Vladimir says
Fariba, Tehran 2014
Si sa siavash
Aamout, Tehran 2013
The return of Hordad
Honored by parvin prize in 2012
Kanoon, Tehran 2011
Summary of The return of Hordad
Written in 26 short seasons, this Novel is narrated by a twelve year old girl, named Samareh. A story of good and evil dichotomy. It’s based on ancient Iranian mythology, but its superstructure contains environmental facts. While scientists are searching reasons for climate change, especially the causes of tsunamis and marine pollutions, an ancient myth revives. The battle between Shupa, the drought demon, and Hordad, the goddess of water. The problem solver for this battle is Samareh. She is a girl born to a human father and a mother who is a sea fairy.
Samareh is living with her father, Janan, in a sea village. She’s been told that her mother drowned in the sea years ago. However, one day a guest arrives and she is apparently Samareh’s aunt-her mother’s sister. Samareh notices that Janan and her aunt are secretly arguing with each other and she is curious to know what the reason of their argument is. Aunty has brought Samareh a pair of flaked shining boots, which, whenever she puts them on, she feels powerful and is able to walk on water.
Samareh feels that something is going to happen. The sea is not as quiet as always. Huge waves, strange voices, stinky smells and the corpses of sea creatures show that this is not the usual sea.
The argument between the aunt and father grows heated and Samareh still is not aware of what is happening between them. Once she hears her aunt is saying to her father: “We do not have much time, Hordad should be back.”
Aunty asks Janan to tell Samareh the truth; otherwise she will do it herself. Janan has no way but to concede, so he tells Samareh that: “What you do not know is that your mother is a sea fairy!”
He tells the story of his acquaintance with Samareh’s mother and says: “She had come to make me love her and marry her so that you would be born and if something happened to her, you could save her.”
Lady Hordad is the protector of the seas. She is the goddess of water, but she has a big enemy named Shupa. Over the years demons and evil creatures, who are under the rule of Shupa, have tried to capture Hordad to rule over the seas. Eventually they succeeded in doing that and now Shupa is the ruler of the seas and every day more and more sea creatures die. Every day, more and more black giant waves are approaching the shore in which they bring dead creatures with them. More people who go to the sea to swim are drowning and the stink of Shupa and his collaborators are all signs of his domination over the seas. No one knows at what time he would decide to ruin all the sea creatures, sea villages or cause a worldwide drought. The sea queens in different time periods had always helped lady Hordad in guarding the sea and they were always aware that they had to combat Shupa, if he ever started conquering the seas.
Samareh is angry with her mother, because she did not have her out of love, but for the sake of saving the sea. She is also not going to do anything to bring Hordad back or save the sea. Samareh learns that the newcomer guest is not her aunt, but she is her mother’s maid. She has come to take her because Samareh is the only one who can save Hordad from Shupa’s hands. Samareh had thought her mother had drowned, but the maid tells that her mother is alive. “Your mother is a sea fairy; how could she drown in the sea?” says the maid.
“Before you, also there have been girls and boys who were born out of the marriage of a sea fairy with a terrestrial man and have grown up” says the maid. Shupa was always hidden, so they were not in an emergency situation to wage a war against him. Thus they never found that their mother has been a sea fairy. Now you are the first Hybrid girl who has to fight with Shupa and his subjects!”
The maid unreels to Samareh that, because the demon of sleepiness entered her mother’s body, she is always sleeping and, if Samareh could return Hordad back, Hordad would be able to throw the demon out of her body.
The maid gives Samareh a necklace made of particular and ancient bones, which would protect her. It is not a pretty necklace, but the maid notes that, like the flaked boots, it is also a present from her mother. The maid dry’s question mark tailed fishes and makes cotton from them. Samareh goes to another village to borrow a Spindle.
On the way, a wolf attacks Samareh. She climbs up a tree and thinks about a wolf with yellow eyes. When, for a moment, she opens her eyes and sees another wolf. The same wolf she had made and conceptualized in her mind. A wolf made from smoke. Samareh discovers that she can make panels and creatures from smoke and take care of herself and her surroundings.
The wolves attack each other. The first one is wounded and escapes and the second one dissipates away. Samareh arrives in the village and borrows a Spindle. Over there she meets a boy, named Nima, the son of Borzoo the Hunter. Borzoo is thought by all the village inhabitants as being torn apart by wolves. Nima is going to reveal some mystery to Samareh, but changes his mind and leaves it for the future.
