Da (Mother) 10

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
Translated from the Persian with an Introduction by Paul Sprachman

2022-8-30

Da (Mother)

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Translated from the Persian with an Introduction by Paul Sprachman

Persian Version (2008)

Sooreh Mehr Publishing House

English Version (2014)

Mazda Publishers

***

Ali, who had witnessed all this strife as a child, was the first of us to go to work. In the dead of summer or in winter when it got cooler, he would sell gum to people at the gas station (famous as Dieselabad) on the Ahvaz-Khorramshahr road. He would also sell corn on the cob roasted over a fire. One day I insisted he take me with him so I could see how he did it. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then he became quite the little man, saying that a place where drivers and garage boys hung out was no place for a girl. I kept begging him to take me. He finally gave in to my nagging. Having seen how he and the other children did it, I thought I’d try my hand. I worked on mother so much that she finally agreed to let me go with Ali. When father found out about it, he became very upset, and there was an argument. “Why are you sending them off to work?” he asked. He was not in favor of Ali working in the first place, and so when I started … well. Given our finances, mother had no choice but to let us sell food without telling father. I eagerly grabbed the pot of cooked chickpeas she made and stormed out of the house. Ali also wasn’t happy about having his sister work, but because of mother he didn’t say anything. Every day at the crack of dawn we took our places by the road among the twenty or so half-pints and bigger children. We placed the pots of food in front of us and waited for customers. God was good to all the children, providing everyone with a living, but Ali and I sold out before the others because mother scrubbed our pots so they sparkled and was compulsive in the way she prepared the food. The drivers would come around and ask us to lift the lids on our pots. They went down the line examining all the offerings, but would end up buying from Ali and me. Ali tried to see to it that I sold out before he did so I could go home. Whenever a driver bought from me, Ali would come forward to stand by me protectively and say, “We’re together.”

Though we needed the income from selling food ourselves, Ali would sometimes stop me from making a sale when he saw there was a child more in need of money than we were. He would tell the kid to go ahead of him with the gum and chocolates. It made me happy to see Ali letting the poor kids take his place. Though he was only in second or third grade, I accepted everything he did without question.

Aware of our finances, Uncle Hoseyni asked my parents if he could raise Ali himself, thinking it would make it easier for the boy’s intelligence and talents to develop. He could study and advance without having to worry about supporting the family by selling gum. Ali eventually went to live with uncle, but only a few days later he returned. He looked around and asked me, “What did you have for lunch?” “Nothing,” I said. “Why?” he asked. “Well, because there was nothing in the house,” I said. Father, who hadn’t been in favor of Ali’s going but finally gave in, asked him in a gentle way why he was back. Ali said nothing. Mother insisted that Ali should not give up this opportunity. Uncle came around and kept trying to persuade him, but Ali did not agree. Several days later I asked him about it. He looked at me and said, “I want to be in my own home. I want to eat whatever we eat together—everybody equal.”

Ali apparently gave up many things by returning. Uncle wanted to enroll him in the National School, which was considered a private school. For the few days Ali was at uncle’s house, uncle drove him and his own children to and from school. Uncle’s house was furnished with many things a child would find entertaining. He had a television all to him, while in our entire neighborhood there was only one set. This was probably a reason to stay, but Ali came back and resumed working. Ali’s capacity for sympathy kept us fast friends. When the boys rolled out of school making a terrible racket, he raced ahead of them and waited in front of my school to keep me from being stampeded by the crowd. On the way back we took out our lunches and showed them to each other. There were times when we didn’t have the heart to eat and brought the food home. We often spoke about of what we wanted from life. One thing was a house of our own, which would rid us from having landlords.

One of the homes we rented belonged to a wife-beater. After pummeling his wife with his fists, this landlord would smoke a cigarette and go out drinking with his buddies, who were worse than he was. The whole time we were there, father and Ali stayed up nights keeping watch over us. The resulting stress forced us to think about a place of our own.

The nights we slept on the roof Ali and I would point to the stars and say to Leila and Mohsen, “That one’s mine. Mine is brighter.” Ali would say, “I wish everybody’s heart shined like those stars. If only all people were united. If only the rich gave a thought to the poor and distributed their riches among them; that way there’d be no poor people.”

