Aziz’s notebook: transmitting the memory of violence

A granddaughter discovers her grandfather's notebook years after the political massacres that stole her mother and aunt. Beginning as a testimony of loss, it becomes an obsession to leave a trace against silence and denial. From States of Impunity.

In 2004, Chowra Makaremi discovered the notebook written years before by her since-deceased maternal grandfather, Aziz Zarei. The notebook recounts the tragic destiny of Aziz’s two daughters in the Teheran of the 1980s: Fataneh Zarei, Chowra’s aunt, was arrested and executed in 1982. Fatemeh Zarei, Chowra’s own mother, was arrested in 1981 and was imprisoned and tortured for seven years before she was finally killed in the mass-murder of political prisoners in 1988. Aziz’s notebook has been published in French (Gallimard, 2011), translated in English (Yoda Press, 2013), and published in Persian (H&S, 2014).

Emmanuel-Pierre: Your grandfather’s notebook brings to life cruel stories of violence and loss, execution and exile in Post-revolutionary Iran. Yet, your grandfather did not seem to have plans to publish it. As readers, are we not stumbling across a private conversation?