I Have Kissed You in My Dreams

This work is a collection of eight plays by Akbarnajad, written with different approaches and settings. The first two plays, titled “I Have Kissed You in My Dreams” and “A Piece of the Lost Speech of Mandana in the Report of the King’s Murder,” are works in which the author explores the aspect of history and its presence in the narrative. In the first play, Akbarnajad tells the realistic story of the life and transformation of Har ibn Yazid Riyahi in the context of the Ashura event. The story is straightforward, showing Har’s transformation from his own perspective, as well as that of his son, wife, and some companions of Imam Hussein. In the play “A Piece of the Lost Speech of Mandana in the Report of the King’s Murder,” the author narrates a fictional story from ancient Iran, describing the life of Harpagus – general of Ishtovigo, king of the Medes, in the 6th century BC. He was ordered by Ishtovigo to kill his granddaughter Cyrus II, who was still a child, but Harpagus chose to assign the task to a shepherd named Sepako, who also did not kill the child. Akbarnajad uses three characters to depict this historical event and the subsequent assassination of the Medean king. The third play, titled “There is a Woman in the Mountains of Kabul,” features narrators chosen from the neighboring Persian-speaking land, with the author aiming to provide a narrative about the religious beliefs of Afghan Muslims and the militant school of the Afghan Mujahideen, especially Ahmad Shah Massoud, against the Taliban forces. The play “Symphony on the Molten Lava of the Bitter Volcano” narrates an emotional story set during the Sacred Defense (Iran-Iraq war), involving a combatant and a woman who seems to be a member of the hypocritical group planning to kill the man, creating a dramatic event and sharing parts of their lives with each other. This work also includes Akbarnajad’s Shakespeare trilogy, which he claims is the result of his restlessness during his university years in Shiraz. Overall, Akbarnajad’s dramatic works in this collection can be seen primarily as reflections of his concern for displaying narrative content. He prioritizes content over narrative form and has not attempted to confine himself to complex narrative techniques to express his stories. Moreover, these plays effectively showcase his effort to analyze and present multiple perspectives on a concept through various dramatic texts.