What shapes and defines the collective memory of us, the children of the revolution, from the 1980s is, on the one hand, an official and governmental narrative of the bravery, courage, and sacrifices of the warriors on the fronts of truth against falsehood. On the other hand, it is a sentimental and sometimes romantic discourse that, through intermediaries like the children's program presenter and the TV series Oshin, turns the economic and cultural scarcity of that period (which was itself a product of wartime conditions), along with nostalgic images such as the crisscrossed tape on windows, into a source of a kind of morbid pleasure.

Neither of these two representations—neither the epic governmental discourse nor the romantic narrative—provides an accurate picture of that period, the period of war, and its core element: death. Death, in and of itself, is a filthy thing. To seek a true image of what happened during those years, one must go to the thresholds and borders. Shalamcheh is the name of one such threshold. A border point, a window into eight years of death and its dark mark on the face of the earth and the survivors.

Shalamcheh is still the choke point of Iraq, with tanks stuck in the mud, unexploded mines, pierced helmets and water bottles, and headless palm trees. Shalamcheh is still an image of the wasteland of death, of death and those left behind, and the pilgrims of that desolation.