Samareh gives the spindle to the maid and describes to her that she had been able to reveal a wolf and save her life. The maid is not surprised and says: “anyone whose father is a human and whose mother is a sea fairy has especial abilities but, without this necklace, your powers do not work. This necklace works as a key in which if you don’t have it, no lock is opened.”
The maid spindles the cotton and asks Samareh what kind of dress she would like her to knit for her? Then she knits a long white dress for her.
One night a high wave brings the corpse of a whale to the coast. The corpse is torn apart and there are the signs of burnouts on it. Suddenly, dozens of evil creatures, as big as a cat’s head, with thundering eyes, appear from beneath the corpse and go back to the sea. They are Shupa’s assistants, who are gradually beginning to ruin coast villages and their surrounding cities.
In the middle of one night, Nima takes Samareh to Borzoo the Hunter. Borzzo the hunter is alive. That was the mystery Nima was not sure he should tell Samareh.
In the fishing cottage among the wetland, Janan and Borzoo the Hunter are waiting for Samareh. Borzoo narrates for Samareh the story of those evil creatures. s“For many years, bloody Wars went on between evil creatures and human beings until they decided to sit around the negotiating table. They agreed to choose someone from each group to fight with each other. Beasts and demonic creatures were armed with Mumbo Jumbo and magic, and human beings were armed with a metal mallet. Human beings knew that they could not win with just the metal mallet, so they defeated evil creatures by using their wisdom. From then on, they agreed to live in two different but symmetric worlds. These worlds were to be parted by some impenetrable power, but several years later, some evil creatures and humans being to communicate with each other. To obtain power, human being to appeal to the evil creatures and of course, they pay for it. But how big is the price? It is to sell their soul to evil creatures. Every day hundreds of people, who are willing to enjoy the supernatural powers of demons, giants and beasts, communicate with those creatures and gravitate to demonic behaviors and attitudes. For example, they commit to doing massacres or torturing. When the human soul grows demonic, evil creatures give something of their power to it. This is the demonic law.” Borzoo says.
Samareh is wondering why Borzoo is telling the story to her.
After saying these words, Borzoo’s eyes reflect demonic shining, his face screws and eschews and his snout grows longer. He is one of the people who have sold their soul to a half demon. He has promised to give him his son’s feet, if one day he had a son. Some evil creatures just have a half body and they don’t possess any foot. Half of their being is the soul and the other half is the body. So the most precious thing for them is to have feet. The half demon share it’s power with Borzoo, provided, if he had no son, he somehow obtains Samareh’s bonny necklace and bring it for him. Shupa is aware that the one who is supposed to save Hordad is Samareh with her powerful necklace.
That night Borzoo asks Samareh to give her bonny necklace to him but Janan does not allow it. Borzoo grows satanic, captures Janan and asks Samareh to give her necklace for his father’s freedom. Samareh looks at the worm which has come out of a corner of Borzoo’s mouth and, by the aid of perception, turns the worm to a giant snake twisted around Borzoo’s body. Janan gets free and together with Samareh and Nima they escape from there.
After they come out of the cottage, the cottage is exploded and some parts of Borzoo’s body are thrown out into the wetland. Nima describes that he is capable of restoring himself, even if all remained from him was just one hand.
Borzoo comes out of the water and again pulls Janan into the water, while asks Samareh to give him the necklace. Samareh feels her feet are full of strength. She jumps into the water and she and Borzoo began to fight eact other. In effect, Samareh, by the aid of her flaked boots, can throw Borzoo away to a distant much far from there.
It is the summer feast and all coastal villages’ habitants have put on their folk dresses. The maid gives the dress she has woven from question mark tailed fishes to Samareh to wear in the feast.
Towards the middle of the feast, the sea becomes stormy and high waves and blackness bring coastal villages beneath themselves.
The water surges everywhere and people are drowning, but Samareh walks easily on the water and is looking for Janan and the maid, whom she can bring out of the mud and sludge.
Samareh intends to go to Shupa’s shelter, which is in the heart of a mountain, but, if she could get there, she must be able to leave Shupa’s shelter in a six days’ time, otherwise, the shelter moves away from its place and goes to another place which will be very hard to access. Samareh sinks in a well which leads her to Shupa’s shelter.
