material on multiple levels.

The novel introduces its complex themes and structure with the line, “Haft Awrang: Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand, Shamāyel Gardāni Bā Do Tāblo,” which translates to “Seven Thrones: Sparrows Understand Heaven, a Canvas in Two Panels.”Footnote ²⁰ The reference to “Haft Awrang” (Seven Thrones), not only alludes to the seven stars that form the Big Dipper but also links to Jami's famously illustrated 15th-century poetry.Footnote ²¹ This allusion merges modern historical events with the literary and visual representation of those events. This symbolic intertextual reference blends the literary with the visual, the real with the imaginary, and the present with the past. The novel thus blurs the boundaries between mythical and historical, exploring the haziness between reality and fiction.

The second reference in the line, “Shamāyel Gardāni Bā Do Tāblo,” highlights another aspect of classical visual culture: the practice of Shamāyel Gardāni, an illustrated form of public storytelling.Footnote ²² Originating in the 16th century, this art involved the display of images on canvas or glass narrating the tragic fate of the martyrs at the Battle of Karbala. This method of storytelling, akin to the theatrical Taʿzieh or Naqqāli, transforms the reader into an observer of a visual narrative encapsulating communal memory.Footnote ²³ By incorporating this traditional form, the novel further suggests a fusion of visual storytelling and textual narrative that deepens the exploration of personal and collective memory and trauma. It positions the reader not just as a passive consumer of the text, but as an active participant in a narrative experience that resonates with historical and cultural significance. This integration of Shamāyel Gardāni into the novel's structure emphasizes the enduring impact of historical events and traditions on personal and collective identities, bridging the gap between past and present through a rich tapestry of imagery and text.

The novel's epigraph – a single line in quotation marks – captures the reader's attention with a modified excerpt from “Sonnet 184” by the 14th-century Persian poet Hafez, establishing the narrative's thematic tone.Footnote ²⁴ Hafez originally explored the plurality of interpretations of the true path to God and ensuing sectarian divides, arguing for a singular truth.Footnote ²⁵ The novel echoes this theme by adapting Hafez's poem: “since truth I could not see, the path of myths I took.”Footnote ²⁶ In the context of the novel, this pastiche emphasizes that genuine representation and narration of events of war can only be done by those directly impacted by the material reality. The novel underscores the gap between lived personal experiences and external interpretations, personal and collective memory, critiquing the limitations of conventional and institutional storytelling in capturing the truth of war.Footnote ²⁷

In “Tābloy-e Qows va Qozah” (The Rainbow Panel), the first of the two canvases, an unidentified speaker asserts his unique authority over the narrative, establishing a tension between the preceding intertextual references and this singular narrative voice:

The speaker's assertion, “I alone possess the voice,” underscores the dominance of a central narrative force that seeks to override all other interpretations of events. This claim directly challenges the intertextual elements that suggest a multiplicity of meanings, setting up a conflict between diverse perspectives and a singular authoritative truth. The novel leverages this tension to delve into the complexities of narrative authority and the power dynamics in historical interpretation, reinforcing the intertextual reference to Hafez and its emphasis on a singular, transcendent truth that surpasses conventional divisions and interpretations.Footnote ²⁹

While the novel's opening pages are rich with intertextual references, engaging with various cultural and artistic traditions, the prominent use of the first-person “I” introduces a tension between decentralized meaning and the assertion of a single narrative authority. Echoing Roland Barthes's poststructuralist critique of author-centered criticism, the novel questions who truly holds the power to recount events. By delaying the revelation of the narrator's identity, the novel builds anticipation for a “complete truth” that is deeply intertwined with the experiences of those directly affected by the materiality of trauma. This tension reflects the broader struggle over control of the narrative surrounding traumatic historical events: who is telling the “truth,” and who is telling myths and fables?

