On September 22, 1980, the Iraqi military under the command of Saddam Hussein, unprovoked, supported and heavily armed by the Western and Arab worlds, invaded an economically devastated and militarily weakened Iran following the events of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Through a brutal campaign of violence, terror, and the illicit use of chemical weapons against civilian populations, the Ba'athist dictator sought to quickly conquer his oil-rich neighbor in order to fulfill his nationalist fantasy of becoming the region’s dominant power. Despite facing crippling economic sanctions, a substantial lack of proper military equipment and training, and the world's major powers collaborating against them, the Iranian people retaliated and held their ground throughout one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history and prevented Hussein from taking even one inch of their land.
This album is dedicated to the myriad Iranian soldiers (many of whom were young volunteers) and civilians who lost their lives as a result of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, as well as the countless Kurdish victims of the Al-Anfal genocide. May they rest in peace and remain forever free from the failures of mankind.
Notes:
In Narrow Graves - The title of this track references a line from the poem " A Poem for War / شعری برای جنگ" by the acclaimed contemporary Iranian poet Qeysar Aminpour / قیصر امینپور, whose work is renowned worldwide for its innovative prose and compelling anti-war themes.
Halabja - As implied by its title, this track was inspired by the horrific events that took place on March 16, 1988 in the Kurdish city of Halabja, Iraq during the final days of the Iran-Iraq war. The opening lyrics, "come and see", allude to director Elem Klimov's eponymous masterpiece, which captures the horrors of war with an unsettling and harrowing realism very few filmmakers have been able to capture. The lyrics "a silent city" are a nod to the stunningly beautiful collaboration album by the legendary Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider, whose title track also serves as a requiem for the events that took place on that dark day in Halabja.
