UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

Department of Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies

Children’s Literature in Iran:

the example of Samad Behrangi

© 2001

Nafisa Abd El-Sadek

2 - Introduction

4 - Samad Behrangi: His Life and Work

10 - Behrangi’s Stories

1) 24 Restless Hours (Bist-o-chahar Sa’at dar Khab va Bidari).

 Juje-ye Tala’i-esh).

                    3) The Bald Pigeonkeeper (Kachal Koftarbaz).

                   4) The Little Sugarbeet Vendor (Pesarak Labu Forush).

                   5) The Little Black Fish (Mahi-ye Siyahe Kuchulu).

 

29 - Commentary on Behrangi’s Stories

40 - Behrangi’s Essays

46 - The Legacy of Folktales

52 - Samad Behrangi’s Homeland: Azerbaijan

57 - Summary and Conclusion

61 - Bibliography

64 - Works by Samad Behrangi

Introduction

Following on from the previous papers which attempted to discover the dynamics of children’s literature in various societies at different times in history the present paper will seek to begin an investigation into themes which have shown themselves to be especially pertinent to Persian children’s literature. The paper will touch upon the wider issues of history and politics and the use of symbolism by writers. In order to explore these and other factors in an Iranian context the background and work of Samad Behrangi, one of Iran’s most well known children’s writers, will be examined.

The paper begins with a short biography of Samad Behrangi. It then examines five of his children’s stories published in 1967 and 1968, with a section of commentary from various secondary sources, followed by an analysis of some of his non-fiction work comprising his work on children’s literature and education in Iran. This constitutes the bulk of the paper, but in order to better understand his corpus of work, further areas are explored which deal with the legacy of folktales in Behrangi’s homeland, Azerbaijan, as well as its politics and history. An appreciation of the events surrounding Behrangi as a child and leading up to his most productive period is intended to help give an insight into his motivation and ideology. A wider discussion of the historical origins of tales still popular in modern times and the meaning of their mystical elements, of themes recurrent in stories from past times to present, of symbolism, censorship, and the purpose of fiction for children and the effect it has on them, is also included. A chronological list of Behrangi’s works is provided for reference after the bibliography.

To appreciate fully the legacy of Samad Behrangi it is necessary to explore all the facets of his life, career and contributions, to look at both his short stories and his non-fiction, not to just take a one-dimensional view as many of his critics have done, in only looking at his children’s stories. His non-fiction writing deals with issues that affect educators and children’s writers worldwide to the present day. His fiction has been interpreted in different ways and critics still speculate and disagree over its meaning.

Behrangi is seen as one of those writers who have used the perceived harmlessness of children’s literature to their advantage in order to get a message across to an adult audience as well as to a juvenile one. Without such a vehicle the voices of these writers may never have been heard. In this way children’s literature has been used as a means to deal with serious topics. Not everyone agrees that such serious topics as social reality, environment, politics, resistance and revolution, economics, exploitation and so on are suitable issues for literature ostensibly intended for children and some deny that interpreting children’s writing on these lines is even valid. This paper will give some examples of these differing points of view. It will seek to show that politics is one theme which has shown itself to be especially relevant in the field of children’s literature.

The first section will give a brief biography of Samad Behrangi’s life and work before starting on a synopsis and discussion of his stories.

Samad Behrangi was a writer who used children’s stories as a way of expressing his feelings about the wrongs of society during the rule of the last Shah of Iran. Iraj Bashiri identifies him as a social critic:

‘More than anything, Behrangi was a social critic whose major effort was concentrated on bringing about change in the educational system of the country. This is evident from the themes of his works that contrast the rich and the poor, the village and the town, and the educated and the illiterate.’

 

Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak has made a similar observation:

‘…a high degree of fidelity to social experience marks the peaks of twentieth century Persian fiction everywhere. Closer to us in this range, looms the figure of Samad Behrangi whose stories emphasize outright revolutionary action as the author’s vision of the solution to the problem of social injustice.’

 

Samad Behrangi is a writer who has gained a lot of attention outside of Iran as well as becoming a cult figure inside Iran before the Islamic Revolution. He was born in the southern division of Charandab, Tabriz, commercial and administrative capital of Azerbaijan Province, in July 1939. In 1955 he attended the local Teachers’ Training College and in 1957, on completion of his course, which was based on modern and American theories on education, Behrangi became a teacher in a village school. The school consisted of one room and a toilet. The windows needed repairing and the roof leaked on rainy days and during winter. The school was located outside the village itself and the pupils walked to school. In winter those who did not have proper shoes were forced either to stay at home or work in a neighboring carpet factory.

Behrangi earned a BA in English from Tabriz University during the period he was occupied with teaching. As a result of his dissatisfaction with available teaching materials he wrote a first-grade reading book for the village children which reflected their own lives. The government prohibited its publication. He collected Azerbaijan folklore and prepared a book of poems from it; again publication was prevented. He then collected Azerbaijani folktales and, with the help of his best friend Behruz Dehqani, translated two volumes of tales into Persian and published them. Despite these attempts to silence his voice by withholding publication rights in his own language, as a result of his perseverance Behrangi finally started to have his work published. The conditions were not ideal and the limitations must have been hard for Behrangi to bear, as Bashiri notes:

‘Behrangi's native tongue was Azeri Turkish and, personally, preferred writing in Azeri over Farsi. He was not, however, allowed to publish in Azeri; he, therefore, made his writings available by translating them into Persian.’

 

Behrangi translated the works of such famous authors and poets as Nima Yushij (1890-1960), Ahmad Shamlu (1925-), Mehdi Akhvan-Sales (1928-1990), Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967), and M. Azad (1933-) from Persian into Azerbaijani, demonstrating his great linguistic capabilities in both languages. Unfortunately these remained unpublished due to the government’s prohibition of publishing works in Azerbaijani. Behrangi’s work includes critical essays about the education system, collections of folktales, short stories based on popular folk themes, and original stories which deal with various social aspects of village life and the problems of peasants who have migrated to the cities.

Although he may be better known for his children’s stories and folktales, Behrangi also wrote numerous essays, very different in tone from his stories. His essays criticized the Iranian education system and dealt with Azerbaijani history, the Azeri Turkish language, children’s literature, village life, grammar, and so on. He wrote about a variety of philosophical, moral and sociological issues, often discussing specific societal and educational problems and giving logical, well thought out strategies for dealing with them, based on his own experiences. A number of the essays have a pedagogical tone, notably those dealing with issues such as teaching methodology and curriculum development, while others, especially the ones concerning village life, are descriptive.

An example of one of his curriculum projects was an alphabet book; a primer to teach Persian to Azerbaijani speakers. Despite his love for his own language, Azerbaijani, Behrangi recognized the necessity for Azerbaijani children to learn Persian. He put a lot of thought into the methodology necessary for this task. The area of methodology had not been sufficiently addressed by previous educators and the materials available at the time taught all learners using the same methods whether or not they were first language Persian speakers. Behrangi believed that Azeri Turkish speakers should not be taught Persian in the same way as native Persian speakers. He made a detailed proposal for teaching Persian to Azeri Turkish speakers in a methodical and carefully planned way, acknowledging the linguistic differences of the two languages and building on the students’ knowledge of vocabulary that was common to both Azeri Turkish and Farsi alike.

Behrangi’s close affiliation with the Tabriz branch of the Feda’iyan and, in particular, with his close friend, confidant, and coauthor, Behruz Dehqani (who was later tortured to death by the SAVAK in the summer of 1973 for being a leading member of the Feda’iyan), helped to strengthen the bond between the underground activists and the literati. He used to meet writers such as Gholam-Reza Sabri-Tabrizi, Behruz Dehqani, and Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi at his publishers, Intisharat-e Shams (Shams Publications) in Tabriz while the government stepped up its repression of writers through frequent interrogations and constant harassment of booksellers believed to be selling protest literature. In September 1968 Behrangi is said to have drowned while swimming in the River Araz.

His most important work, The Little Black Fish won awards after his death at Bologna and Bratislava International Literature Festivals in 1969. In the fall of 1971 the University of Tehran sponsored a special Behrangi festival. All of Behrangi’s writings, with the exception of The Little Black Fish were officially banned by the security police in charge of censorship in 1973. A rich and beautifully illustrated edition of The Little Black Fish was produced by the Kanun-e Parvaresh-e Fekri-ye Kudakan va Nojavanan (The Society for the Intellectual Nourishment of Children and Youth) under the patronage of the Empress Farah. Later the Samad Behrangi Award presented five prizes in the form of educational equipment for works by children and young adults .

Behrangi’s experiences as a teacher in rural Azerbaijan had a crucial influence on his writings. He taught in poor village schools, predominantly in Azerbaijan, for 11 years and during this time traveled widely in Iran. Most of those acquainted with Behrangi’s work believe that his untimely death at the age of 29 under very suspicious circumstances was no accident. The official version below met with refutations in the memorial issue of the literary journal Aresh:

‘The regime’s version of his death: Drowning while crossing the Aras River, which forms part of the boundary between Iranian Azerbaijan and Soviet Azerbaijan, either as a suicide or as a desperate attempt to cross over into the soviet Union.’

 

David Nissman is quite unequivocal when describing the tragedy:

‘... like the history of every people on the face of the earth, this history also carries with it its own martyrs and victims - the Southern Azeri patriot Semed Behrangi, murdered by Savak in his attempt to swim to the northern bank of the Araz River, which marks the border between Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic.’

 

The truth of the circumstances of Behrangi’s death may never be known. The Shah’s dictatorship might well have been unable to tolerate the threat of the widespread influence of his work. His stories were banned by the monarchy's censorship bureau in the early seventies. Later, Behrangi’s stories were published and propagated in large numbers during the period of freedom following the people’s revolution of 1979, as he had become an inspirational figure for many during the demonstrations leading up to the revolution.

After this brief look at the events in Samad Behrangi’s short life, it is time to turn to the part of his work which has most attracted the attention of critics and commentators. Consequently, the next section of the paper will review some of Behrangi’s short stories. In giving a synopsis and commentary, and offering examples of some of the comments found in secondary sources relevant to the particular stories, it will seek to determine what kind of view they portray; idealistic and utopian or realistic and pessimistic, and to see the kind of symbolism he has used in them and how it relates to his era in Iran.

