The Plunderer

Reading orientation

The opening is a denial that immediately grows less secure. The narrator insists he lacks the courage to steal, yet describes himself inside a damaged shop holding a package. His account of what his wife said in questioning complicates every attempt to present his actions as innocent. Source 2

Their balcony is a threshold between a domestic conversation and the unrest outside. He helps her wheelchair across the doorway while disputing her knowledge of the street. The story’s energy comes from self-justification and competing accounts of the same sounds and movements. Source 2

Publication and language

The Persian story is printed in Avaye Tabeid 16, Autumn 1399 / 2020. Its title is rendered here as an English finding aid. The Plunderer is distinct from The Prey, the separately published English story translated by Nilou Mobasser. Source 1

A purchase and an exchange

The narrator buys packages of underwear from a woman escaping the damaged shop. Convinced some are the wrong size for his wife, he enters the shop to exchange them. His account presents the act as a correction to something already paid for. Surveillance images, however, retain the simpler appearance of a man removing goods from a looted store. Source 3

On his way home he sees the seller trapped in a dead-end alley as police approach, and keeps moving. His concern is the gift and the intimacy he hopes it will restore. The scene places that private purpose beside another person’s immediate danger, without allowing his explanation to settle the moral account. Source 3

The detail he thought he knew

At home, his wife says the packages are the wrong size. He had trusted something she said to his sister, while she treats that conversation as a place for private concealment. The clothes fall to the floor and she asks him to help her back into the wheelchair. The failed gift closes a story in which hearing, knowing and telling the truth continually separate. Source 3

Sources & credits

1. The Plunderer · publication

   Avaye Tabeid 16. Autumn 1399 / 2020. Persian. By Ghazi Rabihavi.

2. The Plunderer · reading evidence

   A man denies being a looter while explaining to an imagined listener how he entered a shop during unrest. The website paragraphs are editorial orientation to this source.

3. The Plunderer · extended reading evidence

   Avaye Tabeid 16, Autumn 1399/2020. Original source 294, complete story 4591–4921, printed 82–86 / PDF 82–86 in the inspected issue. The following Shahram Rahimian contribution begins 4928 and is excluded. The website sections are original English editorial orientations; literary passages are not reproduced.