Originally, intertextuality, as introduced in poststructuralist theory, was meant to challenge author-centered criticism and allow for a plurality of interpretations. Roland Barthes argued that assigning a single, definitive meaning to a text based on the author's identity or intentions imposes limitations on the text. He viewed the author's purpose to be the production of the text, not defining its meaning. Barthes's aim was to disrupt the traditional association between “author” and “authority,” suggesting that meaning is created by the reader and that the writer's original intent is ultimately inaccessible.Footnote ³⁰ This raises the question: who is dismantling whose authority in this statement? The inclusion of the unidentified authorial “I” hints at the eventual return of a legitimate storyteller, distinct from both narrator and author – perhaps someone who has been silenced, marginalized, or even deceased. The desire to “reveal the complete truth” is accompanied by a deliberate delay in unveiling the speaker's identity and the truth until the novel's conclusion, where the voice of the “martyred” protagonist returns to fulfill the promise made at the outset.

This intricate layering of visual storytelling and intertextual references exemplifies the tension between personal and collective memory. The isolated statements from Persian cultural heritage, starkly set against blank pages, illustrate how collective memory – embodied in these canonical texts – asserts itself as an authoritative narrative. However, the novel complicates this collective memory by embedding it within a personal narrative voice that seeks to reclaim a singular, traumatic truth. This interplay highlights the distinction between collective memory, which seeks to unify and stabilize historical events through shared symbols and narratives, and personal memory, which often challenges these collective narratives by introducing fragmented, subjective experiences of trauma. The novel thus becomes a site where the struggle between these two forms of memory is dramatized, questioning who holds the authority to narrate history and whose voices are marginalized in the process. By drawing on classical Persian cultural heritage, the narrative weaves together historical and mythical dimensions, engaging with collective memory and linking past events and cultural symbols to the present narrative.

The body remembers

The narrative unfolds through a central chapter entitled “Ghows va Qozah,” a play on words that, when combined, mean “Diving and the Rainbow.” The term ghows, which translates to diving or plunging, reflects the chapter's focus on Alijan's mysterious death in the river and Ali Ashraf's quest to locate Alijan's body in any water he encounters. Alijan's drowning in the river symbolically parallels how white light refracts when it enters a medium such as a glass prism or water droplet, bending and dispersing into its component colors. Alijan's fate, like the refracted light, is fragmented into multiple accounts of what truly happened. This metaphor of dispersion structures the chapter into seven segments, each named after a different color of the rainbow.Footnote ³¹

These colors are not merely aesthetic, they are integral to the narrative structure. Each color evokes specific emotions and aligns with the thematic elements of memory, identity, and trauma, creating a multi-sensory reading experience. Through the “Haft Awrang” structure, the chapter weaves these themes with the physical properties of water, color, films, and photographs, engaging readers on visual, tactile, and emotional levels. The use of rainbow colors symbolizes distinct facets of truth. Each segment represents a different aspect of the past as remembered by various characters and narrated by the photojournalist. As the chapter progresses, these individual colors converge to form a singular light – or truth – that encapsulates the complex reality of the past, the truth of Alijan's death. This convergence mirrors the way white light is created when all the colors of the spectrum combine. Water, central to the novel as the protagonist is born, dies, and emerges from it, serves as a vessel for memories. Each rainbow color represents an emotional facet of the past, which seeps into the present through the interplay of light and water, revealed through the narrator's interviews, personal recollections, witness accounts, and recorded documentaries from the war.

The novel begins eight years after Alijan's body goes missing and forty days after it is discovered in the river, unscathed. Danial has settled into a peaceful yet haunted life, with the image of a bullet hole in Alijan's throat etched into his memory. Nationwide memorial preparations are already underway when a mysterious phone call shatters Danial's family life, casting a shadow over everyone connected to Alijan. The voice on the other end, claiming to be Alijan, sounds exactly like him. This unexpected call triggers a visceral reaction in Danial, disrupting the calm blues of his current life with the violent reds of wartime memories, blurring the lines between past and present. Danial retrieves the film of Alijan's burial procession. As he meticulously reviews each frame – observing the grief on the mourners' faces and revisiting his own memories – he begins to question the identity of the person in the coffin. “Who was in that coffin then, if not Alijan?” he wonders.

