120 6 Stepping Back from the Front A Glance at Home Front Narratives of the Iran-Iraq War in Persian and Arabic Fiction Amir Moosavi In discussions of modern literatures rarely are modern Arabic and Per- sian fictions brought together in a comparative context. Despite many shared sources and intertwining histories in the classical period and similar trajectories in the development of what are now considered modern literatures, Persian and Arabic literary traditions are seldom brought into conversation with one another. As a result, and despite some more recent attempts to rectify this situation, whether in the form of conferences or publications,1 scholars and critics of either literature face a lacuna just considering the possibilities of comparison between the two literary traditions, even though both are often housed within the same academic departments. There are a few reasons for this large gap in comparative work between Persian and Arabic fictions that immediately come to mind. The first is obviously a problem of language; while exceptions certainly exist, few scholars who work on modern literatures function comfort- ably in both Arabic and Persian. This issue is compounded by the fact that translations of modern literary works rarely cross from Persian into Arabic or vice versa. Translations of modern fiction abound in both lan- guages, but they are largely limited to translations originating from the Americas and Europe. This has meant that there are fairly few pieces of secondary literature in either Arabic or Persian that deal specifically with criticism or the literary history of the other in the modern era. Another reason, perhaps, for the large gap in comparative works is rooted in the differing historical experiences of Iran and many countries in the Arab world. For the countries in the Arab world, the traumas of Khakpour.indd 120 9/6/16 1:08 PM