Five of his stories have been translated and gathered together in the collection The Little Black Fish & other Modern Persian Stories, and this collection forms the basis of the works examined in this paper along with one story from Qesse-ha ye Behrangi, and sections from his essays on education and children’s literature. The present section deals with the following stories:

1) 24 Restless Hours (Bist-o-chahar Sa’at dar Khab va Bidari).

2) The Old Woman and her Golden Chicken (Pir-e zan va Juje-ye Tala’i-esh).

3) The Bald Pigeonkeeper (Kachal Koftarbaz).

4) The Little Sugarbeet Vendor (Pesarak Labu Forush).

5) The Little Black Fish (Mahi-ye Siyahe Kuchulu).

 

 

The story 24 Restless Hours is told by a fictitious country boy living temporarily in Tehran with his father. This is his account of their last 24 hours in Tehran before they return to their hometown. The story falls between two genres: hard social realism conflicts with the fantastic dream world of the narrator who spends his days competing fiercely in the dog-eat-dog world of the streets, and his nights on magic journeys with a toy camel that he covets in a shop window. But the camel is eventually sold and the boy’s dream stolen. Behrangi writes as an introduction to this story:

‘Dear Readers,

I didn’t write the story 24 Restless Hours to set an example for you. My purpose is rather that you become better acquainted with your fellow children and think about a solution to their problems.’

 

Latif, a young, illiterate boy, is the main character in the story. He has come to Tehran with his father to try and earn some money for their family back home in the provinces. Latif’s Father has been out of work for several months, so he decides to go to Tehran, hoping to meet up with others from their hometown who are working in the capital as vendors of ice, oranges, clothing and other goods. He buys a handcart and sells vegetables, sleeping on the cart in the street at night. Latif helps his father and sometimes sells small items on his own, such as charms and chewing gum, returning to their handcart at night to sleep. He passes the days with his friends Qasem, Ahmad Husayn and Zivar’s son, other poor street children, sometimes gambling and getting chased by the police; but he doesn’t beg, as his pride will not let him. He smashes a shop window because the shop-owner upsets him by intimating that he is a beggar.

A car driver knocks him down in the street and then shouts abuse at him. Dodging the park guards, the boys wash in the water gutter at City Park gate, but still ‘don’t smell clean like the rich children’. Latif sees that only because of his poverty and not for any other reason he is treated unjustly. He feels very strongly the unfairness of this. His stress and frustrated energy surfaces as a wish to fight and show how tough he is, using new Tehrani slang recently picked up on the streets. Despite his tough exterior, he feels lonely and misses his mother very much and spins dreams around a huge toy camel he sees in a toyshop window in Naderi St. He fantasizes that the camel is his and they go on trips at night, playing music, flying to the villas of North Tehran where the rich people live and where he finds all the toy animals from the toyshop waiting for him to join the feast. He dreams that he eats but never gets satisfied. He wakes up to hard reality when the street sweeper sweeps dust into his face. The camel is his fantasy friend, voice of resistance against social injustice, teacher, leader of the masses and the only thing in Latif’s life which gives him any joy or hope of escape. At the end of the 24 hours he goes to see it one last time before leaving Tehran but his hopes and dreams are crushed when his camel is sold and is given to a little rich girl who drives away with it in front of his eyes, an event which tips him over the edge of reason. He chases the car and jumps on it but is pushed off and left bleeding in the street, wishing he could get his hands on a machine gun.

The final image of this tale is that the boy has reached the stage where he is ready to fight to overturn the unbearable situation that he finds himself in, but he still does not have the means to fight back. In order to acquire the means he must still break the laws of the present unjust society as there is no legitimate way for him to achieve his goal. This leaves a somewhat negative impression at the end of the story.

The main characters of this tale are an old woman, a golden chicken and a spider. The old woman is alone in the world except for the chicken, which we are told, she has found in her dreams. The old woman makes body scrubs and sells them at the public baths to make her living. The golden chicken keeps the old woman’s humble home and small garden free of ants and spiders. No ants, not even the big ones, dare to enter the old woman’s house because of the chicken, who can even handle the nosy cats who mess everything up looking everywhere for scraps of meat.

The old woman’s garden has a thick, leafy walnut tree. When the walnut season arrives and the wind blows the walnuts to the ground the chicken happily cracks them open and eats them. In between some empty bottles on the windowsill a spider has spun a web and laid her eggs there. These bottles previously contained vinegar and mint derivatives which the old woman used to make and sell, but they are now empty. The spider is terrorized by the chicken who warns him that she will eat him one day. She has already eaten some of the spider’s babies, and prevents any ants from getting caught in his web by crushing them as soon as they reach the windowsill.

One night the spider comes into the old woman’s dreams and warns her that the chicken is squandering her wealth and belongings. At first the old woman refuses to hear any complaint against her golden chicken, but when the spider points out that if the golden chicken cared for her at all she would keep some walnuts for the old woman to sell so she could eat some decent food for once, then she begins to believe him. She wakes up from the dream in a terrible mood and starts planning what to do to the chicken. She doesn’t leave the house as usual to sell body scrubs but sits there watching the golden chicken in the garden. The chicken goes to the bottom of the walnut tree and asks it to drop some walnuts for breakfast. The walnut tree shakes some ripe walnuts from its branches but before the chicken can eat a bite, the old lady shouts at her not to touch them as she wants to sell them and, kicking her away, she pockets all the walnuts. The chicken sits under the tree until the old lady goes back inside the house and then asks the tree to shake down some more walnuts. This time the chicken manages to eat some, but the old lady sees her and comes out threatening to show her what she will do to a walnut thief. The old lady puts the barbeque on, catches the chicken and holds her over it until she is severely singed. The walnut tree shakes hard and rains down walnuts on the old lady’s head, which makes her let go of the chicken. When she goes to pick up the walnuts she finds that they have all turned to stone. She goes back into her house and sits and watches the chicken who has retired to a corner of the garden to cry. From noon until evening the wind blows and knocks walnuts off the tree until the old lady’s garden is filled with walnuts, but the chicken still sits and the old lady still stares at her until suddenly the voice of the spider rings out, congratulating the old lady on putting the chicken in her place and telling her to collect her walnuts so she can eat. The old woman picks up her shoe and throws it with all her might at the spider, killing him instantly. Then she dries her tears with the corner of her chador and goes to the chicken begging her to eat some walnuts. Despite being singed and upset, the chicken cannot refuse the old woman when she sees that her usual kindly expression has returned. When the old woman promises to put some ointment on her wound they go back to the house and eat shelled walnuts for their dinner. The next morning the old woman clears up all the spider’s webs and throws them away.

This tale appears to give the depressing message that change can only be effected for a short time before the return of the status quo, that oppression and exploitation is the norm and that any relief from this condition can only be temporary. The story ends with defeat for the spider and victory for the chicken with the old woman left in the same situation as before. It seems to give an opposite message to that of an idealistic resolution, showing that the status quo will prevail despite challenges to it.

Kachal, the hero of the story was a poor, but wise boy who lived with his mother, a goat and some pigeons in a small hut beside the king’s palace. Kachal collected firewood and dry bushes to feed the goat. His mother spun wool on her spinning wheel. Between them they managed to make a living. From her balcony the princess was able to watch Kachal’s pigeons fly and little by little they fell in love. Kachal could never show his feelings, as he knew he could never marry the daughter of the king. The princess became ill from lovesickness and no one could cure her. The king, however, learned her secret and became furious, threatening to banish her from the kingdom. He decided to take matters into his own hands and sent soldiers to kill all Kachal’s pigeons. They carried out his order and also beat Kachal and broke the leg of his mother’s spinning wheel. A few days later Kachal was recovering under the mulberry bush in their yard when he heard two pigeons whispering to each other and talking about how he could bring his pigeons back to life. He jumped up and followed their instructions and all his pigeons woke up and flew away to return after a while with a magic hat that made the wearer invisible. Kachal’s mother begged him not to use it to touch forbidden property, and he promised not to touch things that were forbidden to him. He put on the hat and went to the district where the rich factory owners lived. He asked himself how one factory owner by the name of Haji Quli had gained his wealth and money and deduced that as it came from the work of the workers it should rightfully belong to them and not to Haji Quli. With this in mind he entered his house and saw him in the garden taking afternoon tea with his wives. His hunger got the better of him when he saw the honey, cream, toast and tea in front of Haji Quli and he started to eat and drink some of it. Everyone was terrified and started screaming and praying and running away. Kachal then went into the house, took all the money from the safe as well as other valuable items and then went and distributed everything among the workers, telling them that it belonged to them. A little money was left over and he used this to buy food.

Haji Quli and the other rich landowners went to the king to ask him to protect their property from Kachal. This gave the king the excuse he needed to launch an all-out attack and he sent his entire army to deal with Kachal. In the battle Kachal’s pigeon’s defended him by showering goat droppings on the soldiers’ heads. Their commander-in-chief was wounded, many of the soldiers’ heads were broken open and they were plunged into a state of shock and confusion, until finally they were forced to retreat. Kachal then visited the princess in the palace while wearing the hat. It was knocked off and he was captured, but managed by a ruse to get it back. He was locked in the palace by the king who ordered all the doors to be closed but the princess saved him by running to his mother’s house for help. The pigeons came and bombarded the palace for hours until the king finally admitted defeat and had the doors opened. The king sent servants to throw his daughter out of the house, but they found that she had already left. The princess had run away to join Kachal. His mother taught her how to spin wool and they lived happily ever after.

This story follows the opposite line from the usual rags-to-riches scenario. It shows that the riches to be gained from righteousness are not always material ones, but treasures such as love and peace and justice which can be greater and more meaningful and valuable in leading a rich and happy life. The king, while giving support to Haji Quli and the other rich factory owners, suppressed social relationships and love. He was prepared to kill the pigeons, who symbolized freedom, and Kachal, who represented reason or wisdom, as well as to banish his daughter. The idealistic resolution here is highly unlikely and quite unconventional in that it ends with a riches-to-rags result. The princess ends up estranged from her father and separated entirely from her past life and everything that was familiar to her. It could be argued that as her father was quite unconcerned about her happiness and on the verge of banishing her forever anyway it was not such a great loss. This could stand as a metaphor for the condition of women in society; as long as they toe the line and do what they are told by the powerful male members of their family they are protected and taken care of, but if they should act upon their own wishes they become the enemy and are treated worse than dogs.

