Da (Mother) 19

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2022-11-1

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

***

Mrs. Goruhi immediately bit her hand, showing how much the news upset her. The other women asked her who Effat was. She was about to explain when I begged to be excused; I didn’t have the strength to listen.

When I got home, Mansur opened the door for me. I went into the yard. Mother was standing in front of the porch. She seemed exhausted. She answered my greeting sarcastically, “So, you’re home. How strange!”

She was obviously exasperated. I answered playfully, “Did you want me to come back?”

She glared at me and disappeared into the kitchen. I sat by the small pool to wash my socks. “What’s going on, mother?” I asked.

“What do mean what’s going on? You’re the one who left me high and dry.”

“Where’s dad?” I asked.

“After you left, he came straight home. Then he went out again, saying, ‘Don’t wait up for me; they’ve sounded the general alarm.’”

When she saw me by the spigot, she said, “Get up. Get up and go to the bathroom.”

“I will,” I said.

I was dead tired, but I knew that if I didn’t listen to her, I’d never hear the end of it. I got up and dragged myself to the bathroom and stood under the shower in my clothes. I looked at my hands, amazed that they had been touching corpses. Although the water was so cold it made me shiver, it was soothing just the same. It lifted my spirits, but I didn’t even have the strength to wash. Waiting impatiently for me behind the door, Leila took the clothes. I heard mother say to her, “Don’t put these on the clothesline; put them on the fence.”

Then I said to myself: Imagine what mother would say if she had seen the situation at the body washers’. As I did the ablution for touching the dead, I thought about the corpses that I had washed that day. The only difference between them and me, it seemed, was that I was washing myself. As I left the bathroom the only thing I wanted to do was collapse on my bed, but I had housework to do so mother would not have an excuse to scold me.

Leila dogged my steps as I went this way and that, bombarding me with questions. She wanted to know what it was like at Jannatabad. I was worn out and didn’t feel like talking. We brought out dinner and spread the food cloth on the floor. The children sat around the cloth, behaving badly as they ate. I gave them a look. Although my stomach was rumbling, I didn’t touch the food; I had absolutely no appetite. The sight of meat turned my stomach. Mother kept asking, “Why don’t you eat? You’ve been on your feet all day.”

I wanted to tell her about the storm raging in my heart, but I made do with a simple, “I’m not hungry.” I broke off a lump of bread and went into the yard. I forced it down to make the knot in my stomach go away. I also had a few cups of tea to quench my thirst and pep me up a bit. Then I went to clear the dinner things and spread the bedding. The everyday things like eating and sleeping no longer had any meaning, I thought, in the face of death; life could be lived on a much more basic level. When I was washing the dishes with Leila, she said, “I’m coming with you tomorrow.”

“No way,” I said. “If you go, mother will be left here all by herself and she’ll complain to father. He won’t let either of us go then.” Then I told her some of the things that I had seen at Jannatabad that day. Mother came in and out of the room, hearing parts of what I said, and cursed Saddam. She said, “This one will never leave us in peace. All  our suffering is from him; in Iraq, in Iran—it makes no difference.”

When we were finished washing up, I said my prayers and went to bed. I was really tired, but Zeynab wouldn’t let me sleep. From the minute I entered the house, she had latched on to me and wouldn’t let go, and no matter how many times I told her to go away and sleep, she wouldn’t listen. She came into the room and said in her baby voice, “I want to sleep by you.” I didn’t have the heart to say no. She lay down beside me and I stroked her hair. With her beside me, so innocent and fragile, I didn’t want to think any more about Jannatabad, but she asked me, “Where were you?”

“Jannatabad.”

“What did you do there?” she asked.

I was at a loss. I paused and said, “There was some work. Now I’m really tired.” Then to distract her I asked, “Tell me what you did today?”

“Nothing. I was bored being in the house all day. Mother wouldn’t let me go out. She’s says it’s dangerous. Father was gone also.”

“Mother’s right. You shouldn’t go out. Father wherever he is will be back.”

