A Journal
by Mehrdad Khameneh
Mehrdad Khameneh is an Iranian-Norwegian film and theater director, writer and translator.He left Iran in 1984 to pursue his studies abroad and returned in 2012, living there until 2025.This book chronicles his personal journey—both before leaving his homeland and after returning nearly three decades later—offering a deeply human perspective on memory, society, identity and the people who shape us.
EXIT THEATRE
May 2025
Cafe Tehran (Book)
by Mehrdad Khameneh
War Journal was never planned. It began with a simple, urgent need: to write—to make sense of what was unfolding, to hold on to what might otherwise disappear. These pages are fragments from a city under attack, from lives held together not by certainty, but by habit, humor, and quiet acts of defiance. They are not declarations. They are acts of witnessing.
The war arrived in Tehran without ceremony. It slipped in through text messages and distant blasts, through cracked windows and the hush of emptied streets. Yet even as homes were abandoned and institutions failed, something remarkable endured: the instinct to stay present, to care for one another, to resist fear by brewing tea, telling stories, and continuing—however uncertainly—to live.
You won’t find battle maps or political analysis here. You’ll find Mostafa, the eleven-year-old footballer; a café owner who insists on lipstick, even during an air raid; and Mr. Samad, who stays behind so others won’t be alone. These are the people who held up the sky while it collapsed—not with weapons, but with decency.
War Journal is a letter to Tehran, a farewell to a home, and an offering to anyone who has ever tried to hold onto life in the dark.
Mehrdad Khameneh
Croatia
July 2025