Danial, then fresh out of college with a degree in theater and film, had hidden a camera in his backpack and joined Alijan on a mission to the war-torn region of Paveh, where the local Kurds are torn between their Kurdish identity and loyalty to the central government. Danial and Alijan craft careful strategies to navigate this precarious situation, as separatist Kurds are both wary of and in conflict with the central government militia. Trust is nonexistent and fear prevails. Despite this, Danial and Alijan form an alliance with Ali Ashraf (Asoo) and his mother Zhinoo while in Paveh, until Alijan is shot through the throat during an operation and drowns while crossing the river. In a melancholic, post-traumatic response to Alijan's death – or disappearance – Ali Ashraf, later revealed to be Alijan's half-brother, begins a nightly ritual of donning a diving suit to search the river for Alijan's body. The lack of a proper burial drives Ali Ashraf to keep this vigil for eight long years, until finally finding Alijan's body.

In The Body Remembers, Babette Rothschild examines the complex interplay between physical manifestations of trauma and psychological therapy. She argues that the human body retains physiological memories of traumatic experiences, as our initial perceptions of an event are encoded not in words but through somatic sensations – such as smells, sights, sounds, touches, or tastes. These sensory memories can trigger flashbacks, igniting psychosomatic reactions in the present when any of the senses re-encounter elements reminiscent of the trauma.Footnote ³² Similarly, Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand depicts a traumatic past not just through its characters’ thoughts and dialogue but also their interactions with the environment, reactions to physical settings, and sensory experiences.

The corresponding narration of memories evokes a deeply sensory reading of the novel, where trauma is not just verbally told but physically and emotionally experienced through vivid images, sounds, and even the subtle shifts in human expressions and the physicality of Ali Ashraf's mourning, echoing Rothschild's idea that trauma is stored in the body and can be recalled through sensory triggers. The narrative delves into the complex interplay between memory and representation, contrasting tangible photographic images with fragmented, sensory recollections of traumatic events. While photographs and documentaries offer a selective view of history, the narrative suggests that the true impact of trauma is preserved within the body and through sensory and emotional recollections, challenging the idea that documentary evidence alone can fully encapsulate the depth of human suffering.

In Gonjeshkha, the narrator presents two distinct types of images: tangible photographs and films captured by the narrator-journalist and the mental snapshots stored in his and other characters' memories. The first set of images, tangible photographs, are revisited by Danial in the wake of his mysterious phone call. One particular photograph captures Ali Ashraf and a girl, Goole Bakh, who had been rescued immediately after her parents' tragic murder. Despite the brutal murders they just witnessed, both Ali Ashraf and Goole Bakh are smiling in the photograph, taken on the most chaotic and bloody day of battle in Paveh. Another tangible image consists of film footage Danial recorded at the end of that day, documenting the arrival of supporting forces that broke the siege and rescued Alijan, the narrator, and their company. Although the images are blurred and poorly captured, Danial enhances them with audio and commentary to make the film presentable, recalling Susan Sontag's interpretations of photography: “Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience.”Footnote ³³

The second set of images stems from the narrator's photographic memory – capturing moments he wished he could have recorded with a camera. He acknowledges that the rapid unfolding of events that day could only have been precisely captured through still photographs or films. Nevertheless, he suggests these moments can be vividly remembered and, over time, become even more resonant and enduring.Footnote ³⁴ In the narrative, the narrator presents seven vivid images from traumatic past events, enhancing them with the recollections of his interviewees and described as if in slow motion. This approach creates a narrative documentary, a montage of characters' mental images and emotional recollections that, although not physically captured, form a vivid and evocative depiction of their experiences.

The distinction between tangible photographs and the sensory, emotional snapshots stored in memory highlights the inherent contradictions between journalistic documentation and institutional memory versus individual traumatic memory. Susan Sontag notes that photographs serve as evidence, making tangible the things we might otherwise doubt.Footnote ³⁵ While a painting or prose can offer only selective interpretations, a photograph might seem to offer a clear window – a “narrowly selective transparency.”Footnote ³⁶ Yet, Bani Ameri's narrative questions this premise. In the novel, the photographs and films Danial captures depict moments of relative calm, while it is through the narrative of memory that moments of intense chaos are vividly brought to life. These captured images do not convey the full scope of trauma, such as Goole Bakh's joyful appearance on Ali Ashraf's shoulders, masking the horror of the murder of her parents and uncle just moments earlier. The physical photographs omit these traumatic details, whereas memory preserves and recalls them without bias, even years later. The role of the storyteller thus becomes to give form to those memories of historical events that cannot be visually represented or shared outside of narrative storytelling.