This story is told from the point of view of the new teacher in a village school and concerns events which have already happened. The subject of the story is Tarvardi, the sugar beet seller, a young boy who arrives at the school to sell his sugar beets one day. The teacher invites him inside the classroom to warm himself and treats him kindly. The children also seem to be very sympathetic towards him and to respect him. The teacher learns Tarvardi’s story little by little from the other students and from Tarvardi himself on his subsequent visits to the school. Tarvardi’s mother is paralyzed and cannot walk. Tarvardi’s father, Asgar Aqa the Smuggler, has been killed by gendarmes. When he was alive the family owned a house and lived comfortably, but after his death they have become penniless. Tarvardi and his elder sister, Sulmaz, are forced to go and work in the carpet workshop of Hajji Qoli Farshbaf. They have been working there for several years when their mother falls ill. Hajji Qoli starts to pay too much attention to Sulmaz, staring at her, sometimes putting his hand on her head and laughing. One week on payday, Hajji Qoli gives Sulmaz ten rials extra, telling her that it is for their sick mother. When they go home to their mother she tells them not accept any more money from him. The next payday they go to collect their pay after everyone else as Hajji Qoli has told them to come when he is alone. He gives Tarvardi an extra fifteen rials, saying that the next day he will come to their house to talk to their mother. Tarvardi throws the money back at him and tells him that they do not need extra money. Hajji Qoli tries to push the money into Sulmaz’s hand but she runs out in fear. Tarvardi flies into a rage and, picking up a weaver’s knife from the table, throws it, cutting Hajji Qoli on the face. When Tarvardi goes home he finds Sulmaz crouching beside her mother crying. That night the village headman is sent by Hajji Qoli to ask for Sulmaz’s hand in marriage. Tarvardi’s mother says that Hajji Qoli has a wife and children in town and concubines in four other villages and that he is not interested in having family connections with the villagers, only in acquiring another concubine. In her opinion he is like a huge pig; fat and squat and ugly. She says that even if she had a hundred daughters she wouldn’t give one of them to that hyena. The headman is sympathetic but warns her that the consequences of refusing Hajji Qoli are likely to be grim, as he will turn Tarvardi over to the gendarmes, among other things. Sulmaz is terrified and refuses to go back to work, so the next day Tarvardi goes there alone. Hajji Qoli is standing by the door of the workshop fingering his worry beads. Tarvardi is afraid to pass but Hajji Qoli tricks him, saying that he is not going to hurt him and then as Tarvardi is about to go through the door Hajji Qoli grabs him and starts beating him. Tarvardi runs to get his hands on the weaver’s knife to kill him, but luckily for Hajji Qoli the workers restrain Tarvardi and carry him home by force. The family survive by selling their goat, Sulmaz goes to work for the baker, whose son is her fiancé and Tarvardi does whatever work he can find. Several years later the teacher returns to the same village and finds Tarvardi tending forty or fifty goats and sheep on the mountainside. He asks his news and Tarvardi tells him that his sister has gotten married and that he himself is now saving up for his own marriage.

This story is an example of social realism set in a more recent time period and missing the magical and fantastic elements of the previous stories described. It has a different approach and style of writing from Behrangi’s other stories; it describes reality with all its flaws. The reader gets the feeling of being present at the scene, learning all the ugly and unpleasant details, which are, however, somewhat de-emphasized, as they have already happened in the past. The violent incident is in the middle of the story and so is not perceived as the most important part.

This story reflects the personal observations of its author. John West describes it as ‘a deceptively simple, descriptive piece drawn directly from Behrangi's experience as a village schoolteacher.’ It thus reflects Behrangi’s experiences in the schools as the teacher finds out how village society works, but it can also be used as an allegory to encompass the conditions found in the whole of Iran. Each key character of the story could represent a social group: the politicians are influenced by the economic sector and bow to the interests of the big business organizations. The people with economic power, not the politicians, are the ones who are actually in charge. If action is taken against the politicians the economic system survives. The real relationships which run Iranian society will not change and the system will continue.

In the story the teacher is a totally unimportant character, a mere bystander. His name is never mentioned and he performs no purpose as agent, as the reaction and outcome of the situation had already happened before his arrival. He is just an onlooker, a plot device, as are the students. The story is revealed by the boys telling the teacher about Tarvardi’s life. In doing this they present a means of telling the reader how the village works and who really wields the power. The village headman, in theory the leader of the village, is seen as Hajji Qoli’s lackey. Despite professing disagreement with the situation he still advises Tarvardi’s mother to let Hajji Qoli take her daughter away and cannot promise to control the gendarmes.

Behrangi implicitly criticizes religion in this and other stories. The characters who are Hajjis are often portrayed as abusers of power. He shows Hajji Qoli as an evil man who made a lot of money from his evilness and was able to use this to go to Mecca on Haj and gain even more power and respect in the community. The poor villagers could never hope to amass the kind of funds necessary for such a trip. Behrangi shows that in reality religion helps the system rather than challenging it and that people seek meaning in religion because they cannot change anything. He shows it as the opium of the people.

The ending or epilogue of The Little Sugarbeet Vendor at first glance seems to have been added as an afterthought, but it is important to the story. This device of later resolution is not used in the other stories. Two possible interpretations could be derived from it; the first being that, in gaining material wealth, (forty sheep and goats are implied to belong to Tarvardi, but there is no definite proof of this. He could be looking after someone else’s flock) Tarvardi becomes part of the capitalist system and therefore the capitalist system succeeds. The second possible interpretation could be that both Tarvardi and Sulmaz in becoming independent materially and, having an independent material base, have found for themselves an alternative place in their society.

5) The Little Black Fish ( Mahi - ye Siyahe Kuchulu ).

This is the most famous of all Behrangi’s stories, both within Iran and internationally. It is a story with universal appeal and has been likened in this respect to stories such as Antoine de St. Exupery’s Le Petit Prince and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. In 1969 The Little Black Fish won international awards at literature festivals in Bologna and Bratislava which further enhanced its reputation back home. As a result of this prestige it was the only story of Behrangi’s which managed to escape censorship. There have been first and second English editions of stories containing The Little Black Fish published by Three Continents Press (1976 & 1987) and a 1992 English translation by Hooshang Amuzegar and illustrated by Allison Remick. The story has also been published as a folktale under the name of Little Ebony.

The Little Black Fish is a tale within a tale, told at bedtime by grandmother fish to her grandchildren at the bottom of the sea. It is the story of a little black fish whose home is a stream. Grandmother tells that the fish is an only child, the only survivor from 10,000 eggs laid by its mother. This little fish starts to question the confines of its world and to ask where the stream goes and where it ends. In trying to talk these matters over with its mother the little fish involves all the neighbors in the discussion. Everyone tells the little fish to forget about this idea of finding the end of the stream and searching for another way to live, but finally the little black fish leaves them all and sets out on a journey to seek knowledge of the world.

At the bottom of the waterfall the little black fish finds a pond full of tadpoles who are very proud and think they are the noblest and prettiest creatures in existence. The little black fish asks to meet their mother and when the mother frog appears she complains about her children being led astray by the little black fish’s talk and attacks it, saying that the world is this pond and nothing more. The little black fish darts away and carries on down the stream. The little fish meets a crab and then a lizard, who tells it about the dangers of the pelican, the swordfish and the heron and gives the little fish a dagger to use to escape in case it is ever caught in the pelican’s pouch. The lizard also tells about the band of fish who fight back when the fisherman tries to catch them in their nets by pulling the nets to the bottom of the sea. Later in its journey the little fish meets a deer who has been shot by a hunter, in another place comes upon turtles napping, and so on until it meets a school of fish in the wide part of the valley where there was a lot of water. Many tiny fish come to talk with the little black fish and when they learn that it wants to go down the river to find the end they warn it about the pelican. They wish the fish well but are too afraid to accompany it. The little fish continues and that night falls asleep under a rock. It is woken in the middle of the night by the moonlight shining into the water. The little black fish has always wanted to speak to the moon but its mother has never allowed it to do so. Now it is able to greet the moon and the moon replies, telling it many interesting things and asking the little fish if it has heard that humans were planning to fly up and land on the moon. In the morning the little black fish wakes up to find that a group of the tiny fish has followed after all and are waiting overhead. They are just about to set off when the water around rises up, everything goes dark and they realize that they have been caught in the pelican’s pouch. The tiny fish immediately begin crying and blaming the little black fish for their misfortune. They plead with the pelican to spare them, claiming that they are innocent and that the little black fish has led them astray. The pelican says he will pardon them if they strangle the little black fish. They are quite ready to do this to save themselves but the little black fish tells them not to trust the pelican’s tricks and that to test the pelican it will just pretend to be dead. As the little black fish has the dagger to defend itself with the tiny fish are forced to agree and they shout to the pelican that they have strangled the little black fish. Immediately the pelican swallows them all, but the little black fish escapes by splitting open the wall of the pelican’s pouch with the dagger and swimming away to where the pelican cannot reach it.

The little black fish swims on to where the river flows through a level plain. Several other rivers have joined it and the water has become so immense that the little fish cannot see the bottom. Suddenly it is attacked by a creature with a double-edged sword in front of its mouth. The little black fish escapes and swims to the surface, but after a while, goes below again in search of the bottom of the sea. It meets a huge school of fish; thousands of them and is told ‘Welcome to the Sea’ and is invited to join the school of fish. The little black fish is very happy and agrees to join them after exploring the sea a little. The fish warn it to take care near the surface as the heron is there and each day catches at least four or five fish. The little black fish swims off and later comes to the surface where the sun is shining and it basks in the sun while thinking that if it should die now it will not matter, but that what will matter is the influence that its life will have on the lives of others. At this moment a heron swoops down, catches the little black fish in its beak and flies off with it to feed to its young. The little black fish tries to save itself by talking to the heron and saying that if it dies its body will become full of poison and it would be better to swallow it alive. The little fish goes limp and the heron, alarmed, calls out to it. The little fish leaps from its beak and falls to the water, but at the same moment the heron catches it again and swallows it immediately.

