A Review of a Book: "Let's Return Tonight!"

Peyman Esmaeili is a 39-year-old writer residing in Tehran, who can now be considered one of the best storytellers of his generation in Iran with four successful fictional works, including one novel and three short story collections. His works have received very positive reviews and garnered significant attention for their unique language, innovative imagery, and the author's precision and contemplation in discovering special moments in his fictional world. His latest work is a short story collection titled "Let's Return Tonight," which has just been published. After several years of migration to Australia, Esmaeili now lives in Tehran, but this collection is a product of his days and years of migration. A part of one of his stories, narrated by the author: "As he walked around the room, his faded jeans were loose on his thin legs. He said, 'My wife is dead.' At first, it was very hard. I would wake up in the middle of the night. I was hungry. Very hungry. I would cook food for myself. I made a pizza this big. It was a sign of life. In three months, I gained 15 kilos. My wife was dead, and I kept getting fatter. Then he laughed and pushed a green glass in front of me. He said, 'Eat this.' I said, 'If you get Zahra's work done, we will go.' He said, 'I haven't left this house for three years.' Then he shook his head and pointed downstairs, saying: 'Not a house. Just what you see. They fight every day. They scream. The air in the room was stagnant. There was no airflow in the room. There was no window in the room, and only the irregular breathing of a young man, which seemed very strange and unfamiliar to me, could be heard. He asked if I was eating anything or not and then said: 'I am waiting here. You all need to understand what waiting means. I have been sitting here for three years, waiting; and now I am really happy to see someone who has come from Kermanshah and understands what waiting is.' Then he pushed his hair away from his face and said, 'It is very important to understand these things;' and shook his head in pity. What you just heard was a part of the short story collection "Let's Return Tonight" narrated by the author, Peyman Esmaeili. Welcome, Mr. Esmaeili, to this program, "Distant View, Close View." The five stories in this collection seem to reflect your experiences of migration abroad; specifically to Australia; and the experiences you have faced directly or indirectly during this period. I greet you, Mr. Ghasemfar, and all the dear ones who are listening to the conversation. Yes, exactly. Each of these five stories examines the concerns of migration, whether from inside Iran to outside or migration that occurs within Iran itself. In three stories, there is a clear connection to the relationships and events that happen to migrants outside Iran. This is exactly what you mentioned. Directly or indirectly, it has been the experience, intuition, and understanding that I, as a migrant, have derived from life outside Iran, especially in Australia. In this book, despite reading multiple stories (meaning we are faced with five stories that apparently narrate different people or different slices of life), there is something that connects them; common signs and motifs. Is this deliberate or did these five stories you selected for this collection coincidentally find such shared aspects? I believe it cannot be said to be coincidental. Because some of these motifs naturally include things that are concerns for me as a writer. As I said, the space that the characters in the stories face is the migratory space where they encounter a new world, and naturally, that new world has its own elements and its impact on all the characters in the stories is anxiety. You might clearly observe anxiety as a widespread motif in all five stories. After all, it is a very important factor that connects the outlines of the stories. Besides the motifs that I, as a writer, am interested in, there are also a series of signs that, whether in the form of a kind of literary intertextuality, if we want to refer to it, or at least it can be said to be my personal interest, are a series of elements and features that are repeated in the stories. Specifically, something that was very important to me in writing these stories was establishing a dialogue with the story of Alice in Wonderland. Because for many who migrate, new countries and new spaces are similar to what Alice found herself in. One of the most prominent and important connecting elements of these stories is the white rabbit, which you see is repeatedly mentioned in several of these stories, and its function is exactly the same as the function we see at the beginning of Alice in Wonderland. Of course, there is a specific storyline for it as well. For example, the white rabbit is actually a brand of a drink in Australia, and using this ability and capacity, an intertextual dialogue was attempted. In general, I want to say that there have been a series of concerns, motifs, and elements that are consciously present in these stories; but certainly, part of it is also unconscious. I am happy that my unconscious part has had its function and has allowed a string of prayer beads to be seen among these stories. One of the motifs or at least common signs is that in all these stories, death has occurred. Or there is a reference to a dead person and a lost human; a physical death. Since you also mentioned the sign of the 'white rabbit' and that Wonderland or the strange land that seems to happen for every migrant, does migration in your experience have a direct relationship with death? Is this an important part of that experience? A critical or philosophical interpretation can be made on this, and after all, I, as a writer, do not delve much into that discussion. In my personal view, the experience I had as a writer in these stories is the answer 'no.' That is, for me, the experience of migration has not necessarily been the same as a sense of separation or physical death. No! It has not been like that; but what has happened that perhaps manifests in these stories is the physical death that you see, which is that migration truly creates a very acute and radical rupture with many of your possessions; which really does not differ much from physical death for the individual. Especially in the early years. That is, the very process that perhaps the remaining individuals from a deceased person experience after that person's death: initially, various stages are experienced, they first deny it, and then gradually