Seduction of war's euphoria, aesthetics of colors in brutality, and ethics of violence

Bani Ameri deliberately uses vibrant colors, drawing on the continuity of classical Persian heritage, particularly the Haft Awrang and Shamāyel Gardāni styles, while also evoking the symbolic representations of religious war in the work of contemporary revolutionary artists, such as Kazem Chalipa.Footnote ³⁷ However, unlike revolutionaries’ obsession with religious symbolism, Bani Ameri aims for realism, stating, “I wanted to be realistic in showing the true colors of life in war.”Footnote ³⁸ This realism, while bringing beauty to his depictions, complicates the portrayal of war by blurring the line between aestheticization and brutality. The narrator's descriptions of events do not provoke a denunciation of human cruelty or fully convey the reality of death and destruction. Susan Sontag, in her exploration of war photography, argues that images of suffering can evoke both horror and fascination, often dulling ethical responses when their beauty overshadows the brutality they depict.Footnote ³⁹ Bani Ameri's use of color mirrors this tension, where the allure of war's beauty risks obscuring its harsh truths. However, the epigraph, “Since truth I could not see, the path of myths I took,” reflects Ameri's recognition that his distance from the material experience of war can lead to mythologization, just as a journalist – by the act of photographing or documenting – can reduce the victims of war to mere spectacles, objectifying their pain for consumption by distant audiences.Footnote ⁴⁰ While Bani Ameri portrays war's aesthetic allure, he simultaneously undercuts this romanticization by confessing to the mythologizing of events because of the “truth he could not see.”

In one snapshot of the narrator's memory, he vividly recalls the chaotic day he most wishes he had captured on camera. Upon their arrival at the neighborhood hospital to sell their goods, Asoo (Ali Ashraf's Kurdish name) and his mother Zhinoo are suddenly caught in a siege. Obeying his mother's urgent command, Asoo mounts his beloved horse to fetch his uncle and wife, believing the hospital to be a refuge amidst the chaos, as helicopters from the central government descend, laden with weapons to evacuate the wounded. In this memory-turned-photograph, the fear in Zhinoo's eyes is palpable as she whispers “Asoo,” her voice laden with anxiety.Footnote ⁴¹ As the chaos unfolds, the narrator, mounted on a motorcycle, dodges bullets and ignores warnings to stop. Amid the peril, he finds exhilaration in the dangerous ride, driven by the powerful beats of the horse galloping ahead. This raw thrill of navigating through a war-torn city infuses the narrative with a complex blend of horror and beauty.Footnote ⁴²

Another snapshot shifts to a devastating tableau at Asoo's uncle's house, where the consequences of the siege become painfully clear. Asoo arrives too late, finding his relatives fatally shot. The narrator vividly describes the murder scene: a bloodied hand, clutching chestnuts, emerges from the wreckage of a shattered window, symbolizing the abrupt and violent disruption of daily life. Unaware of the tragedy inside, Asoo pauses, a fleeting smile crossing his face at the sight of chestnuts falling like tears, creating a poignant contrast against the backdrop of his family's demise. The narrator paints the scene with poetic clarity, depicting an expansive sky, bluer than ever, riding atop mountains, waterfalls, rocky houses, and the rich forest unfolding before them.Footnote ⁴³