It is wet and dark inside the heron’s stomach and there is no way out. The little black fish hears the sound of crying and sees a tiny fish crouched in a corner. It tells the tiny fish to calm down as it is going to kill the heron by ripping open its stomach with the dagger and it will free the tiny fish first so as not to spoil the plan. In order to achieve this the little black fish jumps about to tickle the heron and then when it opens its mouth to laugh the tiny fish leaps out into the water. The tiny fish waits to see the little black fish but there is no sign of it. Then the heron falls down and cries out and beats its wings. It splashes into the water, beats its wings again and then stops moving. There is no sign of the little black fish and it is never seen again. The grandmother fish finishes her story and tells her 12,000 children and grandchildren to go to sleep, but one of them cannot sleep because of thinking about the sea.

The story ends indeed with the death of the little black fish when it is swallowed by the heron, but its last heroic act is to save another little fish who has been swallowed before killing the heron and dying itself in the process. But the end of the story is still to come. The last few lines show that the life of the little black fish has indeed influenced others:

‘Eleven thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine little fish said goodnight and went to sleep. But try as she might, a little red fish just couldn’t get to sleep. All night long she thought about the sea …’

 

 

The fish met both friends and enemies on the long journey to the sea, who were alternately valuable and instructive. The little fish gained a lot of knowledge from these various encounters, of the larger world and how to survive in it, as well as of the behavior and ideas of other creatures. When it finally reached the sea and met other fish who had also traveled the same dangerous route to get there, the little black fish was happy because it had found the answer to its question about living another way in the world. After its experiences the little black fish became philosophical, saying:

‘… if someday I should be forced to face death -as I shall - it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the influence that my life or death will have on the lives of others …’

 

The location of the grandmother fish and her 12,000 children and grandchildren when she told them the story of the little black fish was at the bottom of the sea. The home of the little black fish was in a stream which came from a mountain and flowed through a valley. When grandmother fish finished telling them the story one of the little fish was unable to sleep because she could not stop thinking about the sea. But they were already at the bottom of the sea. They were already there and so did not have to go anywhere to search for the sea. Why was such an oversight in logic added to the end of the story? No comment has so far come to light on this discrepancy by any of Behrangi’s reviewers.

In the version of the story called Little Ebony the little fish ignored the advice of the minnow and was caught by the fisherman, but unlike the little black fish, she escaped and returned to her stream. Little Ebony sometimes got bored and dreamed of new places and exciting new fish-people at the beginning of the story, but contented herself with swimming around near home with her friend Bianca until the day that Goldy from Big River came and filled her head with stories. Goldy talked about Big River and how it was so much better than their little stream. As a result Little Ebony set off for Big River where she was chased by a huge fish. She escaped and hid under a rock where a minnow lived. The minnow told her that the big fish always tried to eat the little fish and that Ebony should also watch out for the fisherman’s hook. But she did not listen to the minnow and got caught on the fisherman’s hook. Little Ebony was very scared, but luckily she was so small that the fisherman let her go. The story ends:

‘Little Ebony swam straight back to her little creek and her beautiful, safe and happy home under Big Rock. She always listened to her mom and she never ran away again.’

 

These changed elements make for a very different reading of the story. First there was an agent, the Big River fish, Goldy, without whose influence Ebony may never have left home. Notice that she is alone. Her friend Bianca does not leave with her. The lessons to be learned from this version are that it is better to follow the rules and not disturb the status quo. Once caught on the fisherman’s hook Little Ebony has no plans to escape, no ideas of how to put the fisherman in his place. She is only ‘very scared.’ The way back home is open for her, however, and finally she is to be found in the same place as at the beginning of the story, now a model child, following her mother’s instructions. Although this version of the story should, due its satisfactory resolution which follows the pattern of many fairy stories, leave us feeling content, there is more of a sense of frustration than with Behrangi’s version. It seems almost watered down, its promise diminished.

This possible prototype for the Little Black Fish storyline gives a clear comparison to Behrangi’s version, showing the basic philosophical differences arising from the revolutionary rewriting of folktales.

This section will present various reviews, criticisms and commentaries on Behrangi’s children’s stories from a number of sources. Other views of his rewriting of stories in relation to history will be found in the later section on folktales.

To continue with the theme of revolutionary rewriting of folktales and the use of symbolism, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak comments in a review of The Little Black Fish and other Modern Persian Stories that such factors can make Behrangi’s work difficult to translate:

‘Hidden layers of meaning and covert turns of phrase designed to fool the government censors while at the same time convey their true meaning to an audience who seeks political statement in the heart of any literary work, makes his fiction all but untranslatable.’

 

At the same time this seems to deny children as the audience for Behrangi’s fiction as they are not renowned for seeking political statements in their bedtime stories. However, Behrangi stated himself on numerous occasions that he is addressing children in his stories. Could other writers be reading meanings into them where nothing so specific is intended? The language of his folktales appears to be quite simple and unambiguous, and at first glance easy enough to translate but, as with any writing, it does carry associations in its original language that are naturally lost upon translation. Brad Hanson seems to concur with Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak’s interpretation of Behrangi’s writing as containing social comments intended for adults while allowing that his folktales were also taught to the village children:

‘To evade the censor Behrangi used the folktale form. Behrangi’s fiction consists entirely of folktales, either translated from the Azeri Turkish or created anew. That he should have chosen this style is not at all surprising, given his fascination with Azeri folk literature and positive experiences in teaching folktales in the village schools. However, the opportunities to evade the censor through allegories and metaphors surely were not lost on Behrangi.’

 

Farzaneh Milani, in discussing the work of the writer Simin Daneshvar makes the following comparison with Behrangi’s work on the basis of his story Mahi Siyah-e Kuchulu (The Little Black Fish):

‘Besides abstaining from militant political stances, Simin Daneshvar has refused to follow the popular trend, typified by M.E. Beh’azin’s Dokhtar-e Ra‘ iyat [The Serf’s Daughter] (1951) and Samad Behrangi’s Mahi Siyah-e Kuchulu [The Little Black Fish] (1968), of portraying the triumph of idealistic dreams over social actualities. No little black fish of hers is sent to the sea to meet the pelican with its wide pouch, the swordfish with its sharp jawbone, or the heron with its long beak, ultimately presaging victory for all the fish in an ocean of danger. Hers is a world where ruthless wolves devour idealisticjf sheep, where wolves often wear sheep’s clothing. Rhapsodies of utopian longing catering to the longings of her readers have no value for this author. She sees no illusory romantic turning point in revolutionary changes; instead she cherishes and explores sustained, even though undramatic, efforts to change. "No sheep has ever devoured a wolf," she writes, "the point is how long one can resist."’

 

Milani finds Behrangi’s stories idealistic and utopian with idealistic dreams triumphing over reality. However, it has been seen that his stories also deal with the harsh facts of life. The little black fish himself dies (or at least, is never seen or heard of again) at the end of the story while killing his enemy the heron.

John West in his book review considers that the little black fish met its end due to tempting fate, and that the last few lines show that courage and the search for knowledge are their own reward:

‘…. just when the journey's end is in sight, and a home can be found with a band who defeat the fishermen by swimming together and dragging down their nets, the fish tempts fate once too often and goes down in a last desperate struggle.

 

In this way Behrangi leaves the listener unsettled, frustrating our yearning for the happy-ever-after. But courage and the search for knowledge are their own reward, as we see in the last few lines, when the grandmother has finished her bed-time story: "Eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety nine little fish ……"’

 

Behrangi’s own views shown in other writing, which will be examined later, advocate opening children’s eyes to reality, as do the prefaces he has written to some of his stories. Sabri-Tabrizi certainly does not find Behrangi’s stories shallow or utopian as can be seen from the following comments:

‘My friendship with Samad Behranghi, Behruz Dehqani and Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi became deeper when I learned that they were honestly and passionately devoted to serving the masses by their pen and voicing their silent griefs and shortcomings. At a time and in a society where all political parties are banned, freedom of speech is outlawed and historians do not dare to write the truth, the works of such writers and their socio-political literature becomes very valuable. In order to understand the history, the society and the political and economic conditions of the people in Iran (especially since the coup of 1953) [where Mossadeq was ousted] we must read and understand the works of writers like these…..’

 

Ricks finds that Samad Behrangi’s own life and works establish him as both artist and revolutionary. Ricks gives two reasons for the important influence of children’s stories on both adults and children: the first their direct and simple language and the second their greater opportunities to evade censorship through allegories and metaphors. Hanson considers that this led to ‘the folktale, euphemistically called "children’s literature," with its own long and rich history in Persian literature becoming one of the most important genres in post-June 1963 Iran.’ And in the afterword of the second edition Ricks notes that, although the stories are about and for children, they are also protests against mass poverty and ignorance:

‘His short stories, five of which are translated in this collection, deal with powerless individuals, especially children, who not only share the poverty of their parents, but must struggle to survive physically and mentally in a society which has long ignored their vulnerable natures. His style and vocabulary, innovations in themselves, reflect everyday speech. And because he did not believe that young people should be protected from knowledge of the harsh realities of life, he told stories with real pain, coarseness, and even cruelty. His stories, then, are about and for children: they are also thinly coded protests against mass poverty and ignorance.’

 

The Little Black Fish is seen by Thomas Ricks as an allegorical tale of the ways to achieve knowledge and consciousness of the dynamics of society. He says that Behrangi raises basic questions in the story concerning change and continuity in life and builds a clear understanding of society through the experiences of others. He continues:

‘The initial departure of the little black fish from his mother’s home and the resulting uproar due to the fish’s desire "to see the end of the stream" is a very important lesson in education and politics. The more the fish was pressed by his mother and neighbors to stay, the clearer the issues became. When questioned as to how the fish learned about there being "another world" and "an end to the stream", anyway, the fish replied that he learned about these matters on his own and from listening to others. After enduring the constant complaints of the old fishes, the little black fish wanted to know "is there another way to live in the world?"; a question the little fish could not answer until he had traveled and experienced other worlds.’

