Open Eyes, Open Ears - A Memoir / Zakaria Hashemi

‘Your book stands out from the other recent books published in Persian. You have literally invented a new style one might call ‘prose-film’ or ‘Neo-Realism.’

From Fereydoun Hoveyda’s Letter to Zakariya Hashemi

28 December 2004, Geneva

 

‘Picasso has eternalised the crimes in the Spanish Civil War in his Guernica, made of seemingly simple lines within an extremely complicated mixture. In a like manner, in his Open Eyes, Open Ears, Hashemi has stepped onto the same path to create, in my view, such an eternal and, at the same time, painful work portraying the crimes and turpitude as well as courageousness during the Iran-Iraq War.’

 

Dr Abbas Milani, Kayhan London

10 September 2004

 

‘Open Eyes, Open Ears is significantly different from other works of the same type: the author constantly seems to be staring at me with eyes wide open through the lines and challenges my obstinacy, gnashing his teeth with fury, fear and sarcasm.’

 

Dr Sadr al-Din Elahi, Kayhan London

30 September 2004

   

 

Zakaria Hashemi (born in 1936 in Rey, Tehran Province, Iran) is an Iranian actor and film director. Hashemi spent his childhood in southern Tehran. He has acted in several films including The Night of the Hunchback, The Brick and the Mirror. He also directed some films, like The Gamble. In the film The Brick and the Mirror (dir. Ebrahim Golestan), Hashemi plays a taxi driver named Hashem who finds a baby in the back of his cab, left by a woman in a black chador (Forough Farrokhzad).