Over there, she meets dozens of half demons, floating in the air. They attack Samareh, but she succeeds to drive them out of her path and to go on her way.
The demon of sleepiness, which has sheltered in the body of Smareh’s mother and made her fall asleep, has a sister who closes the road to Samareh and intends to enter Samareh’s body. However, the dress the maid has woven for Samareh is armed with a protective tissue which prevents the demon’s sister and other evil creatures from entering her body.
Samareh enters into a stony salon, where she meets lady Hordad. Meanwhile she is hearing Shupa’s voice saying she can take lady Hordad with herself, only if she gives him the necklace. Samareh does not have much time, because the shelter is detaching from its place to go somewhere else.
Samareh does not intend to give her necklace to Shupa because if she does, she would easily be defeated by Shupa and his companions and Hordad too would be annihilated. So she decides, using her abilities, to fight with Shupa, but he is going to annihilate Hordad. So he sends his earthly thunders towards Hordad to burn her. Samareh fastens her necklace on Hordad’s neck, so that it makes her invulnerable. Now she becomes vulnerable and Shupa sends burning thunders towards her. Samareh dives into lady Hordad’s body, which is made of water, and then she shelters in her safe body. Suddenly, everywhere is shaking. Shupa’s shelter is gradually detaching from its place.
Still in Hordad’s body, Samareh raise herself and Hordad up the well and they get out of there. Hordad is back to the sea. The stink and black waves are annihilated and the sea takes no more victims.
The maid tells Samareh: “In the first fight with Shupa, you could defeat him.”
Samareh understands that there would be other fights facing her in the future. The maid brings her the news about her mother’s wellness and says that her mother is waiting to see her. Samareh departs from the maid and goes to find Janan. She loves her father very much and, first of all, she is eager to find him.
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Today my chelcheleh
Kavir, Tehran 1991
Today my Chelchele
This fantasy novel is a work in praise of the responsible coexistence of human beings. Social participation to change and strive for a healthy global life. The protagonist of this novel is a ten-year-old girl who becomes the leader of the city’s children in order to teach them a better way of life. She and her friends manage to show the right direction of life to the people whose inner compass is disabled.
A river flows through a city called Apple-Roseberry, in which half of the people are clean and the other half dirty and disordered. Half of the city always shines with cleanliness, the other half smells dirty. In this way, the city is divided. The two groups have always been in conflict, but an accident will cause a big change and affect the lives of both groups.
The main problem begins when a girl named Chelcheleh, who is the daughter of one of the cleanest families in the city, slips on the skin of a melon and breaks her leg. Her mother, who is a symbol of the city’s cleanliness, protests how long this unorganization should last. “There should be order in the city; today this happened to my daughter, tomorrow it will happen your daughter” she says.
The sentence, “Today my chelcheleh, tomorrow your chelcheleh”, will become a revolutionary slogan that whenever the clean people of the city want to protest, they will use it and ask the mayor to change his mind to change the situation. The mayor is a clean, shiny man, and he has a deputy who is considered the common sense of the whole municipality, and he always puts new ways in front of his feet. On the day that Chelcheleh breaks her leg and the riots reach their peak, people gather in front of the municipality. A group of people are telling the mayor how long they should warn you not to throw your garbage in the street, not to spit on the street, not to buy food from the street vendors…
Others say: “how long do you want to advise us? We’re tired of you just brushing your teeth. You go on a picnic, pick up your trash … take a shower every day…”
The mayor asks the two groups to elect a representative and negotiate. The representative of the dirty people is a traveling person who does not have a dirty face, and the representative of the clean people is a bookseller who has read a lot of revolutionary books and wants to solve any problem with the revolutionary execution.
The mayor, deputy mayor, two representatives and the city’s police chief will hold a meeting. The demand of the clean people’s representative is for the revolutionary execution of the dirty people. The demand of the dirty people’s representative is a legal prohibition against any health warnings. Eventually, they decide to divide the city into two parts. Dirty people live on the other side of the bridge and clean people live on this side of the bridge. Wise people in the city are shocked by this decision, but there is no solution and it has been decided. With this decision, transfers will take place in the city. No one has much trouble with these moves. Only one family is divided into two parts. It’s the Chelcheleh’s family. Chelcheleh’s family consists of four people: The dad, the mom, and his twin sister Parasto. Her mom and Chelcheleh are in the first group, and the dad along with Parasto are in the second group. As a result, the dad and Parasto go to the other side of the bridge, and the mom and the Chelcheleh are left alone.
