Dystopia, as a literary genre, envisions an imaginary space devoid of any positive features, whose inhabitants long for peace and happiness. The Arab world, especially Iraq, became an objectively dystopian space after the world wars due to humanitarian tragedies and the collapse of the social order. Influenced by world literature, Iraqi poets reflected this turbulent political history through their own distinctive poetic language. In the twentieth century, Iraq witnessed bloody wars as a result of the erroneous and hostile policies and expansionist tendencies of the Ba’ath Party. These wars were accompanied by crippling economic sanctions, a sharp rise in poverty and inflation rates, as well as the displacement and migration of large numbers of Iraqis. This study derives its significance from examining the intersection of literature and reality. The Iraqi poet Za’im Nassar was selected for this study because, as a living witness and a soldier, he directly experienced the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War, which endowed his poetic experience with a shocking realism that reflects the depth of the tragedy. This research seeks to analyze how the atmosphere of war and the chaos prevailing in Iraq during the Gulf Wars are represented, from the perspective of dystopian literature and its defining components, in the collection Life in Its Mistake by the contemporary Iraqi poet Za’im Nassar, while also expressing the state of the Iraqi society’s psychological and social security. Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach, the study examines the collection through the lens of dystopian components such as destruction, death, despair, temporal stagnation, and the widening gap between the ideal and reality. The findings show that Nassar has constructed a dark dystopian vision, employing scenes of destruction and death to embody the crisis-ridden Iraqi reality. The collection does not merely convey the psychological suffering of society; rather, it offers an artistic and critical reading that anticipates the country’s fate. It thus emerges as a prominent example of dystopian literature that transforms historical experience into an artistic vision critically engaged with reality.
Keywords: Bitter realist literature, dystopia, contemporary Iraqi poetry, Zaim Nassar, life in its mistake.
Introduction
Za'im Nassar (1960) is a poet from the generation of Iraqi poets of the 1980s. His poems pay close attention to the state of Iraqi society. He witnessed the events of the 1980s and 1990s, both the sweet and the bitter, and experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the wars that plagued Iraq during that period, reflecting them in his poetry. The collection "Life in Its Mistake" comprises poems he wrote between 1986 and 1991, during Iraq's three wars with Iran, Kuwait, and the United States. In his poems, the poet describes a world shrouded in sorrow, where darkness reigns, hopes fade, and war reigns supreme in Iraq. Studying Zaim Nassar's poems from the perspective of bitter realism and analyzing the dystopian elements within them will make the lived experiences of Iraqis in the 1980s and 1990s clearer for the reader, providing a comprehensive and informative account of the general situation in Iraq at that time and illustrating the negative consequences of war and the expansionist ambitions of successive governments. Therefore, this study seeks to analyze the reflection of a war-torn Iraq in this collection, drawing upon the components of dystopian literature.
Matherials & Methods
In this context, I touched upon the political history of Iraq with a brief reference to what is intended and the basis of a theoretical discussion of dystopian literature, in which I write a collection of dystopian poetry in a collection of Persian poetry. Missed. This research seeks to answer the following questions:
1- How does Zeeem Nassar portray the state of the Iraqi society while creating a dystopian atmosphere?
2- What are the goals that Zaim Nassar uses to describe the corrupt city in the poem?
Discussion & Results
In his collection Life in Its Mistake, Zaim Nassar paints a dystopian reality, analyzing the intellectual, moral, and historical collapse of post-Gulf War Iraq rather than merely documenting physical devastation. The terrifying atmosphere reflects a profound chasm between a glorious past and a shattered present, where civilization, faith, and hope disintegrate under violence. Nassar employs visceral imagery, innovative similes, and sensory metaphors to transform the objective brutality of war into an existential, psychological crisis. Torn bodies, darkened skies, and blood-filled wells serve as ontological signs of declining human values and pervasive meaninglessness. Consequently, the external landscape functions as an interpretive matrix revealing the inner fragmentation of the Iraqi subject; war becomes an overarching metaphor for spiritual and ethical decay.Furthermore, by constructing this dystopian realm, Nassar illustrates a profound historical and temporal impasse. Time in his poetic universe ceases to progress linearly, trapped instead in a vicious, recurring cycle of suffering. This temporal stagnation crystallizes the collective trauma of a nation stripped of its future. By freezing time, the poet articulates the collective death, existential inertia, and historical paralysis that define contemporary Iraqi reality.
Conclusion
Nassar’s depiction of the corrupted, dark city transcends mere mimesis to operate as a socio-political critique and a profound warning. Through landscapes saturated with fragmentation and dread, he establishes a poetic framework of intellectual and moral resistance. His dystopia is not a passive chronicle of ruin, but an urgent call for critical awareness: failing to dismantle the cycle of violence condemns history to deeper, catastrophic repetitions. Ultimately, Nassar’s dense metaphorical language serves as an analytical instrument to decode Iraq’s civilizational crisis. By fusing reality with poetic imagination, he transforms the text into an arena of profound psychological and political critique, interrogating the existential relationships among humanity, death, and temporality. This deconstructive vision enables Life in Its Mistake to transcend conventional war poetry, establishing it as a philosophical meditation on the human fall and spiritual alienation in the modern world.