Why war in the Middle East is central to Salar Abdoh's works

Regarding Out of Mesopotamia, how do the trips to battle and the religious pilgrimage frame the novel's larger questions?

The novel obviously is, from a certain point of view, about the reality of combat in modern life – a reality that can become absurd because of the ubiquitous presence of social media, even in the midst of battle.

However, it is also about how other issues, such as the art trade, can factor into these 21st-century wars. Nevertheless, on a fundamental level, this novel tries to confront how faith and belief, but also boredom and lack of opportunities and injustice back home, give rise to a multiplicity of scenarios which ultimately end on the question of life and death and how life and death are interpreted.

Out of Mesopotamia is a complex novel that intersects personal, national, and global confusion. How do you convey this complexity through the narrative structure?

Well, the most obvious way the novel tries to convey these complexities is through the person of the main character, Saleh. He is at once a journalist, a screenwriter for state television, an art writer and someone who eventually steps beyond the boundaries of being a mere journalist and engages in actual combat.

In other words, he is no longer a disinterested observer and reporter. There are stakes for him in the war, and those stakes, he realises, have to do with many things – the war industry, the martyrdom industry, literary opportunism, propaganda.

The narrative structure, therefore, has to show Saleh in all the many roles he plays or is forced to play. In some of these roles, he does better than in others. What is interesting about Saleh for me is that he has a complete awareness of himself in each of these situations; he is able to comment on them and on himself. And by doing so, he is constantly deconstructing war and peace by deconstructing himself.

I have noticed that you often explore the complexities of human relationships, as seen in Tehran at Twilight. What draws you to explore these themes?

If I write novels at all, it is probably because of human relationships and how they manifest themselves in all sorts of scenarios. In Tehran At Twilight, I basically follow the trajectory of the lives of two close friends who part ways after college. One becomes a writer and a professor, not unlike myself, and the other enters an underworld web of terror that also involves intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies.

In the midst of this narrative line, I also explore two complicated mother-son relationships. I am interested in these themes because I am interested in understanding what drives people to do the things they do and the choices they make.

There is often a fine line between sympathy and betrayal, between devotion and treachery. In Tehran At Twilight, I was especially interested in exploring these themes to their ultimate ends because the choices being made were, once again, life and death choices.

The book has been described as a smart political thriller. Tell us about the writing process.

Tehran at Twilight was born out of my interest in yet another one of America's disastrous wars in the Middle East. The novel takes place as the war in Iraq is starting to wind down. Times like these, when critical geopolitical shifts in a region are happening, lend themselves to the political/literary thriller at its best. But only if you pay attention to the human factor and avoid polemics.

My aim in writing such a novel was not to write about who is good and who is bad but rather about how women and men are driven to the limits of their endurance in the face of historical forces that overwhelm them.

When I think about, say, a political thriller, I think about the individual characters involved in any given situation rather than the headlines that move them. And then I begin writing.

Tehran at Twilight is your first novel translated into Arabic. How did you evaluate this experience, and did you and the translator have discussions about the narrative text?

Coming to Egypt to launch the book in Arabic and be a part of its life was amazing and unexpected. But in truth, I had little input into the actual translation process.

As a journalist, you've worked in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. How does the chaos and danger of war impact your creative process?

Since I am not a traditional journalist, in that I don't go somewhere with the express intention of reporting about a place for a specific venue, my relationship to war is a bit different than that of a typical war correspondent.

By that, I mean I am as interested in the persona of, let's say, a war correspondent as in what actually is taking place in a battle zone. I am interested in the secondary details, in the things people don't see or don't pay much attention to, the people in the peripheries, the invisible people.

So 'chaos' or 'danger' in a war that you mention, in a way, become characters in themselves. And I acknowledge this even before I go into a location because I have been through it before and know how things happen, one after another, in these extreme situations.

In other words, the creative process is a package I carry in the way another journalist might carry their recorder, camera, or keyboard. I am watching the watchers, and that creates a double energy, a strange energy that allows me inside the interiors of war, where I am most comfortable and, I suppose, most creative.

Lately, you have visited Cairo. Tell us more about this visit.

To be in Cairo in the flesh and to see the weight of history scattered in every nook and cranny of this awe-inspiring, mad, beautiful and sometimes aching city is to experience the curve of time as if in one breath.

The incredible writers I met, my own excellent publisher in Cairo, and the average person in the street made me feel as if I had truly arrived at a second home. The people of Egypt, and I guess especially the people of Cairo, often ask a person where they are from. When the word 'Iran' comes to my lips, a whole other dynamic takes place than if I were to say I was from France, Germany, or the US.

Suddenly, there is a mutual understanding, a shared vocabulary and consciousness, and we engage in talks that I doubt an Egyptian would be able to have with a visitor from these other places.

In truth, I feel like I have always dreamed of Egypt, and now that I have been there, I think I want to continue this dream of mine. Because, in many ways, Egypt and Cairo, no matter what the circumstances at the time, remain the dream palace of the Middle East and North Africa for many of us.

As a writer and translator, how would you describe contemporary literature in Iran?

Like any other place, contemporary literature in Iran is both interesting and problematic. I recently published an essay on this subject called The Contemporary Literary Scene in Iran. In the piece, I discuss where we stand today in regard to the novel, poetry, theatre, and nonfiction writing and the role of state and non-state censorship in how literature and art are expressed.

For me, the two most interesting developments in Iran in the last few years have been the explosion of personal essay writing, especially by women, and the flocking of many readers to contemporary Arabic literature translated into Persian. I also talk about these two specific developments in my article.

Could you mention some literary voices in Iran that haven't been translated yet?

Well, there really are legions of them that have not been translated, dozens and hundreds. In the last decade, I have tried to spend quite a bit of my time actually translating Persian works into English. Usually, I translate essays and sometimes short stories. This way, I get to translate as wide an array of writers as possible.

Many of those translations into English in the past couple of years have appeared, for instance, in The Markaz Review, out of Montpellier, France. But I also translate for other venues in North America and the UK. I am very interested in the craft of translation and in getting the authentic voices of writers inside Iran heard.

What can readers anticipate from your upcoming novel? Are there any recurring themes or new directions you're exploring?

I'm interested in the movements of people around our planet right now – the huge influx of people from one location to another because of war, climate change, economic hardship and political upheaval.

Therefore, I have been travelling widely in the past year just being with people, in camps, on the road, on the streets of this city and that city, talking to them, and trying to understand what exactly it means when you are forced to leave your land.

In a way, all of these issues I have explored before in other books, but now I am making it more personal because I, too, was a displaced person once. And if you have ever been in the position of someone who is left standing with nothing, nothing at all, in a strange land other than your own, you cannot simply close your eyes and walk away from someone else's similar ordeal. At least, I can't.

You want to know what led this person here, how they survived, and what they intend to do next. I hope to be able to write about these things in a way that turns the 'big picture' about actual individual lives and their relationship to one another.