The setting of Faqiri's stories is the agricultural communities of Kerman and Fars provinces of Iran. This is a region constantly faced with scarcity of water, intrusion of desert into the sown and, consequently, of intense struggle for survival.

The time setting for the stories corresponds roughly to the time of their composition, circa 1965-67. This time frame is important in view of changes brought about by the Shah's "White Revolution," and the subsequent effect that these measures exercised on the peasantry.

Faqiri skillfully "weaves" the time element into his stories, illustrating how rapid and ruthless was the transition from traditional village life to the more centrally controlled shahrak existence. In "ab" (Water) written in 1967, for instance, we find government officials implementing centrally issued decrees; they impose unreasonable quotas on villages, quotas that had been drawn up by technocrats unfamiliar with individual village needs. When the villagers resist the administration's blind judgment, they are insulted, humiliated and vilified. Their chiefs are led out of their villages treacherously and incarcerated in town, later to be punished by the Tehran authorities.

On a different plane, however, the stories are timeless. They deal with the problems that have, over centuries, plagued the Iranian villager. Lack of identity, difficulty in providing viable health and education for the village and, above all, a means for doing away with landlords and their exploitative schemes. That the landlord had been a fixed factor in the Iranian villager's life from ancient times made any dealing with the landlord cumbersome.

What is Faqiri's contribution? He brings some of the traditional "skeletons" out of the closet and discusses them in the context of even more formidable exploitative measures being put in place by the government. It is this aspect of Faqiri's work, this fresh look at the relationship among the peasants, the religious hierarchy and the central administration that makes the stories more than a nostalgic look at pre-industrial Iran. Faqiri's stories disclose past efforts to exploit the villager without his knowledge and points to the various strata involved in the exploitation . At times, it even tries to instruct the uneducated farmer about his rights. By talking to the villager, Faqiri opens a new vista into urban-rural relationship in Iran. At times, he even goes beyond that and clearly delineates the role that the villager should play in dealing with complex problems that in the past he had been relegated to the landlords and the politicians.

Rather than creating fictional characters, Faqiri changes the names of actual village folks. He then allows these individuals to serve as mouthpieces to describe their own plight. Generally he refers to villagers as "they". "They" constitutes a nameless mass from among whom only a few individuals are distinguished by name. Even these individuals, it should be mentioned, are often given ordinary, colorless names. One character, however, stands alone. This character is Mr. Saberi, the hero of the short story by the same name.

As was with characters, so is with themes. Faqiri does not attempt to bring any new concerns in, not at least if we do not regard the themes of foreign aggression and exploitation of Iran of her mineral and human resources be considered a known reality by the 1960s. He does, however, place the old themes in a new light. At times makes them poignant and compelling enough to warrant a second look and a reconsideration of their merit.

A major theme of Persian fiction, indeed the very theme that puts Persian fiction on its way with Jamalzadeh's "Once Upon a Time," is education. In "Persian is Sugar," Jamalzadeh comes to the conclusion that a lack of education has blurred the lines distinguishing the various strata of Iranian society and, he asserts that as long as this state continues, various opportunists--governmental officials (from the farrash to the hakem), religious personages (from the mullah to the mujtahid), and the intelligentsia (from the elementary school teacher to the returnees from Europe) would exploit the benighted masses, masses whose understanding of the world of the time has been ably portrayed by James Morier in The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan as early as 1823.

Following Jamalzadeh, Sadeq Hedayat identified lack of education as one of the most damaging factors in preventing Iranian society from making meaningful advances. In story after story he portrayed the ways "evil" entered society and harmed innocent men and woman. Often characters, like people, found themselves in situations from which their wits could not extricate them. They were all destined to oblivion as if bound by some predestined decree to self destruct. Via vehicles as telling as "Dash Akol" and "Don Juan of Karaj," Hedayat shows that education is not tied to either traditional or modern life, but to an understanding of man's place in the scheme of things. Man can live a tranquil life and prosper in both surroundings, if he can master the knowledge necessary to bring about that desired state.

Socially, however, he condemns the Ministry of Education, the very institution that has accepted the guidance of the community and the rearing of the offspring of the people. Sadeq Hedayat's "Patriot" is not merely a condemnation of the old by the new, but also a testament to the inanity of the system that believed that the mere advertising of greatness would be tantamount to greatness.

