The Scarlet Stone (2020)

The support of many intellectuals and leftists for Ayatollah Khomeini is considered to be one of most important factors for the triumph of the Islamic regime in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Siavash Kasrai, a celebrated poet and vocal dissident of the Shah and the Pahlavi Regime, was among such leftist intellectuals. Fearing persecution by the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kasrai fled the country in 1982. After living in exile for 10 years, basing his story on the most famous mythological story of the Shahnameh, 'Rostam and Sohrab', he wrote Mohreye Sorkh (The Scarlet Stone) in 1992 in Moscow to recount some of the events of the 1979 revolution. In the mythological story, Sohrab is the love child of Rostam (the immortal hero of Iran) and Tahmineh (the princess of a neighboring country) who actively and proudly pursued Rostam, and believed that their union and offspring (Sohrab) would bring peace and prosperity to the region. The story ends with the tragic slaying of Sohrab by Rostam in a battle (without either knowing their relation to each other). Based on Shahnameh, the poem Mohreye Sorkh by Siavash Kasrai, is set at the last moment of Sohrab's life, after having been injured by Rostam.