 

Behrangi’s introduction to Oolduz and the Talking Doll confirms his audience as working class children and criticizes rich spoilt children heavily when the doll says:

‘…every pampered and selfish child has no right to read Oolduz and my story, particularly the wealthy children who ride in big cars, look cocky, and think they’re heads taller than the vagabond and raggedy children in the street, never passing through the working-class districts. Mr. Behrangi himself said he writes principally for the vagabond, raggedy working-class children. Of course, misguided and self-indulgent children can read Mr. Behrangi’s stories but only after correcting their thoughts and actions’

 

In his stories Behrangi effectively highlights the gulf between the rich few, who enjoyed the financial and moral support of the Shah and his government, and the poor majority. He also stresses the gulf between theory and practice, the moral teachings and deeds, of the government. Brad Hanson describes Behrangi’s work as follows:

‘Behrangi’s corpus of fiction – short stories often referred to as children’s stories in the West, but really timeless folktales meant for child and adult alike – is deeply rooted in his village teaching experiences and his love for Azeri folk culture. Behrangi left no doubt that he wrote these tales to instruct and to incite.’

 

This can be seen in the story of Oolduz and the Crows where the crow tells Oolduz how it steals soup from courtyards or catches fish from pools. Oolduz and the Crows (Oolduz is a popular name for girls in Azerbaijan) criticizes social injustice and abstract moral laws. It was written after Behrangi’s first story, Taragon (1964), which had its background in Azeri myths and proclaimed him as an able and progressive writer. Behrangi, in his travels, had observed the uneven distribution of wealth in the villages and in the cities of Azerbaijan, which is a comparatively prosperous province of Iran.

Oolduz asks why the crow steals, disapprovingly adding that it is a sin. The crow accuses her of being childish and asks, "What is sin? When my children and I are dying of hunger it is a sin not to steal." He considers not fighting for survival to be a sin and to be unable to satisfy his hunger and that of his children to be a sin, especially when he can see that others have plenty. He tells Oolduz that her theoretical moralizing and empty advice can never prevent stealing, adding, ‘For as long as everyone seeks only his own interest, there will be stealing.’ This theme echoes the one in the story The Bald Pigeonkeeper [Kachal Kaftarbaz]. Behrangi perceives the issue of morality as being in its true oppressive position when seen in the reality of life for the majority of people in the world.

In the introduction to the second edition of his collection of children’s stories we find that despite being a writer of ‘children’s literature’ he was highly regarded by other intellectuals and artists in Iran:

‘Despite a short literary career, Behrangi’s output was voluminous. At the time of his death he was already recognized as one of the most important writers of contemporary Iran. The memorial essay by Gholam Hossein Sa’edi attests to the extraordinary influence and respected status Behrangi had attained among Iranian artists and intellectuals, even though his most popular works belong to the genre of children’s literature. Behrangi’s reputation is based primarily on his short stories which, although written originally for a youthful audience, contain social themes and philosophy of ageless appeal.’

 

Although Behrangi’s work covers issues ranging from education to various literary and social topics, it is his children’s stories that made him most famous and brought the wrath of the powers to be upon him. His stories, while quite popular among children, are widely enjoyed by adult readers, as well. They are seen to have a special relevance to children:

‘The stories are more directed towards the children who ‘glamour and money’ had not yet seduced and their ears and eyes weren’t filled with colors and songs.’

 

Behrangi’s stories demonstrate his concern with social class barriers and the ignorance of different groups of people in the society about others, especially the stereotyped city/country divide. He tried to act as a bond between the two groups and encouraged them to learn more about each other. He believed that before any action could be taken to improve people’s lives there had to be knowledge about the situation. Behrangi did not intend his stories to be mere entertainment but a reflection of reality with good battling against evil.

In his review of Behrangi’s work, John West in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs introduces The Bald Pigeon Keeper as follows:

‘The Bald Pigeon Keeper uses a traditional Eastern folktale formula but contains none of the escapism associated with that genre. The poor man who marries the princess is not handsome but bald. He does not set out to win his beloved but is pursued by her. His magical powers he uses first to steal, unconcerned for an individual happy ever-after ending. He succeeds by a courage which includes fearlessness in the face of the king and his army. The narrative, while containing these unusual elements, follows a smooth fairy-tale track - a subtle subversion.’

 

The story appears to follow a conventional plot, but with some quite extraordinary features. This has led to a number of interpretations. One suggestion asserts that Behrangi had projected the idea in this story that the Shah’s regime suffered from two weaknesses; one the lack of a proper educational and political mechanism and freedom, and the other social injustice, especially in the case of the honest and hard-working villagers. Certainly a similar theme can be seen here to the one in Oolduz and the Crows where the justification for stealing is that it is one’s duty to fight for survival in the face of unjust conditions.

Behrangi’s stories show the forces of good battling against evil. He did not intend them to be mere entertainment as can be seen from his preface to The Bald Pigeon Keeper which begins:

‘A few words:

Children, the future is in your hands and its good and evil belong to you. Whether you want to or not, you are growing up as time passes. You come after your fathers and elders and will take their places and inherit everything. You will be master of society. Poverty, oppression, power, justice, joy and sorrow, loneliness, punishment, work and idleness, prison and freedom, sickness and hunger and need, and a hundred strengths and weaknesses of society will belong to you…Poverty, oppression, lies, stealing, and war are illnesses seen only in an unhealthy society.’

 

This preface addresses children as the audience for the story. It lists the ills of society and makes children realize that they will be the ones who are responsible in the future. Behrangi continues by telling children to always ask themselves why, giving a number of examples: Why does my friend have to work in a carpet-weaving workshop? Why do people steal things? Why do countries fight wars? Where did we come from and what will happen to us when we die? What will happen to the world? When will war, poverty and hunger ever end? He says children must ask a thousand other questions in order to understand society and work to improve it in every possible way in order to pass something better on to their own children; one must induce change in one’s society, better that which is good and stamp out that which is not. He makes a comparison between the health of a body and that of a nation. All classes of society should count and visiting other villages and cities, mixing with different kinds of people and reading informative and thought provoking books, are advocated as a means towards understanding and improvement. Behrangi ends his ‘few words’ by saying that worthwhile stories can teach perceptive children about people, society and life, and that they need not be only for entertainment.

In discussing Kachal Koftarbaz, Sabri-Tabrizi says that although Behrangi’s story may seem rather simple and childish, his vision is sharp and that the story, despite being for children, was also meant to be read and understood by adults. He asserts that it was written in this style in order to avoid the attention of SAVAK, who would otherwise have prohibited its publication and that SAVAK came to fully understand the meaning of Samad’s works soon after his death, because of the influence he left behind among the people. Sabri-Tabrizi also considers the pigeons who rose from the dead to have special symbolism as can be seen from these comments of his on the story:

‘ "Sister, if Kachal feeds his goat on the leaves of the mulberry tree, and then milks his goat and rubs the milk on the necks of his dead pigeons, then the pigeons will wake up from their death sleep and do things that ordinary pigeons cannot do." This refers to those who were arrested or tortured by the SAVAK. After their release they knew things about the SAVAK that other people did not. They knew the SAVAK from the inside.’

 

Such interpretations are contentious as these stories are acknowledged to have been derived from folktales told long before SAVAK came into existence. The wider historical background of Behrangi’s stories and their relation to folktales will be further examined in a later section.

The Little Black Fish is said to be the most important of Behrangi’s works because its philosophy contains all of his essential ideas about society: that one should continually question one’s environment, oppose injustices, struggle against tyranny, and work actively to change the ills of society. These ideas mark a sharp break with the themes typically found in earlier twentieth century Iranian literature. Compared to writers such as Hedayat, Behrangi shows an optimistic approach, believing that society can be improved by individual action. This may also reflect his youthful outlook, not having had time in his short life to become disillusioned and resigned to the status quo.

It has been seen from the commentary in secondary sources that most critics comment only on Behrangi’s stories and that their opinions are mainly based on this one aspect of his work. However, all the various facets of Behrangi’s work need to be explored in order to fully appreciate his legacy, including his stories, his translations of other Iranian writers, his struggle to forward the Azerbaijani national cause, his efforts to perpetuate and advance the Azeri language, his essays on education, social conditions and children’s literature, and his work on the folklore of Azerbaijan. In his essays, Behrangi shows his aversion to American influence in Iran, offering solutions on a modest and practical scale rather than on a revolutionary one, at least in connection with education. This is a subject of which Behrangi had much practical experience and was able to write about in great detail. He was also very explicit in his ideas on the purpose of children’s literature, and in his criticism of other children’s writers whose ideology he disagreed with, as will be seen in the next section. In many of his short stories the class struggle is highlighted and the morals of the stories are clearly shown; that the underprivileged workers must rise up against the tyranny and injustice of those in power, after carefully making plans based on knowledge gained from personal experience.

Thus, in order to fully understand Behrangi’s philosophy and message, and to appreciate the different aspects of his legacy, it is necessary to read both his fiction and his essays.

Behrangi wrote a number of non-fiction works which were highly respected by his contempories and which found their place in the literature of resistance leading up to the Islamic Revolution. These are an essential part of the corpus of his work. In turning to Behrangi’s concerns and comments in his essays, Al-e Ahmad’s nickname for him, ‘Dagh-e Samad’ (‘Hot-headed Samad’), will be found very apt. In these works he criticized the Iranian bourgeoisie and the westernization of Iran openly and strongly. Unlike Jalal Al-e Ahmad, who completed an entire work of disparaging rhetoric on the above topics by way of an overall cultural analysis, Behrangi did not dedicate a particular piece of work to these subjects, but rather dwelt upon the issues on various occasions in his essays from a more class-oriented and leftist perspective.