The narrator's recollections raise questions about the impact of war imagery on viewers and the ethical responsibility of journalism. The vibrant colors – blood red, forest green, and sky blue –enhance the aesthetic appeal, while excitement on the battlefield obscures the harsh realities of violence and death. Susan Sontag, in Regarding the Pain of Others, cautions about the seductive power of such images and questions their ability to mobilize opposition to war. She discusses how images of suffering can be both repulsive and strangely beautiful, questioning whether the aesthetic presentation of such images dulls the ethical response to violence. She cautions about the seductiveness of such images: “IS THERE AN ANTIDOTE to the perennial seductiveness of war? […] Could one be mobilized to actively oppose war by an image?”Footnote ⁴⁴ In war photography, the tension between beauty and brutality raises the question of whether viewers become desensitized to violence through aestheticized depictions, leading them to view conflict as an abstract concept rather than a brutal material reality. For the narrator, this interplay between beauty and horror complicates his own understanding of war, as the aesthetic allure might overshadow the visceral human suffering beneath the surface. This challenge becomes even more pronounced in journalistic representations, where the line between documentation and sensationalism is often blurred, forcing viewers to confront their own moral and emotional reactions to the images presented.

Susan Sontag asserts that beautification is a typical function of the camera, often obscuring the ethical implications of what is depicted and potentially numbing the viewer's moral response.Footnote ⁴⁵ In contrast, she describes the act of “uglifying” – showing scenes in their harshest form – as a means to provoke a stronger, more thoughtful reaction. This contrast highlights how colorful, aesthetic portrayals can inadvertently diminish the viewer's moral engagement with the real horrors of war, while more stark, unembellished depictions might encourage a deeper contemplation and ethical reaction to the atrocities shown.Footnote ⁴⁶

By blending beauty with brutality, Bani Ameri's depiction suggests that the aestheticization of war can distort its painful reality, leaving viewers entranced by the imagery and detached from the ethical implications. Bani Ameri's use of realistic colors and depictions highlights the tension between beauty and brutality, suggesting that war's true nature is often obscured by its aestheticization in art and media. For the author, who has not directly experienced war, and a journalist who remains objective, this aestheticization creates a distorted or incomplete understanding, where chaotic beauty overshadows underlying horrors. In this sense, the narrator's struggle to know the truth of war perhaps stems from the gap between secondhand, visually appealing portrayals and the visceral, traumatic experiences that survivors carry with them.

Fragmented memories: the affective experience of trauma versus semantic recall

Among the vividly described snapshots, photographs, and films in the narrative, the sixth stands out as the most traumatic and visually intense, demanding a deeper and more engaged response from the reader. In this harrowing scene, a helicopter transporting the wounded and dead is struck by sniper fire upon takeoff. It spirals out of control, colliding with the surrounding hills, and its spinning propellers descend upon the people below. This catastrophic moment, rooted in historical events, coincides with the arrival of Ali Ashraf and his mother Zhinoo, who tragically loses her life to the helicopter's blades. This sixth photograph captures the chilling aftermath of the day's events, marking it as a profoundly impactful image within the series:

The narration of this traumatic memory is rendered through fragmented present tense and passive, repetitive, run-on sentences. The relentless repetition of Zhinoo's head rolling becomes a disturbing motif, interwoven with the visceral reactions of onlookers, vividly depicting a spectrum of emotions in the face of tragedy, from horror to disbelief. This stylistic choice mirrors one of the unique characteristics of traumatic memories identified by van der Kolk:

In the portrayal of the sixth scene, Danial utilizes various sensory perceptions to communicate the intensity of the moment. The actual event includes little direct communication; it is only later, possibly years after, that Danial and Ali Ashraf can articulate their experience, embedding brief dialogues within the slow-motion recounting of events. This approach underscores the delayed processing and expression that typifies traumatic recall.

