Lean, and frequently raw, LAST MOMENTS: The Dark Shadows of Protest in Iran is a collection of stories that captures life under the shadow of tyranny in Iran. These are moments where hope may briefly flare but swiftly fade away; where families are torn asunder; where ordinary people become extraordinary as they collide with state oppression and violence in regular places: a stalled car in traffic, a family home, a hospital corridor. Sometimes they know it’s coming; sometimes it strikes without warning. Either way, Hirbod Human’s steely prose grants them dignity and power against their oppressors.
Human was born in Iran in 1979. He writes it was “the year the Shah fell, and a brutal revolution handed control of the state to the most extreme, violent, and deceitful factions of society.” Now exiled in the USA, the author writes in order to remember and celebrate those who lost their freedom, and often their lives. His stated aim is “to remind those who champion freedom not to compromise with history’s tyrants and to enlighten future generations on how easily valuable lives are sacrificed for political greed and ambition to wield power.”
Born of recollection and conversation, Human shares stories of individuals who found themselves under the shadow of a vicious regime—characters that pulse with defiance. Human writes in clean, precise lines. A sadistic airport interrogation is skilfully evoked in the story “Airport,” which chills the reader with as much terror as any regular horror story. In “Prison,” the bravery of a captured man is implied with the simple words: “It looked like he was enduring a lot of pain to keep this smile.”
Elsewhere Human provides poetic (if still bleak) flourishes, such as this sentence describing the site of a firing squad in the story “Prison”: “Under the wall, the ground was covered with a two-meter-wide layer of old blood like a dark cloud.” Or the child in the story “Hospital,” who cowers from a guard “like a scared baby bird on the floor stalked by a cat.” Like the prisoner’s smile, the main characters find simple means to show their resilience in desperate times. Often the strength in family bonds is what holds them together—mother, father, child—as they hold these stories together and make this collection well worth reading.
LAST MOMENTS: The Dark Shadows of Protest in Iran is a memorable, if sometimes harrowing, collection of stories. Hirbod Human’s careful prose is a lasting tribute to those who suffered so much and acts as a reminder of the power of literature in the face of oppression.
~ Kent Lane for IndieReader