Arash Shi­razi finds him­self con­fronting the harsh real­i­ties of war in Feb­ru­ary 1984, as he grap­ples with the inevitabil­i­ty of his con­scrip­tion into the Iran­ian mil­i­tary. Caught in the tur­moil of the ongo­ing rev­o­lu­tion, he con­sid­ers his role as a “zero sol­dier,” some­one with­out the pow­er or means to avoid the draft. His life is shaped by the revolution’s shift from an ide­al­is­tic strug­gle to one dri­ven by zealotry and vio­lence. Arash reflects on the inevitable fate of count­less oth­ers like him, imag­in­ing his death immor­tal­ized on the walls of a mosque along­side oth­er mar­tyrs who sac­ri­ficed their lives for a cause they were forced to fol­low. This image of mar­tyr­dom encap­su­lates the oppres­sive weight of war, strip­ping Arash of his indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and forc­ing him into a cycle of duty defined by exter­nal pres­sures rather than per­son­al choice.

While at a vac­ci­na­tion cen­ter, Arash observes a poignant inter­ac­tion between a young man and a woman, which reveals the emo­tion­al toll of con­scrip­tion. The woman is frus­trat­ed with the man for not using their shared his­to­ry to escape the draft, high­light­ing the harsh divide between per­son­al aspi­ra­tions and the demands of war. Arash watch­es with empa­thy as the man’s poten­tial to be a pianist becomes over­shad­owed by the bru­tal neces­si­ty of serv­ing in the war, just like him. Though Arash sees him­self as des­tined for the front­lines, he feels a pro­found dis­con­nect from the idea of patri­o­tism, see­ing his involve­ment as a mat­ter of inevitabil­i­ty rather than choice. This inter­nal con­flict reflects his dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the nation­al­is­tic ideals that ini­tial­ly drove the rev­o­lu­tion, now over­shad­owed by a sense of oblig­a­tion to a cause he doesn’t ful­ly believe in.

Arash’s thoughts shift to his child­hood, where a mem­o­ry of play­ing with his sis­ter Roya at a frozen pond offers a stark con­trast to the adult world of vio­lence and duty he now faces. In this fleet­ing moment, their inno­cence and care­free play stand in stark oppo­si­tion to the grim real­i­ties of war. The bond they shared dur­ing sim­pler times evokes a long­ing in Arash for a past untouched by the bru­tal­i­ty of con­flict. As his mem­o­ries deep­en, the com­plex­i­ty of his fam­i­ly dynam­ics becomes clear. The loss of his par­ents and the over­whelm­ing ten­sion between duty and per­son­al con­nec­tion fur­ther shape his iden­ti­ty. This long­ing for fam­i­ly and con­nec­tion high­lights the emo­tion­al void that war exac­er­bates, as Arash becomes aware of the sac­ri­fices he must make to pre­serve some sense of him­self amid the over­whelm­ing demands of duty.

At the train­ing camp in the Alborz Moun­tains, Arash is sub­ject­ed to the harsh rig­ors of mil­i­tary life, where his indi­vid­u­al­i­ty is erased, and he is reduced to a number—11. This dehu­man­iz­ing expe­ri­ence con­trasts sharply with the youth­ful mem­o­ries of his past, leav­ing him to nav­i­gate the ten­sion between the care­free inno­cence of his ear­ly years and the rigid con­for­mi­ty of his present. The camp becomes a sym­bol of the trans­for­ma­tion that Arash under­goes, forced into obe­di­ence and stripped of his iden­ti­ty. The inten­si­ty of the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al toll at the camp forces him to aban­don the ves­tiges of his for­mer self, mark­ing the loss of the per­son he once was. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of youth and war illus­trates the pro­found inter­nal strug­gle Arash faces as he bat­tles between the man he is becom­ing and the boy he once was.

A sto­ry cir­cu­lat­ing among the sol­diers high­lights the absur­di­ty of the military’s bureau­crat­ic sys­tems, adding a dark lay­er to the nar­ra­tive of sac­ri­fice and iden­ti­ty. The tale of Alireza, a sol­dier named after his dead broth­er, who unknow­ing­ly fol­lows in his broth­er’s foot­steps, dying in his place, under­scores the trag­ic con­se­quences of iden­ti­ty with­in the mil­i­tary. This sto­ry serves as a reminder of the arbi­trary nature of the roles they are forced to play in a sys­tem that deval­ues their per­son­al lives. Amidst the laugh­ter and tragedy shared by the sol­diers, Arash begins to under­stand the deep­er impli­ca­tions of their col­lec­tive fear and uncer­tain­ty. The sense of duty they are forced to embrace inter­twines with the inevitable sac­ri­fice they face, high­light­ing the harsh real­i­ties of war and the fear that per­me­ates their every­day lives. For Arash, these moments of cama­raderie offer fleet­ing solace in an envi­ron­ment that con­tin­u­al­ly strips them of their human­i­ty and agency.