Sadgeh Hedayat’s Buried Alive
By Syma Sayyah, Tehran

Payvand, Iran
Sept 2 2005

Buried Alive is a famous short story by the 20th century Persian
writer Sadgeh Hedayat. In the story Hedayat recounts the diary of
the last days of a man who struggles with suicide. This story was
recently published in a new book by the Hedayat office.

In this book, there is the original Persian text, a translation to
Armenian by Mr. Khachik Khacher, who is a well known writer of short
stories in Armenian, and an English text. The English translation
is the work of Mr. Carter Bryant and was part of a collection titled
“The Blind Owl” published under the editorship of Dr. Michael Hillman
in the USA in 1978.

This book was launched publicly last week at a ceremony which
was attended by many well known scholars of Persian and Armenian
origin in a packed hall at the Artists Forum in Tehran. The program
started surprisingly promptly. First Mr. Jahangir Hedayat, the head
of the Hedayat Office in Tehran, made a short speech explaining
the event and the book. He then introduced and gave some background
information on Mr. Khacher the Armenian translator and the publishers
(the Varjavand Publishing House). He also pointed to the fact that
this is the second authentic book of stories of Sadegh Hedayat that
has been published recently by the Hedayat Office in Tehran using
the original manuscripts. The first one was “Three drops of blood”,
which was published by Nashreh Cheshmeh.

There has also been a book of Sadegh Hedayat pictures which have been
very well received by the public in Iran and abroad, and another book
of his paintings and drawings which is ready to be published. Mr.
Jahangir Hedayat’s easy narrative and pleasant soft voice made
everyone listen carefully to all the information and anecdotes. He
told the story of the “Buried alive” plot, the reasons why Hedayat.
had such a fondness for Armenians, the story of his friendship with
an Armenian painter and the fact that when he committed suicide in
Paris in 1951, by turning the gas on in his small flat, he had made
sure that he would be found by an Armenian couple he was very fond of.

Afterwards Mr. Kacher came to the podium and made a short speech during
which he thanked Mr. Amir Cheltann for his kindness and guidance when
translating the book.

We then were entertained by a short performance based on an extract
of the story wonderfully staged by a group of young actors under the
direction of the well known cinema and TV personality Mr. Seyrous
Ebrahim-Zadeh. It was indeed very well done! After a enjoying a drama
piece in Armenian, the ceremony came to a close and the guests could
buy the new book. Your place was indeed empty (we missed you)!

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress