sīngūrīng Persiska (Farsi) 2025

Singooring is a collection of childhood and adolescent memories and nostalgic reflections by Ali Khodaei, drawn from the years he lived in Tehran and Isfahan. Although the book is classified as nonfiction, its narrative perspective, language, and structure bring it remarkably close to fiction. The title draws readers back to the nostalgic atmosphere of the 1970s: “Singooring” was a small spiral-shaped radio produced by National (Panasonic) in the early 1350s (1970s). At that time, the company launched a promotional contest in which a song would be played on air, and the first five participants who correctly identified its title would receive a Singooring radio as a prize.

These nonfiction pieces follow a nonlinear structure; the narrator moves between present and past, and through these shifts invites the reader to witness the transformations, events, and emotional resonances that unfold across time. The return to an irretrievable past carries a strong nostalgic charge that stirs the depths of the reader’s memory. This nonlinear form also closely aligns the work with modern narrative techniques typically associated with fiction.

A significant portion of the narratives takes place in Isfahan—a city that, in Khodaei’s writings, assumes the presence of a character in its own right. The stories, in a sense, recount Khodaei’s process of “becoming Isfahani,” a trajectory that begins with a book by Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh. Tehran also figures prominently in several narratives, intertwined with collective memories and the shared nostalgia of its residents. Yet some pieces—such as “Television Songs,” “Film-Farsi,” or “The Road to the North”—echo across the broader cultural memory of all Iranians.

Khodaei’s meticulous attention to detail allows readers to see themselves within the events he recalls. Descriptions of refrigerator magnets, encounters with patients in a hospital, or the ritual of cooking doushabareh are rendered with remarkable precision. His portrayal of distinctive urban spaces in Isfahan remains vivid and luminous throughout his oeuvre. The description of Chaharbagh Avenue in this book exemplifies this quality:

“When Chaharbagh is still the Chaharbagh of my youth and middle age—when the taxis are still blue, when the shops still smell of earlier times; the 1980s. The sandwich shops in Chaharbagh sell herb patties, potato sandwiches, brain, Olivier salad, egg, cutlets, sausages, and mortadella. On the tables sit a salt shaker and a pepper shaker. Half the holes on the salt shaker are clogged; the pepper is red, not black. The ketchup comes in a bear-shaped bottle filled to the brim with tomato sauce and paste. There is also a hamburger.”

Singooring is a nostalgic portrayal of a city and an era that have now receded into memory—a work that will resonate deeply with admirers of Ali Khodaei’s writing and with readers drawn to evocative memoirs of time and place.