Da (Mother) 16

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2022-10-11

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

***

Two sides of the room were lined with cement benches protruding from the wall. The bodies were laid out on the benches. The panes in the translucent windows were etched with floral patterns and covered with muslin so nothing could been seen from the outside. Light from a naked bulb suspended from the ceiling shone on the water. Several aged women were helping the body washers. A few others operated the spigot, undressed the corpses, or filled buckets with camphor water from the pool and, in the final stages of preparing the bodies for burial, poured it over them with a red plastic cup. As soon as one corpse had been washed, they lifted another from the corner and placed it on a bench. The wounds on some of the dead were so bloody they looked like slaughtered sheep. When they poured water over the wounds, a trickle of blood would become a flood. The sight pained my soul and turned my stomach. As if that weren’t enough, the creaking of a rusty bucket handle got on my nerves. The leaden bucket was the last straw; I nearly threw throw up at the sight of it.

As I stood there looking around, one seemingly competent woman, who may have been in charge, turned around. I recognized her immediately: Zeynab Rudbari, a city employee at Jannatabad. She was wearing a dark blue coat and pants and a black head cloth. Her boots and gloves were also black, and there was a dark shawl wrapped around her waist. Her house was one alley over from ours, and I would occasionally see her in the neighborhood or at the market where we’d say hello to each other. During Moharram when as part of our vows we would make food for the neighbors, I would bring dishes to her home. Now she was so busy with what she was doing she didn’t even have time to acknowledge my greeting.

I stood there without knowing what to do. The bodies lying on the floor made me stop and think; I was of two minds. On one hand, I wished I hadn’t come there at all. On the other, I thought it had been a good idea. I was debating with myself when I saw a woman put her bucket down and rub her back. She swayed back and forth, hoping to relieve the weariness she felt. Zeynab, so busy with her work she didn’t notice the woman had put her bucket down, called for water. I lunged to pick up the bucket, and then dipped it in the fount, which was now half full. After pouring the water, I put the bucket on the bench. Zeynab looked at me and said, “Thanks.”

“I’ve come to help. Tell me what you want me to do,” I said.

One of the women standing near Zeynab asked, “You’re not afraid?”

“No. At first I would have been, but now it seems normal to me.”

She nodded her head and said, “God bless you for that.”

That was how it started. I operated the spigot, turning the water on and off for the body washers. They began to order me around, telling me to fetch camphor or cotton from the cabinet or pour water or hold the hose, and I wasted no time doing whatever they asked.

The women, all old and established people, were evidently thankful someone had come to help them—especially since they were so exhausted. The thing that worried me as I got involved in the work was how mother would view it. I was afraid she’d come and start a fight about me working there, and how I would have to answer to father about it. But the worst thing was to have father come and fetch me himself. I always had my ears cocked for a familiar voice from outside so I could get ready to fight. But I only heard the droning and crying of the people outside the body washers’. The sounds got louder whenever they put a body out or whenever people took possession of their dead. I could hear people mourning in many tongues: Arabic, Turkish, Luri, Bakhtiyari, Shirazi Persian, Esfahani Persian….

The women stopped working when the noon call to prayer sounded. “Come; let’s pray and take a break,” they said.

As they were finishing up with one of the dead, I lifted the hose and washed down my arms and legs. No matter how hard I tried not to get blood on my clothing, the hem of my chador and my pants got stained when I lifted the bodies. I washed my face and head cloth and cleaned my shoes.

I stepped gingerly from the building with the body washers, careful not to get my shoes bloody again. We waded through the crowd, which parted before us, and I said to Zeynab, “I’m going to go straight home. My mother hasn’t had word from me since morning. She must be worried. If father lets me, I’ll come back.”

Zeynab thanked me and we said goodbye. Working there for a few hours had made me very tired—that was to be expected, but what I really couldn’t believe were the scenes that I had just witnessed. In the space of a few hours, I had received several shocks. Never in the world had I imagined that those innocent white sheets, so familiar to me from home, would be used as shrouds. To that point I had thought of shrouds as something holy, since that was how a person was dressed before making the final journey. Now even the thought of plain sheets as shrouds gave me an empty, chilling feeling.

The closer I got to home, the more thoughts of the body washers receded in my mind, only to be replaced by another worry. I didn’t know what to say to father, how to convince him that what I did was right. Although I loved him very much, I was also afraid of him. When he got mad, the way he looked sent shivers through me. He was never angry without a reason, of course. He wasn’t happy that his children spent time playing in the alley. I had left the house without telling anybody where I was going; now whatever I got I deserved. I also knew that in my absence mother was forced to do chores that ordinarily I would have done. On account of this I was sure she had told on me to father. At the door I knocked and made a loud greeting and sent up prayers. I heard Hasan and Sa’id playing inside the compound. As soon as they heard me knocking, they ran to open the door. When the door opened, mother poked her head out of the kitchen door, which opened on the yard. She looked me up and down; then she glanced at the window of the sitting room. I followed her gaze and saw father through the window, deep in thought with his chin resting on his hands. He seemed very upset.