Regarding traumatic memory, van der Kolk suggests that “terrifying experiences may be remembered with extreme vividness”; it is only over time that a subject gradually develops a personal narrative that can be properly referred to as “explicit memory” or “narrative memory.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Even after the event, in a state of high arousal, subjects may fail to give a coherent narrative of the event, but this inability does not interfere with their implicit memory, as “they may ‘know’ the emotional valence of a stimuli and be aware of associated perceptions, without being able to articulate the reasons for feeling or behaving in a particular way.”Footnote ⁵⁰ It is clearly evident in the photographs and films the narrator describes most vividly that the sensory memory of traumatic events remains graphic, remembered, and relived through the body, while the words associated with the process of narrating events with highly emotional content remain fragmented and crippled.Footnote ⁵¹ The distinction between narrative memory (explicit memory) and sensory, affective memories (implicit memory) highlights a divide between how we traditionally think of memory as a story (narrative) versus how traumatic memories are often actually experienced – as disjointed, vivid, sensory fragments that are materially felt and embodied.Footnote ⁵² While previous snapshots of the narrator's memory obscure the brutality, the memory of the helicopter scene confronts it. In this traumatic memory, there is no detachment; the brutality is front and center, forcing the reader to confront the visceral horror without the veil of beautification. The previous images can be interpreted through narrative memory (explicit), with the visual details curated for effect, while the current image is more aligned with sensory or affective memory (implicit), where trauma is experienced as disjointed sensations and feelings.

In disjointed fashion, the middle of the novel shifts narrative focus away from Danial, our narrator up to this point, and instead centers the voice of Hania, Alijan's widow; the pair met while she was a war zone volunteer in the same region as him. At the point of her introduction to the reader, Hania is remarried to Yahya, a kind and supportive man who also served with Alijan. She is depicted as soft-spoken, dignified, and reserved, yet clearly harbors unresolved feelings about her first husband's death – a topic she seldom discusses. Her persistent silence suggests her struggle to accept this loss, hinting at a deeper, possibly sinister, secret she might hold regarding a murder, as suggested by Ali Ashraf.

Throughout the novel, Danial, the narrator, attempts to gain insight into Alijan through Hania's memories, but she consistently avoids discussing him. Memories of Alijan trigger intense emotional outbursts from her, and she often retreats into solitude to cry. During moments of sorrow, she finds solace in reading poetry from a collection by Hafez, a gift from Alijan, symbolizing her unspoken grief and the unresolved nature of her loss. Her inability to see Alijan's body in its final resting place profoundly affects her, leaving her to grapple with her grief in isolation. Her silence breaks the night Alijan's body is recovered from the Arvand River. Hania steps forward to identify the body and, not long after, seeks out Danial in his office. It is as if years of suppressed speech and emotion flood out all at once: she speaks with the urgency and clarity of someone who has long been silent, eager to express everything she has held back.

Hania's sudden discovery of her voice reflects the argument made by Cathy Caruth, among others, that “exposure-based” treatments for PTSD should involve patients providing a detailed oral or written account of their traumatic events and intentionally engage with visual reminders of their trauma. This method aims to elicit traumatic memories that have yet to be fully processed – what Caruth terms “unclaimed experience.”Footnote ⁵³ These are experiences that were not fully understood or integrated when they occurred, but resurface, seeking comprehension beyond the initial emotional and sensory impact.

Caruth has faced extensive criticism for her hesitancy to fully endorse the integration of traumatic memories into conscious language as a pathway to healing, arguing that such efforts might undermine “the event's essential incomprehensibility, the force of its affront to understanding.”Footnote ⁵⁴ She posits that this dilemma often leads survivors into a silence borne from a reluctance to “translate their experience into speech.”Footnote ⁵⁵ As Holocaust survivor Schreiber Weitz articulates, this creates a paradox where “to speak is impossible, and not to speak is impossible.”Footnote ⁵⁶ This inherent tension – the urge to speak versus the resistance to it – underscores the complexity of comprehending trauma, stemming from the survivor's deep-seated knowledge of the event, which is resistant to externalization and materialization in the form of narration.Footnote ⁵⁷

In defending her position, Caruth clarifies that she does not view speech as negating the truth of a traumatic event or an outright failure to understand trauma. Rather, she warns of “the danger of speech, of integration into the narration of memory lies not in what it cannot understand, but in that it understands too much.”Footnote ⁵⁸ She argues that integrating trauma into a stable narrative might be seen as a form of “sacrilege” against the raw authenticity of traumatic experience.Footnote ⁵⁹ To speak about trauma, Caruth seems to suggest, is to “move away from the experience of shock by reintegrating it into a stable understanding of it.”Footnote ⁶⁰ This tension is mirrored in Hania's journey from silence to speech, following her harrowing experiences in the war. Initially, her trauma translates into a prolonged silence, and only later into a narrative shaped by her recollections. While this act of narrativization starts to bridge her secretive silence, it does not entirely dispel the mystery or fully illuminate the truth; instead, it exposes some aspects while simultaneously unveiling new ambiguities previously buried amid the singular truth Hania was fed.

