Da (Mother) 17

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2022-10-17

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

***

She didn’t say anything. I went to the spigot and washed for prayer on the veranda. I felt much better after praying; the pressures on my heart were gone. I picked up my socks and put them on, and although I had washed them thoroughly, they still smelled of camphor. At that point five-year-old Zeynab walked over to me. She hadn’t seen me since morning, and I knew she wanted a hug. I said to her, “Don’t come near me, sweetie. My clothes are filthy.” She made a face and looked at me in disbelief with those almond-shaped eyes gleaming like two stars.

“I’m going,” I said. “Tonight when I come back, I’ll change my clothes and then I’ll give you a big hug. So, tell me now, what have you been doing all morning?”

Hearing my voice in the yard, mother emerged from the kitchen and, using that tone of hers when she wanted to show her disapproval, said, “Okay, now; have a nice trip?”

“I am going back to Jannatabad,” I said. “How come?” she asked in Kurdish.

“Dad gave me permission—you saw.”

“And what am I supposed to do? You’ve been gone since morning, leaving me all alone here.”

I knew, it wasn’t just having to do the housework that made her cranky; the children listened to me more than they did to her. With me gone things got out of hand, and she confirmed it by saying, “The children are driving me crazy.”

“Well, there’s always Leila,” I said.

“Yeah, there’s always Leila,” she repeated crossly.

She was upset but as I put on my chador she asked, “What about lunch? Hold on; let me make a lunch for you.”

“I don’t want it. I have no appetite, can’t keep anything down.”

I left the house and headed for Jannatabad. I was lost in thought. I was overjoyed by father’s reaction, but it still puzzled me. I began to think about the things he was going through. He wasn’t a person to sit by in quiet acceptance, but it seemed to me that he had given up things he was most attached to.

With these thoughts on my mind, I returned to Jannatabad to find the situation was no better than it had been that morning. I was more at ease, though; the pangs were gone. I felt more at home at the body washers’, but as I worked I still cried and tried to keep myself from seeing many things. Suddenly, among the bodies that they had sent in I noticed a familiar face. I was trembling. She was one of our former neighbors, and the bodies of her two children were beside her. I got all choked up and suddenly everything went dark. When they were washing her and preparing the shroud, I heard her husband wailing outside the door, making sounds that would melt the hardest of hearts. I wondered what was going through his mind. He was a young man with a light complexion who had fallen head over heels for this dark-skinned girl. She wasn’t pretty or well built—almost a mirror opposite of her husband—but they loved each other passionately and, over the objections of both families, got married. In spite of the fact that the marriage produced two grandchildren, the boy’s family remained bitter about it. In the end they forced their son to separate from his wife, but he couldn’t stand being away from her and, after a few weeks, returned. This hadn’t happened that long ago, and I figured he was probably in agony over the hurt he had caused his wife. When they were handing over the three bodies, I went out of the building with them. The husband threw himself on the corpses and howled with all his being. Then he let them go and began to beat himself and heap dirt on his head, shouting, “God!”

I was moved beyond tears by that scene. I wanted nothing more than to calm him, saying that I understood his pain, but modesty prevented it. I could no longer look at him and quickly went inside. Again I felt dizzy and faint, and was plagued by questions that had no answers. Why? Why did this have to happen? What crime did these people commit?

The sound of Zeynab’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Go to the cabinet and fetch more camphor,” she said angrily. Her tone surprised me. From that morning until now the woman never raised her voice to anyone despite the heavy workload. Why she would do so now was puzzling. She was probably dead on her feet, I thought. So I didn’t take it to heart, and did what she said, passing by the dead bodies on my way to the cabinet. All of a sudden it was as if there was an electric shock running through me; I jumped back. Once again I saw another familiar face: Effat. We lived on the same block a few years back. Now she was lying on the floor of the body washers’ with her one-year-old son in her arms. I heard that she had had a second child recently. She’d been married about eight years, but hadn’t conceived. She and her family tried everything: vows, special prayers, and pilgrimages—so that God would favor her with a child, and one year ago it happened. The birth transformed their lives, restoring the thrill to their marriage. Her son was just a toddler when she got pregnant again. Sitting by her body, I saw that her head had been wounded by shrapnel but her body was still intact. Shrapnel had severed the throats of her child and shredded the baby’s sides, however. They had brought the pregnant woman and her toddler to the body washers’ as a family: a mother with her two children in her arms. The lump in my throat grew as I looked around at all the dead women, asking myself why they had to end up like that. I knew her; she waited seven or so years to have the children by her side. I couldn’t take any more and told the workers a little about Effat’s life, and they reacted by regularly saying how sorry they were and cursing Saddam. This was too much to bear. When they told me to bring Effat to the slab, I told them I couldn’t.