My throat was dry with fear and I swallowed hard before saying hello.

Whenever he was angry at me, father had the habit of not answering my “Peace be upon you” or of saying something like “No peace upon you”; but this time he took his hands from his chin and answered normally.

He wasn’t gruff, thank God—more absentminded. Clearly he didn’t know how long I had been away from home. Stepping into the yard I went by mother who barked in Kurdish, “You little brat, where the hell were you? Your father’s going to kill you!”

Before I could answer, father seemed to notice only then that I was there. He asked, “Where were you?”

To justify my absence, I quickly listed the reasons why I was away. “I was in Jannatabad; there were millions of bodies there; I was helping out.”

“Jannatabad! What were you doing there?” he asked.

“I was helping out at the body washers’; it was wall-to-wall corpses.”

“What do you mean you helped out?”

“I was helping to wash the bodies and cutting the shrouds,” I said.

His face softened. He looked at me more carefully and asked, “You weren’t afraid?”

“Sure, very, at first. I was also sick to my stomach.” I was about to say that I fainted, but swallowed my words and said, “I tried to keep myself under control and work.”

He said, “That’s right, child. Good for you! Nowadays we all have to pitch in.”

Relieved now, I asked, “So you’re okay with me going to help out?”

“Yes, it’s alright with me so long as you know for certain you’re needed there.”

“Even if I get home late because the workload?” I asked.

“Try to be back before sunset, but even if it’s later than that, there won’t be a problem,” he said.

I almost jumped for joy, never imagining the conversation with father would go so well. I went to the window, took his hands from behind the window bars, and kissed them. He chuckled and said, “What do you think you’re doing, child?” As I continued to kiss his hands, he said more affectionately, “Don’t, sweet child.” I couldn’t contain myself; I wanted to kiss his face. I rushed into the house and, when I got to the entrance to the hall, mother, her voice raised, asked, “Where to? Where to?”

I understood what she really meant and said, “I’m going to wash.”

“First, get out of that chador.” I took off my head cloth and chador and put them in a corner of the yard. “Take off those socks, too,” she said testily.

Then I heard father’s voice saying, “Leave her alone. She’s tired.

Stop pestering her.”

I added, “Wait a second, mother; I’m going to the bathroom.” She said, “You can’t come in with your legs like that.” I went to the spigot in the yard. I got out of my socks and washed my legs. Then I entered the sitting room barefoot. Father was still standing behind the window deep in thought. I said, “I thank you, father. I was really afraid that I’d come home and have it out with you.”

He turned around and said, “Why would I argue with you? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I said, “No, but I was worried about going off without permission and staying so long.”

“No, you did the right thing, what was necessary. May God reward you. If God’s okay with it, I’m okay.”

This made me want to jump into his arms, but, blocking me with his arms, he said, “No so fast. Wait a second.”

I realized I had been handling corpses and hadn’t done the proper ablutions. I clasped my hands around his neck and kissed his face. Then, as I kept kissing him, I looked him straight in the eye, something his sense of decorum would never allow. More out of joy than uncertainty,

I asked him again, “So you’re saying I can go, right?”

He kissed my face and unlocked my hands from around his neck. He looked at me and said, “Yes, today everyone must help. The differences between men and women don’t matter anymore. Everybody must lend a hand in the defense. We can’t let a foreigner invade our country and take our land, dignity, and self-respect. Both men and women must stop this from happening.” He paused and then said, “I was at Jannatabad myself, and saw what was going on there. They sent us to dig graves; the gravediggers they had couldn’t cope with all the bodies, after all.”

I asked, “So you were there?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t take being in Jannatabad only to dig graves—I need to go to the front and fight the enemy. I can do more than just dig.” Then he said, “So tell me what it was like at the body washers’?”

I explained the conditions there: the large number of poor souls I saw, people slaughtered like that, how tired the body washers were. Leila listened to what I was saying as she went in and out. Father’s expression showed how deeply he was affected by what I said; I had the feeling that he was now deeper in thought than when I first came into the compound. Suddenly he left the room without a word.

Father’s giving his permission was a relief to my physically. What he said also lifted my spirits, and I decided that moment to go back to Jannatabad.

As I was leaving the hall, Leila said she wanted to go, too.

“Go where?” I asked, “And do what?”

“The same place as you. Why are you going?”

“I’m helping.”

“Fine, I’ll help, too.”

“That won’t be necessary; you’ll be of no use there. You’ll just get

in the way,” I said.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“The things I saw there made me go to pieces; there’s no telling what they’d do to you,” I said.

To be continued …