Then I said to myself: It doesn’t matter whether she stays in the house or goes out. It’s dangerous everywhere. Zeynab forced me to tell her a story. Telling her I was tired and wanted to sleep did no good. Finally I made something up and she left, but Leila, who was next to me, started her questions. She was worse than Zeynab, not satisfied with anything I said, but when she finally relented I was so exhausted I couldn’t sleep. When I closed my eyes, the nightmares would start. I saw myself in a grave, and there was someone pulling me down deeper. I tried to resist but I couldn’t break free. As I struggled, from not that far away all sorts of strange faces began to threaten me. I tried to climb out of the grave and escape, but my feet were held tight. There was no escape. As those faces got closer, I woke up covered in sweat with my heart beating so hard it was about to burst from my chest. I sent up prayers and thanked the Lord that I had awakened in time; otherwise I would have been done for. I went to sleep again and in my dreams there were all sorts of jumbled scenes that were upsetting. I woke myself up several times that night with my labored breathing. Once I jumped out of bed, hearing mother say to father, “Why don’t you talk to that girl? Why don’t you stop her from going to Jannatabad.” I was very upset thinking it was all over now, but I heard father say, “This is not the time for such talk. We all have to look out for one another. Suppose I don’t let her go; then the neighbor will do the same thing. Who would stop the enemy then? They’re going to invade any day now, occupy the whole country, and rob us of our dignity. You don’t know what depravity these Baathists are capable of. They have no respect for anything: not for a person’s good name or religion or faith. Some are worse than wild beasts.” I was reassured by what he said.

The last time I woke up that morning there was the call to prayer. Getting out of bed to pray, I asked mother, “About what time did father come in?”

“Late at night.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“He left when the call to prayer sounded.”

I wanted nothing more than to return to bed and sleep until noon, but I had to get cracking if I wanted to go to Jannatabad. Leila also jumped out of bed and the two of us started working like fiends. We prepared breakfast and spread the cloth. I woke the children and Leila folded the bedding. I fed the children some breakfast and poured a glass of tea for myself and ran. I put on some clothes. When mother saw Leila and I were about to leave, she said, “Where to?”

“Jannatabad,” we said in unison.

“Both of you? One of you at least should stay and help.”

I said, “I can’t stay. I told them yesterday I would be back. I promised.”

Leila pleaded, “I want to go and help, too.”

“We’ll try to come back early to help you,” I repeated.

Mother was silent. We didn’t wait for her to say anything and raced from the door. As we walked toward Jannatabad, I was worried about Leila joining me. She was an emotional girl and was afraid she couldn’t take what she saw there. How would it affect her psychologically? If she couldn’t do the job, I’d never hear the end of it. I couldn’t understand it; the more I described the horrifying scenes at Jannatabad, the more she insisted on coming. There was one explanation: since we were only one year apart and always worked together, she preferred to be with me. Not to do a job helpful to people was the last thing she wanted. This made me feel better about her coming. I said to her, “The moment we arrive, you’ll have to get busy, right? Don’t dawdle or say I can’t do something. Whatever they ask you to do you’ll have to do.”

The poor thing wanted so badly to come with me she agreed to do whatever they asked.

We reach Jannatabad very quickly. It was the beginning of the day, and the place wasn’t crowded. We stood outside the building as the body washers changed into their work clothes. When Zeynab emerged wearing her boots and gloves, I said hello. She smiled and said, “You brought reinforcements?”

“This is Leila, my sister,” I said.

“Two young people! God bless you both for coming to help,” Zeynab said. She turned to Leila and continued, “Your sister was a big help to us yesterday. She was exhausted.” Then we walked toward the body washers’. Before we reached the entrance I saw a number of dead piled up behind the door. Zeynab said, “They brought them from the hospital.”

I kept my eye on Leila. As soon as she saw the corpses her eyes went round, and she stared at them nervously, almost in shock. It was as if she realized for the first time what had actually happened—or maybe despite all her questions, she had to see the reality before she could believe it. She now understood the depth of the tragedy. She stood there staring with the same startled expression. Then she looked at me as if to say: You didn’t tell me it was going to be like this.

In order to ground her and make the situation seem routine, I said, “Let’s visit the grave of Mrs. Nuri’s brother.” I had told her about him and Bizhan the night before. Mrs. Nuri was Leila’s favorite teacher at the Salvar School.

At the gravesite, Leila recited from the Quran and cried. The lump in her throat she had tried to stifle by the entrance to the body washers’ burst. Then we got up and returned to the building. Leila, surprised by the number of graves dug in twenty-four hours, said, “Gosh, Zahra, just two days ago this was all wasteland! How did it get filled so fast?”

To be continued …