The encounter with Alijan's dead body marks a cathartic moment for Hania, releasing her from the bonds of unspoken guilt, fear, and grief. This moment of verbalization is symbolically captured by the blue color referenced in the chapter title, which signifies both the tranquility that settles over Hania's lingering melancholia and the serene atmosphere that envelops the novel as Alijan's fragmented history and long-absent body are finally reconciled with Hania's version of the truth. While Alijan remained missing, Hania was caught between hope and dreading his possible return. Confirmation of his death through the physical reality of his body allows her memories to flow more freely, enriching her narrative with previously withheld details.

This chapter, although still non-chronological and fragmented, presents the most coherent account of Hania's traumatic past and is the only part of the novel narrated entirely from her perspective. The narrator explicitly chooses to focus solely on Hania's account in this section, preventing other memories from clouding her narrative, and commits to enhancing the text with additional information from other interviews, which he integrates into Hania's narrative using quotations and italics to denote their sources. This methodological approach offers a clearer and more sequential narrative for the reader, contrasting with other sections of the book in which the abrupt interjections of multiple characters can disrupt the narrative flow.

Tābloy-e Qows va Qozah (The Rainbow Panel)

The final two pages of the novel revisit the enigmatic first panel, effectively linking the narrative's conclusion to its cryptic beginning and offering a sense of closure. This restored panel reiterates the original speaker's promise to return and reveal the truth. The title page, referencing “Shamāyel Gardāni Bā Do Tāblo,” suggests that these two panels, which carry the authoritative voice of the unidentified speaker, hold the definitive truth about past events. In contrast, the middle frame, “Diving and the Rainbow,” functions primarily as a narrative interlude. Despite the speaker's return, the persistent ambiguity implies that the speaker, Alijan, marked by a painful bullet wound, harbors a secret truth yet to be unveiled by any narrator or character.

The final panel of Bani Ameri's novel reveals a startling twist: the unidentified speaker asserts that the person shot by the enemy and then drowned by his two best friends, Ali Ashraf and Ali Gol, was actually Alishah, Alijan's twin brother. The supposed caller on the line was, in fact, Alijan himself. The speaker explains that, throughout their childhood, the twins often switched roles to support each other in various situations. As a result, the photojournalist narrator's attempts to reconstruct the warrior's history amidst the chaos of war and trauma are dismantled. The voice claiming to be Alijan insists that he is still alive, despite his ongoing suffering from a scar on his throat and the forgetfulness of his loved ones, who believe him to be dead.

In the final lines, the ambiguous voice completes sentences left unfinished at the novel's start:

As Gonjeshkha concludes, the clear-cut identity, name, and fame of the heroic fighter dissolve into ambiguity. The binaries of commitment versus corruption and sacred versus desecrated death become fluid. Even those closest to Alijan harbor suspicions of murder and hidden secrets.

There is no moral to violence. Tim O'Brien has argued that the truth about the violence of war is impossible and elusive: “You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever,” and “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It's a question of credibility […] In other cases, you can't even tell a true war story. Sometimes it's just beyond telling.”Footnote ⁷⁰ O'Brien suggested that the only things soldiers can tell as witnesses are nostalgic stories of comradery, but not of the reality.Footnote ⁷¹ Bani Ameri's use of surrealist narrative techniques further blurs the lines between reality and fiction, realism and modernism, challenging the conventional heroic culture surrounding martyrs and prompting readers to reconsider their psychological and moral relationship with glorified martyrdom.

Bani Ameri's effort to identify a legitimate narrator underscores the impossibility of achieving closure, emphasizing that those who are no longer alive to speak are perhaps the only ones who know what happened. While photographic memory serves as a tool for constructing historical reality, the incomprehensibility of traumatic events and their multidimensional meaning, coupled with personal biases, are highlighted in the surreal and ambiguous final scene.