There are other people who have to decide which side of the bridge to live on:
The only doctor in the city goes to the other side of the bridge because the dirty people need him and his medicine more.
Mr. Inventor, although the man is not very orderly, remains on this side of the bridge.
The city school is on the other side of the bridge, however a school is being built on this side of the bridge. The teacher has to teach in the morning and in the afternoon to both side of city.
The mayor puts a gate on the bridge on both sides of the river to prevent the unauthorized movement of people. Only the teacher and the doctor can go and return to the other side of the bridge without the permission of the municipality.
The first day of separation of the two parts of the city is a different day. It is a day when everyone opens their eyes to their own utopia.
There was no high school in the city, and every day a bus would come and take the high school guys to a nearby town that was bigger. On the first day of the division of the city, the service driver keeps the bus in the square as every day. Dirty high school students ride the bus, but there is no sign of the clean students. One of the children tells the driver what happened to the city. The bus driver disembarks the children and goes to the municipality to ask what the rest of the children are doing and how they should be going to school. The deputy mayor says that from now on, the bridge will be considered a neutral area, and the children on this side of the bridge will be waiting for the school bus on the bridge. The mayor insists that the separation law must be enforced on the bus as well. Clean guys on one side Dirty guys on one side. There should be no advice or ridicule. The driver does not understand the reason for all this stupidity.
On the clean side of the bridge, Mr. Inventor, who is building a remote control balloon, opposes the separation of the city. “We all have to work to achieve a healthy global society, not to be selfish, and to make a good living by pulling away from troubled people,” he tells Chelcheleh.
One day, the doctor comes to their house to examine Chelcheleh’s broken leg and announces that Parasto has become the leader of the children in on the other side of the bridge. However, she has become the most unorganized and dirty girl imaginable. Hearing this, Chelcheleh thinks that she can be the leader of the children on this side of the bridge and do great things to reunite the city.
From the next day, Chelcheleh begins her work by first writing “healthy global life” on the blackboard, trying to get the attention of her classmates. After that she enters into a conversation with the girls of her class so they will follow her lead. Then they talk to the boys, and the boys agree that dividing the city was a mistake. They are thinking of ways to integrate the people of the two halves of the city. One of those ways is to inform people. They start by throwing a letter to the other side houses.
Parasto misses her parents. They change places, but in addition to seeing her dad, Chelcheleh has other things to do on the other side of the bridge that she doesn’t tell Parasto.
When Chelcheleh goes to the other side, she encounters a city that has become a mountain of garbage and full of sludge in its streets. The house where his father lives is dirty to a point that living in it is impossible. She starts working and cleans the house. At night, she throws night letters in people’s houses, but she does not put a letter in his father’s house. Dirty people in the city, seeing the letters, cause chaos and complain to the municipality; but since the author of the letters is not clear, they are not doing anything.
Parasto, who has found herself on the other side of the city, is slowly becoming a clean and pure girl, and she no longer intends to return to the other side of the river.
Mr. Inventor’s balloon is ready. The day of the balloon launch, which is also a big celebration, the inventor puts awareness letters written by clean children for the dirty people in the balloon, and when the balloon reaches the top of the dirty city, it pours the letters on their heads. .
This causes the inventor to be deported from the city, but there is still a few days left until the deportation, and the inventor invents a bomb in the balloon.
Writing night letters has not been ineffective, and a number of the residents on the other side of the bridge have decided to come to the clean side and live a healthy life, but a number of others are still on the other side of bridge. It is clear that they will not change, especially since they have realized that distributing the night letters was done by Chelcheleh and they are trying to throw her in the river as a lesson to others. The inventor says that anyone who wanted to change with the advice and reading of night letters has changed so far. For those who are more stubborn, there are other ways to do it.
During a secret operation, the balloon goes to the other side of the bridge and leaves the bomb right in the central square of the city. The bomb explodes. A strange gas is produced by the explosion and enters the gaps in the houses, affecting the thoughts of the residents and turning them into different people.