“Tired, so soon?” they asked.

All choked up, I said, “No, it’s not that. I knew this one personally. It’s hard for me to touch her.”

I stormed out of the building. The crowd seemed to have thinned. The remaining people had cried themselves into semi-consciousness over the graves of loved ones in various parts of the cemetery. I was afraid I would see Effat’s husband among them. What would I say to him? After years of hoping for a child, to have his wishes come true finally, only to lose everything in one night. I was disgusted with myself, with life, with everything—disgusted with myself for surviving and being a witness to such sights. I walked a bit around the cemetery and saw how many graves had been dug, and the day was not even over. I walked toward the exit, searching the avenue for a change of scenery. I hadn’t reached the gate when I saw an old woman, tall and thin, in mourning. Her age was clear from the wrinkles on her face; nevertheless, she seemed to be in good shape. Her temples, the skin around her eyes, under her lower lip, and on her chin was full of bluish tattoos. She was wearing a dark silk shirt with a floral print. On her head was a large silk head cloth tied Arab style, but her forelocks protruded from her head cloth and lay on her shoulders the way Kurds wore them.[1] Strangest of all were the tufts of hair that she had yanked from her skull and wrapped around her fingers. She was moaning softly and reciting a dirge in Kurdish. As she walked she brought her fists over her head, turned them slightly, and then brought them down hard against her bony chest with an audible thud. I heard her saying in Kurdish, “O my darling, I am the living dead because of the infidel.” Then she cursed Saddam, hoping for the day when his heart like hers would be ablaze at the sight of a dead child. “What can I say,” she continued, “it was God’s wisdom to spare me and take my child.”

I looked up to the sky and begged God to come to the aid of these people. All the terrorist bombings, the Arab separatist troubles—how long would we have to endure such miseries? Then I comforted myself with what I had heard people saying all that day: Today or tomorrow the army will drive them back. Planes will come and bomb their positions. Once the army gets here, the Iraqis won’t dare stay any longer. The Arab troubles will be over very soon and….

Reassured, I returned to the body washers’. Zeynab was busy washing Effat, while Maryam, the heavy smoker, was washing her child. However much I tried to remain indifferent to Effat, I couldn’t. Her lips, once red and full, were now bluish and her eyes, which had been bright, were now closed forever. I couldn’t stand to watch them unbraid her long hair and ran into the next room, crushed by the sight. It was hard to breathe, and I felt a terrible pain in my throat—as if it had closed. There was an awful weight on my chest, and the last thing I wanted was for somebody to ask me about it. I waited for them to finish with Effat. Out of curiosity I went outside as they handed over the body and, as bad luck would have it, saw her mother and sister.It was astonishing. I knew that they had come from Azna for Effat’s pregnancy. Now they wanted to bring her back to the town. Although they didn’t know me that well, I didn’t want them to see me there, so I hid behind Zeynab. The mother was speaking in their dialect to Effat as though she were still alive. The poor thing had no tears in her eyes, which surprised me until I saw that she wasn’t herself. She would beat her head and chest so hard you’d think she wanted to do away with herself. Effat’s sister, who was crying, tried to stop her mother from beating herself. I thought I would tell her to cry to make her feel better and did, but she lashed out at me, “Why should I cry? I came here for the public bath of Effat’s pregnancy!” Then she said to her daughter, “Go burn some incense for your sister. Why are you crying?” When she laid her head on Effat’s belly, I got the impression that she was trying to see whether the baby was alive or not. This tore my insides to pieces. Now, I thought, she’d remember the time when she had Effat in her belly.

It was almost dark when they left. There was no one around to take possession of the nameless bodies that had been prepared for burial. These had been wrapped in canvas and put aside in the hope someone would claim them. Each time they opened the canvas to reveal the faces of the dead, I almost blacked out. As it was late, the person who recorded the particulars of the dead said to Zeynab, “Come and wait for the clergy and people in charge so that we can bury these also.” She nodded and went along with them. It bothered me that they were going to bury the poor souls anonymously, without their loved ones knowing where. In addition to these, there were a number of bodies still inside the body washers’. They had names, but there was no telling what had happened to their relatives.

To be continued …