Fearlessness

Now it can be said with certainty that Mohammadreza Kateb is creating a world entirely unique; a world where pain, suffering, fear, dread, astonishment, boredom, waiting, torment, and hardship, all fully reveal themselves and put humans through their trial by fire. Those who endure likely become “human,” and those who do not, vanish and perish. Kateb’s stories belong to a world where its inhabitants have come, ready to face every kind of hardship and difficulty—but not to achieve happiness or comfort. Their solace lies in being able to confront the monotony of life in the best way possible and ride through it. Perhaps that is why his bitter stories feel so sweet. He becomes the narrator of struggles that we have all experienced but have never looked at in this way before—this way of naming our problems, analyzing them, reaching into their essence, and conversing with them to understand why they chose us for this “affliction.” To call one “Trap,” another “Namelessness,” the cause of the problem “Trapper,” or “Nameless-maker.” In *Bitarsi* (“Fearlessness”), Kateb has made his world purer and more concrete. Purer in the sense that it contains fewer explanatory subplots, and more concrete because it references tangible phenomena from our lives, such as science, violence, illness, art, and even love. The story is about “Zeid,” who, because he was nameless, has been called Zeid, and it tells us how he first became nameless and later a nameless-maker. “Janān” entrusts him to “Ebn,” and the entire story revolves around the conflict between the two over the painful concepts of life: “…All the opposing forces of the world are part of one unified entity… Many scientists have already discovered that knowledge and understanding place a tremendous weight on the shoulders of their bearer. This is both a code and a meaning, as well as a truth and a reality. These cannot be separated from each other. When the weight of too many questions, the pain of ignorance, and the lack of answers fall on a person’s shoulders, that person cannot bear it. They collapse, and under that weight, all their bones shatter.” Source: ketabbaz