Hula Hoop

Reading orientation

The narrator finds his addressee among rubbish as war begins. Salt gathering and the burning city enter the same restless speech as later life in a crowded dormitory. The account measures change through bodily growth, labour and the need to keep talking. Source 2

The title’s circular movement finds an echo in a memory of a girl turning with hoops around her waist. That image interrupts scenes of fire and injury. Reading the story through the objects its voice holds onto offers a way into its shifting relation between companionship, damage and survival. Source 2

Publication and language

The Persian contribution appears in Avaye Tabeid 15, Summer 1399 / 2020, with a note identifying the collection Iranian Four Seasons and a dedication to Kaveh Golestan. The printed composition dateline is separate from this magazine appearance; this guide supplies no English literary translation. Source 1

The picture he keeps hidden

The companion Jijou addresses is an image saved from the rubbish when the bombing began. He cuts away the perfume bottle pictured on its chest and adds a wounded heart. The image’s golden hair and his memory of a girl turning with hoops become inseparable in his speech. Its later disappearance is the immediate reason he keeps talking on the roof. Source 3

The displaced household has moved to a Tehran dormitory. Banu, his dead father’s wife, seeks compensation for his injuries, but an official asks for evidence from a military commander. Her control, the other residents’ ridicule and their shared crowded facilities leave little private space for Jijou’s attachment. His speech resists the identities other people give him. Source 3

The return he sees

On the day the radio announces the war’s end, Banu goes into the city. Jijou’s night returns again and again to smoke, henna, an anklet and the lost image. At the close, a dark-clad figure seems to reveal golden hair and a violet top. He recognises his beloved as alive. The narration offers that recognition through his perception, without settling whether the figure belongs to memory, imagination or the roof before him. Source 3

The author’s note beneath the story

The appended note identifies Iranian Four Seasons as a collection written in Tehran. Rabihavi says it spent about three years awaiting publication approval before being returned without permission, and that some of its stories appeared separately. He describes Hula Hoop as previously unpublished in that account and connects the work with his collaboration and friendship with Kaveh Golestan, to whom both collection and individual stories were dedicated. Source 3

Sources & credits

1. Hula Hoop · publication

   Avaye Tabeid 15. Summer 1399 / 2020. Persian. By Ghazi Rabihavi.

2. Hula Hoop · reading evidence

   A speaker recalls the beginning of war, salt gathering and an object found among wreckage, addressing a companion through memories of displacement. The website paragraphs are editorial orientation to this source.

3. Hula Hoop · extended reading evidence

   Avaye Tabeid 15, Summer 1399/2020. Original source 292, complete story 1611–1897, printed 25–29 / PDF 26–30; author’s note 1899–1909. The story’s Tehran 1371 dateline is separate from the magazine date. The website sections are original English editorial orientations; literary passages are not reproduced.