This made me think. I suggested we go to a certain rich man and ask him to portion out his money. Ali said, “That’s impossible. These people are rich exactly because they love money and are not prepared to spend it on others.” So I asked how we could make them understand that there were poor people. We went on talking this way until we fell asleep.

Once, one of my shoes was badly torn. I needed shoes for school and didn’t have another pair. Ali said, “Don’t worry; you can use mine.” That year we went to school in shifts: Ali in the morning, me in the afternoon. As soon as his shift was over, he raced home, took off his sneakers, and gave them to me. The shoes were too tight for him and too loose for me and they skidded. When I had them on, my foot would slide forward and my toe would emerge from a hole in the canvas. When I passed through the neighborhoods where the rich kids lived, I was very careful not to let the toe show, because the spoiled brats were just waiting for an excuse to make fun of anyone less privileged than they were. My feet began to hurt as I walked through the neighborhood. When I told Ali the shoes were a little big for me, he stuffed them with cotton, but it wasn’t much help, especially in the warm weather when my feet started sweating and the cotton became tight little balls that fell out of the shoes, which only made the misery begin all over again. This went on until Ali used the money he earned to buy a pair of shoes of his own, and father also used some of his money to buy me a pair.

Around the beginning of 1977, the municipality started building housing for its workers in an area known as the Old Cemetery. Father was hired to work on the project, doing things like being a watchman, handing out building materials, and overseeing the laborers. After a lifetime of going from place to place, mother couldn’t believe the good news. It was a joy to think that in a few months we’d have a place of our own. But the hell our landlord put us through with his pickax finally became too much for father. He moved us to another house, which was more like a shelter with four walls and not much else. He tried to make up for it by using plastic sheeting as “windows.” The good news was: we were now free from the agonies of renting from vile landlords.

The Old Cemetery slowly turned into a suburb. In the first year of construction we often saw that when workers dug new ground, they would uncover the bones of the dead. The only grave that remained undisturbed was that of the twelve-year-old daughter of a Seyyed known as Hashemiyeh. The people believed she was a saint; they prayed to her and their prayers were answered. Each time one of the city bulldozers came near the grave, something would make it stall. In the end the excavators kept away from the spot, and people vowed—if their prayers were answered—to make a shrine for her. There was also a family sepulcher on the site belonging to a chief of one of the Arab clans of Khorramshahr. Later they turned the place into a mosque. It was said that the graveyard originated during World War II when it had been part of the city precincts. When British forces entered the city, people took cover there to resist them and bury their dead. I also heard about two boys, who, while looking for scrap copper, found a grenade there. When they pounced on it, the grenade went off, killing both of them.

Occasionally, when his workload became too much for him, father was sidelined for a time. At those times, when the workers found a skeleton, they would bring it to a piece of land that was to become a garden spot. Father would say, “It is sinful what they’re doing with the bones; you can’t just bury them any old place.” Sometimes when we were playing we would come across a skeleton and call out to father. He would dig a hole for it and tell us to lift it gently and bring it to the hole. When we weren’t careful with a skeleton, he remind us that it wasn’t a club we were wielding; these are, he’d say, the body parts of a human being who may have died a while ago, but still deserved respect. We would also say what one normally said over the dead: “In the name of God,” and we’d send up prayers for the departed. Working together we’d try to extract the skeletons whole, but some without even touching them would turn to powder. Sometimes all that was left was the skull. This was probably why, later on, I had no fear of the dead or skeletons.

Everybody valued father for the care and attention he brought to his work. He used a little pad to issue receipts to the drivers, but because he only had a reading knowledge of the Quran and couldn’t write, I had to fill it in for him. I’d leave the number of the truck and the date of delivery blank. When he took delivery of the materials from the drivers, they would fill out two pages of the pad, and he’d stamp them and get signatures. One page he’d give to the driver, the other he’d keep. The drivers became such good friends with father they’d send him presents from their hometowns, and when he wasn’t at work, they’d even come by the house for a visit.

To be continued …