A feminine narrative of the Iran-Iraq war; lived experiences of Khuzestani women living in "Shahid Beheshti town, Mashhad"

Over three decades after the war's resolution, ordinary women compelled to leave their homeland and subsequently reside in distant cities remain largely absent from narratives, research, and historiography. The most prominent texts on women's war experiences convey the narrative of women who were "decisive and influential," and who were able to make their voices heard due to their proximity to centers of power. Humanities research has focused exclusively on these published texts in the form of women's memoirs, avoiding direct reference to the enormous number of women who survived and lived through the war. Due to this gap in the discourse of war, this study attempted to address the lived experiences of 32 of these women directly by referring to those who live in Mashhad's Shahid Beheshti Town. In addition to analyzing the gender existence of the participants, structural concerns such as class, economic status, ethnicity, and culture are explored with the theoretical approach of "feminist phenomenology" and adherence to "positional subjectivity." The gathered narratives are evaluated in a narrative fashion using a "structuralist narrative" approach, and the "central narrative," which comprises the experiences of all participants, is narrated in three sections: "Facing War," "Survival Struggle," and "Reviving Life and Striving to Improve It."