Story · Memoirs of a Soldier
The Mosque
English finding-aid title for the scanned Persian text; not a published English translation title.
An old mosque attendant’s cigarettes carry a request the soldiers around him have scarcely understood.
- Author
- Ghazi Rabihavi
- Publication
- Memoirs of a Soldier
- Source date
- Autumn 1360 (Iranian calendar) · Qoqnus edition
- Published language
- Persian
- This page
- English publication guide
English editorial orientation to the inspected Persian scan. The complete literary text remains with the original publication.
Reading orientation
A sergeant and his accompanying soldier stop for food in a damaged building near their observation post. An elderly man sits apart from them. Through another soldier they learn that he worked at a mosque in Khorramshahr and that occupying soldiers took his fifteen-year-old daughter inside it while forcing him away. Source 1
His hand-rolled cigarettes pass between men who continue eating, joking and preparing for duty. Only later do they hear about his tearful request to a sentry: he pointed across the river, towards the mosque. The story ends with the sergeant looking through his binoculars; it does not describe a subsequent attack or the daughter’s fate. Source 1
The scanned appearance
Masjed appears in Memoirs of a Soldier, PDF pages 6–16 · printed pages 5–15. The scanned colophon identifies Qoqnus and first edition autumn 1360. This is the first of the volume’s five stories. The date identifies the scanned volume, rather than an independently established composition date. The English title is a finding aid. Source 1
Sources & credits
- The Mosque · scanned Persian source
Masjed. Memoirs of a Soldier. The scanned colophon identifies Qoqnus and first edition autumn 1360. This is the first of the volume’s five stories. PDF pages 6–16 · printed pages 5–15. The English paragraphs are original editorial reading orientations, not reproduced or translated literary passages.