احمد محمود: روایتِ تاریخ و داستان در رمان «همسایه ها»

Ahmad Mahmoud:

The narration of  history and fiction in Hamsayeha (The Neighbors)

Abbas Baghinejad (PhD)

Islamic Azad University, Urmia Branch

abstract                                                                         

The fiction writers have always taken advantage of history, individuals and historical events and created some literary works. The source and ingredients of these works have been the history and historical events representing the past while following the historical patterns. The closest example of this claim is “historical novel" which has a historical foundation. In addition to historical novels, some fictional works, without having the features of historical novels, owe to the history for their creation and in one way or another they interacted with history, events, and historical entities. The works of "Ahmad Ettay" known as "Ahmad Mahmoud" are one of these works. Ahmad Mahmoud is one of the writers whose novels have been based on the contemporary history and the events that he himself and the present generation have experienced. In his fictions, he has developed a special blending of documentation and imagination making use of time, individuals, events and historical places to create a kind of authentic realistic fiction bearing specific and unique features.

"Hamsayeha”, The Neighbors, is the author's first novel that has these features. The theme of the novel is composed of a combination of historical documents, imagination, and the memoirs of the author. The novel, while having the characteristics of a fictional narrative, aims at presenting a factual- narration of an important historical event. The "nationalization of the oil industry in Iran" is the main theme of this novel and it plays a central role in its structure. Most of the events and interactions in Hamsayeha have been connected to this historical event in terms of both content and structure. The time span of the novel is about three years, from 1950 to 1953. In this novel, poverty, corruption, deprivation, the superstition of the disadvantaged people, as well as romantic adventures and so on are the current themes that the narrator himself has been directly involved with, while, indirectly, narrating the event of oil nationalization. There are other events in Hamsayeha that are often of political and social significance, however, they are peripheral to the main theme. For this reason, the novel "Hamsayeha" has a largely covert and sometimes overt historical significance, so the omission of the original and historical fact, oil nationalization, would affect the very existence of the novel and deteriorate the main interactions of the events in the novel. Many of the adventures and running relationships in this story have been linked to this main event. Although the struggle for oil nationalization plays a pivotal role in the whole structure of the novel, at the intervals of the story, the author engages the reader with the other events. This, in turn, sometimes makes the main event of the story, in spite of its pivotal role, appear peripheral. 

This paper reviews the reflection of this historical event and its related events in the novel, “Hamsayeha", examining the author's historical approach and judgment as well. In line with this, the method of reconstructing of history by Ahmad Mahmoud and the similarities and differences between the characters and the events in novel have been documented and elaborated on. The approach for recreation of a historical period by the author has been stated too. In this regard, the dimensions of author's historical knowledge and his specific political and intellectual attitudes as well as the quality of integration of these three components in the novel have all been stated. The author's use of these components to create a reading consistent with historical patterns that are of certain political and ideological nature is another issue discussed in the paper. Mahmoud has accomplished this by using a plot and a biased representation of a historical event (the oil nationalization event). Through using certain devices, the author has integrated this historic event   into the novel and made it as the foundation for the subsequent fictional events. This has been achieved in a way that the step by step narration of the historical event, oil nationalization, has been merged with the fictitious narration of the event. In this regard, the author has attempted to make use of the details of this historical event as a vehicle for the development of a fictional action. With this approach, he succeeds to narrate and evaluate a historical event from a particular intellectual and political standpoint. At the same time, he takes a historical event as the subject matter for the creation of a political and social novel. To achieve this, the author of the present paper has used historical sources related to the nationalization of oil and the coup d'état of 19 August 1953. In addition to these historical sources, the author has referred to   the related stories, especially those written by Ahmad Mahmoud, the most important of which are:

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Keywords: Ahmad Mahmoud, Novel, History, Fiction, Narration, Hamsayeha