Jalal Al-i Ahmad, one of the capable intellectuals of Faqiri's time, became so infuriated with the system that he struck out of his normal fiction cocoon and wrote an essay, "Fascination with the West," to root out the cancer that consumed the Iranian masses. He advocated a gravitation to the East, to India and Japan, for instance, as a means of revitalization of Iranian and Islamic potentials for rebuilding Iranian society.

It was not, however, until the appearance of Samad Behrangi that the problems of education in Iran were put in proper perspective. And it was not until the publication of stories by Gholam Hossein Sa'edi that the depth of the misery could be fathomed. Behrangi and Sa'edi allowed their readers, who were mostly snugly ensconced in the upper echelon of society, the misery upon which they had built their castles and gardens. Stories like "The Second Story," "The Sixth Story," and "The Game is Up" showed the darker side of an Iran that was coming apart at the seams. In "The Game Is Up" we find that a child gets the same treatment that a dog does and he receives as much societal care. In this shocking story we find that children have to pretend that they are dead to provoke a semblance of concern and possibly affection by their families or by the community. Many die in the slums of cities like Tehran, just trying to attract attention to their plight.

Faqiri's "Doleful Village" created the furor it did when it was published in 1965, because it bespoke a hidden reality, one that Iranians had tried to forge a solution for and which had been frustrated at each attempt. Yet the story is very simple. A young boy is eager to get an education and is, after a discussion with the teacher, admitted to the class. The teacher leaves with the group, the members of which had been spraying pesticide in the area, for a vacation in Shiraz. He is asked to bring a lunch box for the new student. When he returns, he finds out that the child had died of causes unknown to the villagers. He consoles the father and the rest of the community and soon the child is forgotten. Life returns to normal.

What the villagers do not know is that exposure to pesticides kills. This is how Grace E. Goodell describes the potential danger of exposure to pesticides:

"Within minutes of the sprayers' unannounced arrival, they plunged into every room in the community: fast, marching, efficient, their pungent white film sprayed on everything, indiscriminately. Pity a woman alone at home with small babies, pregnant, sick, or weak-worse yet, if no one was home at all. The village men were in the fields, and the spray team was not paid to move anything in its way. Leave a cup in the niche, a photograph of the Prophet on the wall-God forbid, a baby in the cradle!-swish, swish, finished. Next room. An open can of cooking oil on the shelf, the baby's pacifier that fell down as he was being evacuated..." (p. 146).

In Faqiri's story we encounter a protest, tongue-in-cheek, though as one could not at the height of His Majesty's reforms question procedures. But could the teacher, a representative of the government, tell the villagers that the boy did not die because God had willed so but because of the pesticide that had been sprayed in the house a couple of days earlier. All he could do was blame himself. Had he remained in the village he could have contacted the poison center and saved the young boy.

The more one ponders the role of cause and effect in stories like "The Doleful Village" the more one can fathom the depth of the helplessness of the few who tried to change society and who were, at each turn, pushed back and criticized. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Iranian government considered the village its own property. The villager was there to work the land and to produce goods. He was given a temporary shelter. He had no right to decide whether his rooms should be sprayed or not. He had no right to ask what components were used in the spray and whether the spray could be harmful to him, his family, and his livestock. The government had already made all the decisions.

Only education, Faqiri like many before him affirms, can teach the villager what he should accept and what he should reject. But as long as ignorance, like diphtheria, kills the potential destroyer of ignorance, there will be no hope for bettering the lives of the peasants of Iran. Especially when government, the traditional supporter of the peasantry, turns to profit making and sells out to giant agribusinesses.

Xenophobia is a major feature of Iranian village. The story entitled "Mr. Saberi" amply describes the way the village fights off anyone and everyone who intends to violate its harim. In the story, Mr. Saberi, an old man reminiscent of George Eliot's Silas Marner, combines the business of a cobbler with that of a retailer. He is a comparatively well off individual, rich enough to lend some of his fellow villagers money. But, his being a recent immigrant to the village does not sit well with his neighbors. Even after a year of good neighborly interaction with the villagers, Saberi and his only daughter remain objects of suspicion and distrust.