come to terms with it, and then get used to it and then become sad or similar cases. Clearly, in the phenomenon of migration, in many cases in your life, you encounter this state. A very deep sense of loss is created. Of course, this feeling certainly changes shape as the years of an individual's migration increase and may even be forgotten. That replacement can become so powerful that you may not even remember it; but certainly, this happens in the mind of the migrant, and the manifestation of these may be what you pointed out in my stories. After all, a kind of rupture that is practically consistent with death. The point that occurs in at least three of the stories in this five-part collection, now in one like 'In the World of Water' more strongly and in 'The Tunnel' and 'Wonderland' a bit more moderately, is a surprising ending that approaches a kind of surrealism or a kind of science fiction. Why is that? Is it for the sake of surprise? I want to know about that concern that has led the author (yourself) to end the story this way? Please explain a bit. This may also go back to the taste I have in seeing and writing stories. That is, how I visualize the story in my mind before bringing it to paper. Whether with images or with words. What is my personal taste, and it has always been this way, is that I like to give my audience the feeling that what they are reading, and the images that are formed in the narrative texts for them, are not necessarily the meanings and interpretations of everything. After all, there are other layers in life that, when mixed with the mental interpretations of individuals and characters, may lead to a kind of unreal spaces that manifest a series of events that have occurred within the individual. What has been very interesting to me is that I have always loved acute situations. That is, even in the atmosphere of the story in the geography of the story, very hot summers, humid weather… because the fact is that what happens is that living in these situations is felt more prominently, and the abilities of individuals to understand life increase. Now, when I place these types of situations alongside the inability of the characters to understand the new environment they are in, due to the fact that almost one of the motifs that is common in all stories is the characters' inability to understand the new world and their efforts to understand that world. That effort practically changes them and creates a new being in the story. When you put all these together, you see that these stories naturally move towards a kind of intuition. That intuition is the result of the confrontation that the character has had with this new world with this radical and acute situation and with the actions they have taken. The result of all of them becomes that intuition you see in the endings of the stories. Really, as a writer, I had no effort to have a surprising ending, as a technique. I did not think in that way at all. What I thought was, what might my character, who is trapped in such a world, see? What possibilities might be available to him? Who does he want to see? For example, the event that occurs in the story 'Wonderland' is the result of all the activities of that character and the event that happens in the story. Or for example, in the story 'The World of Water,' you actually see the result of that individual's actions not in a moral way, but in a completely visual and literary way at the end of the story; therefore, a collection of these things I mentioned has been important to me that you see in some stories, the stories lead to such results. Let me say, now that we are talking about signs and motifs, that one of the signs that has been repeated in several of the stories in this collection is that, strangely, there is an Australian native on the other side of the world and in another story, an Australian citizen mentions that we have traveled to Kermanshah. While these people and stories have nothing to do with each other. This is also one of those signposts seen in this collection of stories. It seems you want to take the story's space out of pure realism. What was the specific function of Kermanshah in this story? Kermanshah! Well, I am from Kermanshah, and naturally, I have a very strong attachment to the place where I grew up, and my mind is unconsciously drawn to it. What happens in the story 'Wonderland' is that the character who has this says that a trinity was supposed to be formed for them to reach another intuition. Now, the details of this matter are explained in the story. Then, these individuals are those who are searching for those parallel paths to understand existence. That is, you also see this in the characterization of those individuals. Why this is happening and with what quality it happens is ultimately the work of a critic to come and analyze the literary text… but for me, as a writer, when my character is someone who has come from Kermanshah and confronts those people, it seems that their identities begin to mix. That is one of the reasons why this happens, and you see it in the ending of the story, is that these individuals are reaching a common conclusion, and the same event that was supposed to happen for those who were waiting on that island to see their master happens in a way for the character itself, in seeing the wounded whale that is seen at the end of the story. This is a kind of identity fusion of that character... In all the stories, you see that the characters of my stories are blending their past and their geography with something new. It is not that they completely accept that new thing and set aside the previous one or that they merely carry the nostalgia of the previous thing with them. This does not happen in any story. They are all busy blending. They are busy combining. This is also a fusion and combination that occurs in this story. In the story 'Wonderland,' especially at the end of the story, it seems that all the stories of the book and the people and their images come together. It seems that this story is a kind of ending for all the stories in the collection and not just another story alongside the rest; it is a kind of ending for the whole book. I feel that it is here that the thread and chain of the book, which starts from the first story - 'The World of Water' - finally comes together at the end of the last story - 'Wonderland' - and locks together; in other words, the last story connects in a circular movement to the first story of the book. It seems to be a deliberate stylistic and formal technique!