Behrangi found that Western educational theories could not be put into practice under the conditions found in Iranian village schools. Thus in one of the chapters of his book, An Investigation into the Educational Problems of Iran, he wrote, ‘Until we see an environment or society closely, until we live in it, mix with the people and hear their griefs and learn about their wants, it is vain and useless to show ourselves sympathetic to that society and people, and even to write stories for them…’ He considered it impossible for a person living comfortably in Europe or Tehran while writing books about the education of poor villagers, to be objective or aware of the difficulties resulting from the living conditions of those villagers. Bashiri observes that:

‘He criticized both the methodology and the contents of the state-sponsored textbooks. He found the methodology to be outdated and the materials inappropriate. "Postal service, congratulatory notes, telephone conversation, and sitting at the table, although commonplace concepts in a western society, are alien to Iranian village children," he said. Rather than spending precious time explaining these concepts, he normally took the pen and replaced words and phrases that were inappropriate for village children.’

 

Several of Behrangi’s essays were gathered together and published by Behruz Dehqani in the summer of 1969 under the title Majmu’ah-e Maqalah-ha (A Collection of Articles). In one of his essays, Literature for Children, Behrangi strongly criticized passive and conventional moral and social laws, especially as applied to children:

‘That time is past when we limited children’s literature to propaganda and indoctrination; dogmatic advice on things such as personal hygiene, obedience to parents, listening to adults, not making noise in front of guests, being an early riser, in order to be successful; smile and the world smiles with you: helping the poor in the style of Charity Institutions, and many other examples like these, the total sum of which contributes to keeping children ignorant of the major issues and crucial problems of life and their living environment. Why should we smother the child in an unfounded cocoon of hope and happiness and joy while his elder brother is craving for one free breath, one breath of fresh air? The child should be disillusioned with baseless and unrealistic expectations but rather be given another type of hope based on knowledge of the realities of life and society and so replace the false hopes with a struggle to achieve these expectations.

Is there nothing else necessary for children to learn other than cleanliness and obedience to elders and listening to teachers (which teachers?) and politeness and ethics (which ethics?); that the powerful, rich and opulent support and propagate?

Should we not tell our children that there are children in this country who have not seen the color of meat or even cheese from one month to the next or even from one year to the next? Because there are a few people who always desire to have "goose cooked in wine" on their dinner table!…Should we not tell our children that more than half of the world’s population is hungry; and why they are kept hungry; and what ways we can fight to alleviate their hunger? Should we not teach our children a scientific and correct concept of the history, development and evolution of human societies? Why must we bring up children to be prim and proper, obedient and silent? Do we intend to put children behind the shop windows of luxury haberdashers stores at the top end of town and turn them into elegant dummies?’

 

He asks why we say falsehood and theft is bad and why we say obedience to parents is admirable, thinking it better that children should be shown the reasons for falsehood and theft being facts of life and common practice everywhere. Children are taught that they should be honest while at the same time the right eye lies to the left eye and brother mistrusts brother. If one were to directly speak that which was in one’s heart possibly a release could be found from some of these problems.

Is it admirable to obey unfit and pleasure-loving teachers and mothers and fathers whose only aim is to live comfortably and pass their time as much as possible without problems or inconveniences and to amass as much money as possible?

Why do we advocate charity for the poor but we never say how this person has become ‘poor’ and that one ‘wealthy’; one who puffs out his chest and imparts a worthless dread of his wealth to that poor old man and puts him under an indebtedness that ‘yes, I am a good and righteous man and I always give aid to poor and unlucky people like you, and of course this is for the sake of God’s blessing - otherwise you are not important enough to be a recipient of my kindness.’

He goes on to say that attention should be given to two major issues which lie at the heart of children’s literature:

1) Children’s literature must be a bridge between the colorful, blissfully ignorant and innocent world of children, their dreams and sweet imaginations, and the dark world of the adult whose consciousness is drowned in bitter and painful truth and in the hard social environment. The child must cross this bridge and venture into the dark world of adults with awareness and armed with light in hand. It is in this way that a child can be a help and a real friend to his father in life and a positive force for improvement in the sluggish and ever-sinking society.

A child should know by what suffering his father earns a crust of bread and how his elder brother is oppressed and completely stifled. This child should also know what way he must help his father in these dark days, this winter made by the hand of man. Children must be discouraged from having ‘unfounded false hopes’. Children must know that their fathers too are drowning hand and foot in the mire of society and, contrary to what all children wrongly think, the powers of their fathers, in truth, are confined to violence against their wives.

2) We should provide accurate and scientific information about the world to our children. We should give them values which enable them to deal with and evaluate the various moral and social problems in the ever-changing conditions and circumstances of society. We know that moral values are not constant; what was good a year ago may be bad two years later. An action which is considered moral in one society or community may be deemed immoral amongst other groups or classes. In a family where the father spends all his earnings on gambling and frolicking and has no positive impact on society, he is a barrier to social evolution. The child is not obliged to be obedient, truthful and silent. He does not have to accept his father’s views.

Behrangi strongly criticizes Abbas Yamini-Sharif’s poetry for children, saying that it has no message for children, other than ‘a great deal of amusement by way of excess verbosity and play on words and a great number of possibly antiquated moral codes.’ For example, in some places Yamini-Sharif mentions that people should be kind but Behrangi asks to whom should we be kind? Is it possible to be kind to the person on whose orders bombs are dropped on people? Is it possible to be kind to Hitler’s henchmen, who massacred innocent people? Yamini-Sharif decrees that hurting other people is bad. Behrangi asks, ‘Shall we not hurt those whose aim is hurting and spilling the blood of other people? Does he (Yamini-Sharif) mean that you should keep your head down like a sheep and follow the footsteps of other sheep and chew dirt and produce milk and nothing else?’

In other words children’s literature should not only propagate love and kindness to humanity, and frugality and humility, it should also tell the child to detest whatever and whoever is inhuman and an enemy of humanity. Fine sentiments about obedience and love for humanity from those who have the largest slice of the cake are to be expected, but for those who have only crumbs, these words are valueless. Behrangi castigates Yamini-Sharif thoroughly as a result of this philosophy:

‘The description of a bad child and monster that Mr. Yamini-Sharif gives, matches exactly the description of millions of poor children who are working in workshops and carpet-weaving factories, and vagrants in our society. Mr. Yamini-Sharif imagines that all the children in Iran and even in the world are like those children surrounding him, who have beautifully combed hair and whose trousers are well-creased, who never swear in public, never shout, and do not play on rubbish-tips. These children are not roaming the streets and restaurants from dawn to dusk selling lottery tickets, coat hangers, plastic coat-covers, ice-water and so on. They are not weaving carpets in damp, dingy cellars. All those children, who from dawn to dusk are forged in the kiln of life’s bitter experiences, in Mr. Yamini-Sharif’s view, are bad children; but the few children whose only virtues are keeping themselves tidy, eating with proper manners, showing obedience to their parents, not swearing or shouting, are good and exemplary.’

 

Thus, it can be seen that Behrangi opposed cotton wool fantasies and moralistic clichés for children, and had very strong views on what should be portrayed in children’s literature and the purpose it should serve. He favored a realistic approach while at the same time always striving for justice. Behrangi’s work reflects a number of political and historic influences. In the next section the inspiration given by his homeland’s folklore will be examined.

As previously mentioned, Samad Behrangi had collected Azerbaijani folktales and translated them into Persian. His fiction was strongly influenced by his country’s traditions and folklore, and in his philosophy of life he drew from the wisdom of the past as well as the reality of the present.

The stories of Samad Behrangi are seen as reflections of conditions and reactions to an unjust society; a way of giving voice to the grief of the ordinary people. Behrangi takes traditional folktales and in some cases rewrites them to reflect modern times and revolutionary ideas. They follow the tradition of folktales presenting the stark realities of power politics and the violence and brutality of everyday life, as well as projecting magical possibilities of becoming rich, gaining power and achieving one’s dreams. So, while being utopian on the one hand, they also present a realistic picture of life on the other. Boroujerdi acknowledges the importance of folk style and symbolism in Behrangi’s stories:

‘The significance of Behrangi’s stories stems not so much from their aesthetic nature (they followed straightforward plots and employed a simple language) but lies in the folk style and rich symbolism with which they were narrated. Behrangi represented the best of what can be regarded as populist and partisan literature.’

 

Karimi-Hakkak mentions the retelling by Behrangi of the adventures of Koroglu, a Robin Hood style hero of Turkish folk songs and oral tales, who was depicted as a proletarian hero fighting to eradicate social ills and human exploitation. Behrangi wrote in his introduction to The Epic of Koroglu:

‘Koroglu’s power is the power of the masses; that endless power which is the source of all power. Koroglu’s greatest virtue is his trust in this power…He does not forget, even for one moment, who he is, for whom he is fighting, and what the object of his struggle is. He is always mindful of his people whose backs are bent in slave labor beneath the pressure of the Khans and the ruling class.’

 

In looking closely at the origins of this particular folktale certain historical facts seem to refute the Robin Hood image of Koroglu. Vagif Samadoglu, commenting from a psychological perspective, believes that heroic epics and legends within a society are created out of anxiety, such as fear of death or vulnerability. When people are afraid, they create heroes to save themselves from disaster. In his opinion, legends and epics are expressions of this desperate plea for help. By believing in legends that they themselves have created, people are able to alleviate some of these fears.

He cites the example of Koroglu: ‘The legend of Koroglu emphasizes the spirit of heroism - the heroism of one person who stood up against the rulers of his time. Like Robin Hood, Koroglu was a ‘gachag,’ a person who fought against the wealthy landowners and khans.’ Almost every region of Azerbaijan, during the 19th century, had its gachags and many stories and epics were created about them, praising their heroic deeds and bravery. Samadoglu notes that perhaps as many as 70 percent of these very gachags were working for the Russian Empire in its attempt to overthrow the landowners and rulers in the region. The poor were not their main concern. Quite possibly the praise songs and stories were created in an attempt to placate these ‘heroes’ until people started to believe that they were true. Samadoglu comments as follows on this phenomenon: ‘In my opinion, the greatest tragedy related to our legends is when a lie is accepted as truth through misinterpretation.’

In a way Samadoglu is accusing writers like Behrangi for taking these legends at their face value. He gives further examples of how such stories and legends have been changed, misused or misrepresented to serve idealistic political or moralistic viewpoints:

‘When it comes to legends, sometimes our suspension of disbelief goes too far, and we are led to believe the absurd. For instance, the epic says that Koroglu only robbed the wealthy, and didn’t touch the poor. But why would he have bothered with the poor? What did the poor have? Koroglu didn’t steal from the poor simply because they had nothing to steal.