The village also houses a poor man called Razzaq. Razzaq accuses Saberi's daughter of theft. There being no Sheykh or religious authority to either mediate or give a ruling on the matter, Saberi takes refuge in the good will of the village to clear his name. But the villagers side with Razzaq. Razzaq's family emboldened by the support of its fellow villagers, beats Saberi's daughter trying all possible ways to make her confess.

Helpless against the village mob and the relentless Razzaq and his sons, Saberi takes refuge in the holy book, the Qur'an , to clear his name and to restore his daughter's dignity. He challenges Razzaq to a solemn oath.

The ritual administration of the oath finished, Saberi finds himself totally abandoned by the villagers. Without giving any reason, the villagers, too, begin to maltreat the old man.

Finally Razzaq discovers that the money, of stealing which Saberi's daughter had been accused has been found. But rather than acknowledging this mistake, he continues to persecute Saberi, simply because he, along with the rest of the villagers, had "confiscated" Saberi's household furniture and other property and wished not to return them.

Having lost everything, Saberi becomes despondent and aggressive. The villagers single him out as a lunatic and send for authorities to remove him from the village. While in custody to be taken to town for trial, Saberi dies.

Saberi's sad end conjures the image of Hedayat's unfortunate Pat in "The Stray Dog." Unable to fit in Varamin, the helpless canine is abused by the citizenry. In the end he chooses death over life in the square. It conjure the image of Baji Delnavaz and her daughter, Mehrangiz, in Simin Daneshvar's "A Land Like Paradise." This slave woman is detached from her home in Africa and transplanted in Iran. In Shiraz, she has to satisfy her master's desires. When she is old, she is separated from her only daughter born in captivity. She dies. Her daughter has to perform her duties and service the master as well. She, too, dies a terrible death brought about by the master's jealous wife.

Saberi's harsh treatment by his fellow villagers is reflected in many other Persian stories. Sa'edi's "The Cow" is a prime example of village love turned into village "lynching." Indeed, it seems that the helpless villagers, whenever confronted with a social dilemma, resort to the easiest weapon at hand-they turn on each other and "sacrifice" one of their own for the well-being of the rest.

What is fresh about Mr. Saberi is that he is real. He is not a distant representative of some imaginary world such as the one in which Pat roamed or the "paradise" for which Mehrabgiz longed. Saberi is a village reality. He epitomizes the treatment any individual receives who does not belong to a traditional rural community in Iran.

What Faqiri strives to achieve in this story, I believe, is an understanding of both the reformists and those they intend to forcefully reform. The village, Faqiri says, is a whole. Any drastic modification of it would result in the liquidation of the foreign element. Saberi did not belong to the village. He never became part of the village. He died trying.

Similarly, Faqiri argued, reforms drawn up in Washington and implemented by bureaucrats and technocrats from Tehran are foreign to the traditional village. They die before they change the face of Iran.

The important thing to say about Faqiri's understanding of the situation in Iran is that he said this at a time when everyone in the country and abroad praised the reforms and saw in them a golden future for Iran's rural communities and, indeed, for Iran.

Groundless suspicion appears in a number of Persian short stories. Sadeq Hedayat's story of the husband who trusts his friend to take care of his wife but who, upon his return suspects the very parenthood of his only daughter is a good example to begin the discussion with. In "The Whirlpool" Hedayat masterfully examines the breakdown of society and shows how its fibers one by one come apart and break. In that story the wife leaves the husband, and the daughter dies of exposure, seeking her father. With their death the family unit, the very building block of society, dies as well.

Suspicion is also at the root of the division between Blue and her husband in "Blue and Her Love." In this charming story the tables are turned. A village girl is in love with an urban school teacher, in charge of the education of village children. Gradually rumor is changed into reality and Blue and the teacher who had never met before, meet and fall in love.

Romantic at heart and fearful for the future of Blue and her child, the teacher does not give in to Blue's overtures. She tries hard to make him understand how much she wants him. But, in spite of his love for her, he tries to persuade her to forget him.

Rumor in the village, groundless or otherwise, is tied to individual honor. It is up to the man of the house to see to it that his own honor, as well as the honor of the community, is upheld. Blue is targeted and, in a skirmish that happens between two factions in the village, she is struck in the head with a rock. She dies the next day. The village returns to normalcy.