Through mythical, historical, empirical, subjective, and individual narratives, the novel uses photographs, interviews, and films to convince others of the reality of recalled events. Yet, the physical existence of reality, Alijan in this case, ultimately confirms that what we consider objective reality always carries a subjective element. As Hayden White notes:

White argues that the way we recount history – through narratives shaped by cultural and literary conventions – affects how we perceive reality. This does not negate the reality of the events or their impact on those who experienced them, but instead highlights the challenge of fully capturing and representing those realities through narrative forms. Bani Ameri's novel exemplifies this by showing that images retained in survivors and witnesses’ memories cannot be captured by documentary tools or historical archives, nor can they be interpreted by those who do not have those memories.

Bani Ameri's Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand challenges traditional narrative forms, illustrating the complexities of capturing traumatic experiences. The novel's fragmented, stream- of-consciousness approach – contrasted with the idealized portrayals of martyrdom – reflects a deliberate choice to navigate between the sacred imagery of war literature and the harsh realities of murder and moral failure. By avoiding actual photographs or documentary evidence, Bani Ameri relies on pictorial realism reconstructed through characters’ traumatic memories, highlighting the interplay between realism and postmodernist elements.

This narrative strategy, along with heavily intertextual reliance on cultural and traditional forms of storytelling, underscores Hayden White's assertion that the way history is recounted through cultural and literary conventions affects our perception of reality. Bani Ameri's novel demonstrates that traditional narrative forms often fall short of capturing the multifaceted nature of historical traumatic experiences. The reference to Hafez's poem, “Since Truth They Could Not See the Path of Myths They Took,” encapsulates this idea, illustrating how individuals and societies, in the absence of clear truth, turn to myths to make sense of complex realities. This reliance on myth can obscure the material realities of trauma, which are deeply rooted in the physical and psychological experiences of individuals. The graphic depictions of violence and the chaotic fragmentation of historical and personal narratives align with White's theory and Caruth's observation that such narratives challenge conventional expectations of “what it means to tell, to listen, and to gain access to the past.”Footnote ⁷³ Return of the dead to speak the truth, despite all the narrator and author avatar have done to construct history, emphasizes the distinction between an event and its representation, between personal and communal. When these events and experiences are conveyed through narrative or documentation, they are inevitably transformed – shaped by narrative conventions, cultural influences, political agendas, national identity, language, and ideological frameworks. This process can obscure, simplify, or distort the full complexity of the events. In Bani Ameri's novel, trauma is not merely an abstract, mythic, or symbolic concept that can be shown by Shamāyel Gardāni; it is lived and felt through the bodies of the individuals.

In Gonjeshkha, the transformation of once-named individuals into ghostlike, unidentifiable figures reflects the profound impact of trauma. Shahādat, in this context, does not signify martyrdom, a transition to a peaceful eternal life, but rather emphasizes bearing witness to a raw personal truth that has not gone through transformation. The novel's surrealist conclusion, with the unblemished state of Alijan or Alishah's body, signifies not a miraculous intervention but a stark representation of loss and an attempt by the deceased to assert their narrative against hegemonic or institutional delineation. Trauma in these instances “does not simply serve as a record of the past but precisely registers the force of an experience that is not yet fully owned.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand grapples with the fear of “sacrilege of the traumatic experience,” challenging definitive claims of truth and resisting a simplified, orderly resolution.Footnote ⁷⁵ It underscores that the profound effects of trauma transcend what can be clearly documented or articulated. By confronting and countering any teleological or theological closure, Bani Ameri's novel leaves readers with a deep and enduring impression of trauma's impact and the elusive nature of truth. It portrays the histories of trauma as inherently fragmented and incomplete, emphasizing the complex interplay between memory, narrative, and understanding. Through its innovative narrative form, Bani Ameri's work engages with the tangible consequences of historical violence and reaffirms that narrative of truth, as experienced through personal psychological and physical pain, is perpetually in flux and inherently imprecise.