 

When we grew up in the Soviet period and read legends and epics at school, most of them were in a manipulated version. How do we know? For example, there is a scene in Koroglu in which a gardener tells Koroglu to come to the garden because his wife Nigar will be there. Koroglu asks: "What time should I come?" Those who interfered with the story weren’t careful about small details and nuances and forgot that during the period when Koroglu lived several centuries earlier, watches and clocks had not yet been invented.’

 

Thus the interpretation of the origins and meanings of folktales can be seen as a somewhat contentious area. Often the message of a story is not explicit but intentionally placed beneath layers of symbolism and imagery. This can be seen by the different levels that can be read into any story and the numerous meanings that can be extracted according to one’s age and perspective.

If folktales and fairy stories are closely examined it will be found that while encouraging the imagination of children they also contain strong didactic messages about how to deal with the world. This is important since much modern writing for children worldwide has its roots in such tales, even though the tales themselves were not originally told only to children but to a mixed audience. Jack Zipes observes that the concerns of European society in the pre-industrialized fifteenth to seventeenth centuries were what shaped European folktales. He also notes the influence of stories from other cultures:

‘Not only did bourgeois and aristocratic writers explore and exploit the treasures of French folklore, but they also borrowed from the Italian literary tradition… and they began to translate oriental fairy tales which had a tremendous influence. In 1704 Galland published part of the Arabian Nights and in 1707 Petit de Lacroix edited a collection of Persian fairy tales under the title A Thousand and One Days.

 

The stories reflected monarchistic, patriarchal and feudal societies with the focus on class struggle and competition for power with the central theme of ‘might makes right.’ Despite the introduction of many changes when the tales were written down and subsequently rewritten many of them retain key elements found in the oral versions. Zipes agrees with Tenèze in identifying power and oppression as the key themes of folktales:

‘This is why the people, largely peasants, were predominantly attracted to the tale and became its prime carriers; the oral folktales were those symbolic acts in which they enunciated their aspirations and projected the magic possibility in an assortment of imaginative ways so that anyone could become a knight in shining armor or a lovely princess. They also presented the stark realities of power politics without disguising the violence and brutality of everyday life. Starvation of children, rape, corporeal punishment, ruthless exploitation – these are some of the conditions which are at the root of the folktale, conditions which were so overwhelming that they demanded symbolic abstraction.’

 

These are the folktales which have been used as a basis for modern children’s stories. By using symbolic abstraction it may be possible to read them on two different levels, thus presenting a children’s reading and an adults’ reading of the same story.

The magical possibilities and mystic elements perform a practical function in stories, according to Zipes and others. The magic and miraculous represent metaphorically the conscious and unconscious desires of the lower classes to seize power. In the process power takes on a moral quality. The fact that the people as carriers of the tales do not openly seek total revolution does not minimize the utopian aspect of their portrayal of class conflict. Zipes notes:

‘Whatever the outcomes of the tales are – and for the most part they are happy ends and ‘exemplary’ in that they affirm a more just feudal order with democratizing elements – the impulse and critique of the ‘magic’ are rooted in an historically explicable desire to overcome oppression and change society.’

 

In the case of Persian children’s literature, as with any country’s literature, the effects of history, tradition, politics, religion and morals play an important part in shaping what is written and what is considered suitable for children. The tradition of folklore and folktales has created a strong foundation for the many modern children’s tales found today in Iran. The Persian national epic, the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi (completed in 1010 AD) has a wealth of mythical, heroic and historical elements. This classic took Ferdowsi over thirty years to finish and has had a lasting impact upon the Iranian imagination. Azin Mostajet Haghighi identifies fate, revenge and also justice as main themes which are significantly represented in this and other epics. In her book entitled Persian Fairy Tales Eleanor Brockett tells of the sad ending of the hero Jamsheed whose downfall was caused by pride. It led to his losing everything including his kingdom and his princess when he was captured and tortured to death by the evil Zohak. This is a story from the Shahnameh.

The question arises; what is myth and what is fairytale, or epic or folktale? Despite being given separate definitions, in reality, the limits are often unclear, with stories moving from one category to another. Parts of stories are removed from their context and retold, rewritten, modernized, fantasized, translated, adapted and given many other treatments. The story of Rostam, the legendary hero of the Shahnameh, has been rewritten into a twentieth century children’s fantasy story where Rostam and his demon steed Rakhsh race with Jankas, the modern hero, who rides a motorbike. The enduring nature of the effect of folktales and their modern application as children’s tales can be clearly seen in the continuing popularity of the themes and characters of old, and their numerous adaptations.

Thus any modern children’s writer in following conventions set by folktales may well unwittingly echo these concerns in their stories. On the other hand, a writer who wished to examine such issues without attracting the wrath of a powerful regime which inflicted wrongs upon the weaker classes of society could shelter under the umbrella of metaphorical representation and symbolic abstraction in children’s stories as has been noted in the case of Samad Behrangi.

In order to better understand the influences underlying Behrangi’s philosophy leading to his contribution as a social and political commentator it is useful to know something of the historical background of Azerbaijan, the region of Iran which was his home. It will be seen that he comes from a background of struggle to achieve a voice, of alternating powers seeking to influence the politics of the region and of writers and poets who have developed a kind of literature using allegory and metaphor to describe their yearning for a united homeland with its own culture and language.

Azeri national movements in Iran throughout the twentieth century were supported by the North - not only from the Azeris living north of the Iranian border, but especially from the Soviet Union. They were also cultural and traditional movements: over the years they developed their own school of literature, the ‘literature of longing,’ and this literature developed its own symbolism. The struggle in Azerbaijan has left a number of victims and martyrs, of which Samad Behrangi is considered to be one. The Azeri popular song, ‘Semed, Semed!’ is dedicated to Behrangi. Another victim was Pishevari, president of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, established under Soviet protection in 1945. He perished in 1947 in a strange case of ‘accidental’ death in Northern Azerbaijan, the circumstances of which are still unexplained. The Soviet authorities officially reported his death as the result of a car accident.

The origin of the Southern Azerbaijani National Liberation Movement can be found when Azerbaijan was divided up between Russia and Iran by the1828 Treaty of Turkmanchay. It was during the World War II occupation of northern Iran by the USSR that the real beginning of the modern nationalist movement took place. During this time many Soviet Azeris were present, performing various social functions including the establishment of newspapers, magazines, cultural contacts, and the training of Southern Azeri journalists, writers and political activists in their own language and culture. This must have been liberating for the Southern Azeris as the teaching of the Azerbaijani language had been banned under Reza Shah during the period between the early 1920s and 1941. As a child Samad Behrangi was able to see publications in Azerbaijani, something that was denied to him as an adult writer. For a brief period during his formative years he was able to freely encounter the teaching of his own language, to see it on the front of newspapers and publications in shops, and to feel a strong pride in his own ability to speak Azerbaijani. This atmosphere must have strengthened him immensely in the struggle he later undertook to perpetuate his language. On 1st November 1941 the Azerbaijan Society published its first issue of the newspaper, Azerbaijan, which was the first newspaper written in Azerbaijani for twenty years. The next year the Tabriz anti-Axis, pro-Allied Forces ‘anti-fascist’ committee published Yumuruq and Vatan Yolunda (Towards the Homeland) was published by the Soviet Department of Propaganda.

Mirza Ibrahimov, who was an influential figure for the Southern Azeris in the post-war years, wrote in 1983 that Vatan Yolunda shone like a light in the darkness for the Southern Azeris, for whom schools, the press, and literature in the mother tongue had been banned, and who had suffered oppression and persecution through the denial of their identity, nationality, history, culture, and language under the tyranny of the Shah for two decades.

After the departure of the Red Army the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, which had been established in Iranian Azerbaijan under Soviet protection in 1945, collapsed. This resulted, before Behrangi had reached the age of 10, in the flight of many southern Azeri political leaders, poets and writers to Soviet Azerbaijan. They were received warmly by the literary community and gradually they integrated into Soviet Azeri society, with many of them continuing to work for the liberation of Southern Azerbaijan.

Despite the physical removal of all these writers from the Iranian Azerbaijani scene, their works were known throughout the whole of Azerbaijan. These patriotic and nationalistic works inspired many young Azerbaijanis of the time, including Behrangi. Mirza Ibrahimov’s novel The Coming Day, published in Baku in the late 1940s, dealt with the Southern Azeri national liberation struggle. This novel was revised and translated into Russian, and received the Lenin Prize, thus creating a much wider audience for the ‘Southern Question.’ Suleyman Rustam also won a Soviet state prize in 1947 for poetry reflecting his experiences in Tabriz during the Soviet occupation. The Moscow journal Ogonyok voted his ‘Winter in Tabriz’ one of the best poems of 1949. During this same period Jafer Khendan set down guidelines for the symbols of ‘longing’ for Southern Azerbaijan and the history of the entire Southern movement in his 1949 doctoral dissertation ‘The Ideas of the National Liberation Movement in Southern Azerbaijan,’ guidelines that are still followed by poets and critics today. Although allegorical symbols are used, any reader can still read its poetry without losing any meaning: for example a verse from Kamran Mehdi’s 1983 poem ‘Longing’ is understandable by all:

‘The Araz, nurturing us with sorrow,
Flows on, cutting like lightning.
True, the Araz divides a nation,
But... the earth underneath is one!’

 

The Azeri nationalist movement was linked to communism through the support of its northern, Soviet half. However, most southern Azeris gradually found the ideals of Marxism-Leninism unacceptable and this reduced Soviet influence in the political sphere. The emphasis of Southern ideologists centered more on developing the sense of an Azerbaijani nationality, distinct from that of other nationalities within Iran, through promoting the development of the Azeri Turkish language. It has been seen that Behrangi was a leading advocate of this policy. This emphasis also resulted in the Azeri sense of nationality being enhanced within Soviet Azerbaijan. The aim was to achieve a sense of common Azeri identity which superseded the Iranian or Soviet identity among the Azeris whether one lived north or south of the Araz River. Such was the background which formed and nurtured Behrangi’s ideology. These were the forces which shaped him into the powerfully idealist writer that he was to become. Behrangi’s interest in stories and folktales, as part of Azeri culture, and Azeri politics, were kindled as he was growing up. When he later traveled around Iran as a teacher he saw the widespread unequal distribution of wealth and wrote his essays and stories to reach an increasingly universal audience.