In "Blue and Her Love" Faqiri strikes a sensitive nerve. The Shah's reforms thrust many youths, some of them rejects of colleges and art institutes, into villages where they served as doctors and teachers. Villagers, especially women, who had been kept away from men of the village, came into close contact with these urban young men. Those of the women, like Blue, who felt association with these urbanites would be their ticket out of the village willingly gave in to their desires, only to find out, like Blue, that deeper roots than they were conscious of kept them tied to the village. Many lost their dignity. Many more lost their lives trying to extricate themselves from their confined village existence.

Blue's case, I believe, is retold by Shapour Qarib and translated ably by Minoo Southgate in "The Warm South". Qarib places his character, Tala, at the center of a love triangle. Two urban men, a doctor (supposedly performing a task similar to the teacher in Faqiri's story) and his driver vie for Tala's affection. Qarib ably shows what each man sees in Tala. The doctor sees a future wife, a woman he can take home. The driver views Tala as a potential virginal conquest.

To escape her father's potential exploitation-he has sent Tala's sisters to the brothel in the nearby town-and to marry a good and honest man, Tala approaches the doctor and offers herself to him. She tells him that he must sleep with her for the father to have to let go of her and for her not to have to sleep with either the village head or the driver.

The doctor, steeped in his medical journals and optimistic that all will be well in the end, does not hear Tala's desperate plea. The driver, meanwhile pays for Tala and, as soon as she leaves the doctor's room, drags her down the hill and violates her.

Compared with this story that is constructed basically around the three characters mentioned, Faqiri's story seems superficial. Nevertheless, although not a truly slice-of-life story as "The Warm South," "Blue and Her Love" brings in that pristine look at Iranian villages and their problems as they are gradually pulled into the orbits of their provincial townships and of Tehran. It points to potential problems of the urbanites not understanding the rules of the village in the same way that Westerners did not understand the rules under which Iran as an independent nation lived. The difference, Faqiri seems to imply, is that one could expel the foreigners who ignore the laws. But can one expel his own people? After Blue's death, the teacher remains to teach the village children. Daily he meets with Blue's family on his way.

Traditionally Iranian villagers have been very conscious of safekeeping the few rights afforded them. They took pride in kadkhodamaneshi, in their ability to form councils of the rish sefids, and to iron out their differences by subjecting them to compromise. As the guardians of the honor of the village, every villager felt it to be his right to keep strangers out of the village and to defend his neighbors against intruders irrespective of the judicial issues involved.

The "con artist" plays a major role in Persian fiction. One of the first authors to broach the theme is Sadeq Hedayat who, in the 1930s, described the exploits of Sheykh Abul Fazl. The story entitled "The Man Who Killed His Passions" tells the story of Mirza Hassan Ali, a murid (disciple), of the Sheykh. After following the dictates of his Sufi murshed (guide), the Mirza gives away his life and wealth, only to find out that his murshed is a cheat and that by following his decrees, he has wasted all and gained precious little.

Gholam Hossein Sa'edi introduces a twist in the story line. Where he introduces a mullah in one of the southern villages of Iran. Capitalizing on the trust that the villagers had in him and the respect that they accorded him, the mullah occupies one of the best houses in the village, usurps the rights of an absent citizen and marries his girl and when he wishes, leaves to do the same in another village.

Equating foreigners' role with the exploitative ruses of the clergy in Iran, Nasir Taqva'i tells a similar story in "Aqa Julu." This is the story of an itinerant worker of Italian descent who frequents the villages dotting the Persian Gulf. Beginning by winning the trust of the village children, he eventually becomes accepted by the village head and, consequently, the entire village. He then opens a photography studio, unveils the village girls and chooses the ones he likes, produces pornographic pictures of them and sells them to sailors who put to shore in the area. When discovered, he leaves the village for further exploits along the shore, leaving no evidence.

As can be seen, at least as far as theme and story line is concerned, Faqiri is not introducing anything new. He seems to be merely rehashing the same themes. This view is supportable, however, only if we view Faqiri's stories devoid of the socio-political situation of Iran of the 1960's. More reportage than fictional account, the stories deal with the urgent problems of villages in the context of a complex network of local, national, and international relations striving to absorb the rights of the villagers. The clergy's misuse of their position is perhaps the saddest comment of all.