The paper began with a short biography of Samad Behrangi. It then examined five of his children’s stories published in the two-year period 1967 to 1968, with a section of commentary, followed by an analysis of some of his non-fiction writing, comprising his work on children’s literature and education in Iran, and a discussion of the influence of folktales. The following historical section showing the events in Azerbaijan which affected Behrangi as a child was intended to give an insight into his motivation and ideology. It was found that in secondary literature his critics mainly looked at his fiction. This does not give a true overall picture and it is necessary to take other aspects into account. By looking at Samad Behrangi’s life and work, examining some of his short stories in detail and some of his non-fiction, especially his writing on children’s literature, it can be appreciated that it is impossible to understand the career and contributions of this writer without taking into account aspects of all these elements.

Elements of folktales have been examined and also their effect and influence on modern tales and modern writers. In Iran the folktale has formed the basis for a number of modern children’s stories. The life and work of Samad Behrangi has been used to illustrate this connection and his educational and political philosophy has been analyzed with reference to both his fiction and his additional works in essay form. Behrangi’s own views on the purpose of children’s literature have been examined, especially as revealed in his essays. Although his stories may sometimes have a tendency towards promoting idealistic dreams over social actualities, they do not always contain an illusory romantic turning point resulting in revolutionary changes. The social and political conditions of Behrangi’s time have been examined, especially with regard to the ensuing censorship. The paper ends with a historical overview of Azerbaijan, intended to illuminate the historical background of Behrangi’s reality and the forces which informed his writing and led to the formation of his ideas.

Behrangi’s views were strongly influenced by the history of his land and the political events surrounding him as a child. He nevertheless had the gift of seeing elemental truths and recognizing essential issues which affect all parts of the world. His writing raises questions that educators and children’s writers in many countries argue about to this day. In addition to questions concerning the definitions of different kinds of stories, and whether they were really meant for children at all, there is the ongoing debate about what children should be exposed to in the way of stories, reading and literature. To return to the wider perspective, should children’s literature encourage children’s imagination and protect them from the evil realities of the world or should it open their eyes and train them in methods of dealing with such eventualities? As we become adults how are we affected by what we have read as children and what do we retain from our reading? Such memories and opinions are highly personal and are bound to differ widely from person to person. Farzaneh Milani says the following about the effects of children’s stories:

‘We surrendered our childhood to their titillating accounts of adventure and romance, blending the real and the fantastic. Their captivating stories could cast a spell to prevent ruthless kings, monsters, and intruders from executing evil designs. We basked in their fancy and trusted their mystic and dreamlike qualities that opened vistas of beauty, adventure, and splendor in our bewildered minds. Our childhood was impregnated with and transformed by these tales, which like those told by Shahrezad to tame the enraged and violent king, consoled, distracted, delighted, and engaged the imagination.’

 

The role of children’s literature in the socialization of children is accepted by educators. Leslie Kant notes the importance of early reading on attitudes and behavior in her foreword for a Schools Council publication:

A Language for Life, the report of the Bullock Committee, a UK Education Department committee, states ‘It is never too soon to start thinking about the ways in which attitudes may be influenced by reading’. Most teachers would argue, it says, that apart from the acquisition of language, the major role of fiction is to encourage children to explore relationships and to develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior and that of others, and the images that children encounter when reading are a powerful means of shaping such thinking and behavior. If, as the Bullock Committee states above, fiction has a major role in encouraging children to explore relationships and to develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior and that of others, then children’s stories based on folktales do much more than ‘open vistas of beauty, adventure, and splendor in the bewildered minds of children with their mystic and dreamlike qualities.’

Several differing points of view on the interpretation of children’s writing have been examined in this paper, from the somewhat cynical observations of Samadoglu to the delightful ‘basking in the fancy of and having our childhood transformed by children’s stories’ of Milani. From an educational point of view, the Bullock Committee considers that the major role of fiction is to encourage children to explore relationships and develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior. It has been seen that the very tenacity of those children’s stories arising from folktales has given them the power to affect the views of entire generations.

Samad Behrangi is one Iranian writer who became famous due to his children’s books. The fact that they were translated into English made them available to a much wider audience than just that of the Persian-speaking community. There are many other writers of children’s stories in Iran as well as a number of organizations dedicated to the production of material for children. The advent of the Islamic Revolution has changed the parameters drastically for both writers and organizations. Permissible topics have changed, the purpose of children’s literature has been redefined, politics within Iran have changed and the outside world and times have also moved on. How much has really changed in an underlying economic and cultural sense remains to be seen.

Subsequent research will seek to explore these topics further and to show the important position of children’s literature in influencing and maintaining a society’s cultural norms.

Al-e Ahmad, Jamal, Gharbzadegi, Tehran: Ravaq, 1341/1962. [Translated by John Green and Ahmad Alizadeh], Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1997.

Atabaki, Touraj, Azerbaijan: ethnicity and the struggle for power in Iran, London: Tauris, 2000.

Azar Afshar, Ahmad, Afsanha-ye Azerbaijan, Tehran: Day Publishers, 1989.

Bashiri, Iraj, A Brief Note on Samad Behrangi's Life, 2000, at website: http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Authors/Behrangi.html

Behbood, N., ed. website: www.behrangi.com

Behrangi, Samad, Kandokav dar Masa’el-e Tarbiyati-ye Iran (An Investigation into the Educational Problems of Iran), Tabriz: 1965; (cited by Sabri-Tabrizi, 1989, bibliography, p.293 publisher not given.) Tehran: Shabgir, 1969; (cited by Boroujerdi, 1996, p.223.) Also cited by Ricks, 1984, p.473 as Tehran: 1965, publisher not given; and by Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol. IV, p.110 as summer 1965, place and publisher not given).

Idem , Qesse-ha ye Behrangi, (Stories of Behrangi), Tabriz: Shams Publications, 1967.

Idem , The Little Black Fish & other Modern Persian Stories, Tehran: publisher not given, 1968. Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1976, 2^nd edition 1987. [English-translators Eric Hooglund & Mary Hegland]

Idem , Majmu’ah-e Maqalah-ha (A Collection of Essays), Tabriz: Shams Publications, 1969. 2^nd edition, Tehran: Entesharat-e Dunya va Entesharat-e Ruzbahan, 1978.

Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, Iranian Intellectuals and the West/ The Tormented Triumph of Nativism, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996.

Brockett, Eleanor, Persian Fairy Tales, London: Frederick Muller Ltd. 1962.

Bullock Committee of Inquiry final report into Reading and the Use of English, ‘A Language for Life,’ London, 1975.

‘Children’s Literature,’ Encyclopaedia Iranica, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Vol.5, 1992, pp.417-423.

Dianaty, Hamid (Sassan), translator and D. Denise, illustrator, Little Ebony, at website: http://members.tripod.com/~DianatyHome/ebony1a.html

Hillman, Michael C. ‘Behrangi, Samad,’ Encyclopaedia Iranica, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Vol.5, 1992, pp.110-111.

Hanson, Brad, ‘The Westoxication of Iran: Depictions and Reactions of Behrangi, Al-e Ahmad and Shariati,’ International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 15, 1983, pp.1-23.

Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, ‘Iranica Heirloom’, Iranian Studies, Vol.31, No. 3 & 4, Summer/Fall 1998, pp.527-542.

Idem , Book Reviews; S. Behrangi, The Little Black Fish & other Modern Persian Stories [English-translators Eric Hooglund & Mary Hegland] Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, Iranian Studies, Vol.10, No. 3, Summer 1977, pp.216-224.

Milani, Farzaneh, Veils and Words, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1992.

Mostajet Haghighi, Azin, A Comparative Study of Fate and Revenge in The Story of Siyavush of Shahnameh and the Nibelungenlied, Unpublished MSc Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2000.

Nissman, David, ‘The Two Azerbaijans: A Common Past and A Common Future,’ Caspian Crossroads, Vol. 1, Issue No. 2, Spring 1995 at website:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/usazerb/casp.htm

Ricks, Thomas M., ed., Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature, Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984.

Sabri-Tabrizi, Gholam-Reza, Iran, A Child’s Story, A Man’s Experience, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Co. 1989.

Samadoglu, Vagif, ‘Viewpoint: Legends and the Soviet Period, Manipulating the Text,’ Azerbaijan International, Autumn 1998 Vagif Samadoglu, ‘Viewpoint: Legends and the Soviet Period, Manipulating the Text,’ Azerbaijan International, Autumn 1998, Vol.6 No.3 at website: www.azer.com

Shamloo, Ahmed, ed., ‘Yad Name-ye Samad,’ Friday’s Book (Ketab-e Jome’e), Tabriz: Maziar Publishing, 15 Shahrivar, 1358/1979, pp.2-29.

Stones, Rosemary, Schools Council Programme 3: ‘Developing the Curriculum for a changing world,’ ‘Pour out the cocoa, Janet’: sexism in children’s books, York: Longman for Schools Council, 1983.

Tenèze, Marie-Louise Ed., Approches de nos traditions orales, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1970.

Zipes, J. Fairy Tales & the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children & the Process of Civilization, London: Heinemann, 1983.

Short Stories

Folktales and Poems

1342/1963 Summer Pareh Pareh (Tiny Pieces).
1344/1965 and 1347/1968 Afsaneh-ha-ye Azerbaijan (Tales of Azerbaijan). 2 volumes, translated from Azerbaijani into Farsi.

Anthologies/Translations

n.d. Daftar-e Asha’ir-e Mu’aser az Chand Sha’ir-e Farsi Zaban (A Notebook of Contemporary Poetry from Several Persian-Speaking Poets).
1348/1969 Summer Kharabkar: Qesseh-ha-i az Chand Nevisandeh-ye Turk Zaban (Saboteur: Stories from Several Turkish-Speaking Writers).
Kalagh Siyaheh (The Crow).

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