Da (Mother) 26

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2022-12-20

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

***

I listened to them as they hopped from one subject to another. Zeynab said, “I’m not worried—my daughter is with my husband, who took her away from the shelling. If he hadn’t, I would have never been able to work here. Whenever I heard a sound, I’d think that it was our house that was bombed.”

I knew her daughter. Her name was Maryam, and she was in the habit of pacing on their roof when she had to study for school. I used to see her around regularly and we would greet each other from a distance.

Maryam, the body washer, spoke about her son-in-law, whom she called Yedi. He was a member of the Special Forces, who gave her news about the front. She pointed to her cigarette and said, “God bless him, he also brings me these. I told him to pack up his wife and kids and leave. Yedi insisted that I come, too, but I refused.”

Unable to listen to more of this, I got up and began to walk around. Moments later I was joined by Zeynab. It was around 11:00 p.m. and Zeynab kept yawning as we strolled. She was clearly very tired, but kept speaking about her daughter, whom she missed very much.

When we reached the pile of unburied dead, I was sick. My heart went out to them lying there helpless. I wanted to do something, but Zeynab wouldn’t let me pursue these thoughts. She asked, “Are you with me?”

“Yeah,” I said, but my thoughts were soon back to the dead. When they were born? How happy were their parents when they brought them home? What were their expectations? What did they do to fulfill them? I also had my share of desires; I wanted to restart my education. Ever since the time Ali told me about the deprivation and lack of medical services in the villages, I had redoubled my efforts so I could do something about the poverty.

As the night wore on, the howling of the dogs grew louder. When they got close, I picked up a rock and threw it in their direction. The situation was getting serious. We started to hear the sound of the dogs gnashing their teeth coming from the trees, which meant they were getting ready to attack. I shuddered as I imagined them snapping at my heels. Zeynab started hollering and beating the ground with a stick to frighten them, which didn’t make any sense to me because there were so many of them. We could see their eyes flashing in the pitch-black night. We picked up as many stones as we could carry in our chadors, waiting for them to attack. As I left the wooded part of the cemetery, I thought I could feel them behind me. I turned around in horror and saw a pack of sharp-toothed dogs foaming at the mouth, and it scared the life out of me. My legs began to shake and I tried to stay glued to Zeynab. We started to throw stones. Bending down to pick up more stones and then standing upright reminded me of the agony in my back and shoulders from lifting corpses.

The high-pitched whines of the dogs told us some of the stones hit their mark. The pack began to thin out and soon they left. Dead tired, we went back to the changing rooms. I stopped for a moment to look at the dozen or so unidentified bodies we had put in front of the mosque.

I thought: Where are your families now? Are they searching for you? Zeynab said, “This is exactly why I didn’t go home.”

We didn’t stay there long. I hoped the helpers the young man at the mosque had promised would show up soon. When we got back to the room there was no sign of them, though. Maryam and her colleague were still busy talking. The old man was stretched out listening to BBC radio. The other man was sleeping nearby. Zeynab stopped to chat and I went inside. I stretched out in the enclosure formed by the walls and the metal cabinet and pulled my chador over me. A few minutes later Zeynab asked, “You’re not sleeping outside, pet?”

“No,” I said and soon Zeynab followed by Maryam entered and lay down on the carpeting. “Why are you sleeping like that?” they asked. “Come here and make yourself comfortable.”

“I’m more comfortable this way,” I said. The truth was that I didn’t want to sleep on that filthy carpeting. Not only was it old and threadbare, it probably hadn’t been washed in years. In contrast to the crisp air outside, the atmosphere in the room was heavy and dank. Despite this I closed the wooden door before going to sleep.

“Why did you do that?” asked Maryam. “We’ll suffocate.”

“For our own peace of mind,” I said.

“Who’s going to see us in the dark?” she asked.

They made me get up and open the door a crack. I tried to sleep but before I could close my eyes, horrifying noises echoed in my head and I jumped to my feet in a fright. I looked around and realized where I was. I sent up prayers and started to drift into sleep, but a few minutes later I was awake again. Zeynab and Maryam were sound asleep, as if their day hadn’t been as dreadful as mine. There was also the old woman sleeping outside and snoring as if she was sawing wood. This, combined with the low gurgle of Maryam, put my nerves on edge. If the nightmares weren’t enough to keep me awake, these sounds certainly were.

One time I woke up thinking I couldn’t breathe; the thick, clammy air was suffocating. It felt like the walls were crushing me. I got up and went outside, passing the old woman who was sleeping in front of the entrance. I inhaled several times and felt better. Afraid of startling the old woman if she woke and saw me standing there, I went for a walk in the graveyard. It was very dark, and the stars twinkling in the sky did nothing to relieve the gloom. I couldn’t see more than five meters ahead. I chanted a few prayers, which calmed me down. I thought: Suppose the Iraqis, or the Hypocrites or some other were to appear. How would I defend myself? There was also the sound of the wild dogs, which seemed to get closer by the minute. I returned to the room and closed the door. It squeaked, waking Zeynab. “Why did you get up?” she asked.

“I woke up suddenly and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Come lie down. You’ll go back to sleep.”

“I can’t. I just can’t sleep. I can hear the dogs getting closer. If they attack what are we going to do about the bodies?”

“Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked.

“You can’t sleep either?” I asked.

“No.”

She got up. Maryam turned over in her sleep and growled, “Go to sleep. Why are you making all that racket?”

Zeynab whispered, “Go back to sleep. This has nothing to do with you.” With that she got to her feet. We left the room and began to patrol. It was clear from the sounds that the dogs would soon appear. I looked desperately for something to use to keep them off me, but found nothing. Luckily the sounds seemed to recede in the distance and Zeynab said, “Let’s go back.”

As we passed the bodies, I said in Arabic, “Peace be upon you, martyrs.”

Zeynab, imitating my “classical” Arabic accent responded, “And upon you be peace.”

“I was greeting the martyrs,” I explained.

“What if one of them answered; what would you do?”

“Nothing,” I said, “I’d probably run.”

We laughed and went back to the room. Zeynab lay down and said, “Come, you stretch out here and before its morning we’ll catch a few winks.”

“No, I’ll stay where I am.” Zeynab was nice and all, but there was no way I was going to lay down on that ratty carpeting where they washed the dead. It didn’t take long for Zeynab to fall fast asleep, but I remained awake wrestling with my thoughts. The sounds of explosions, some nearby, some from far away, made the concerns cascade in my mind. To escape them I thought I’d go out again. This time Zeynab didn’t see me going.

The graveyard was large but had no gate. It was surrounded by old walls that could be climbed easily. There was an asphalt road extending the length of the body washers’ building. Trees had been planted on both sides of the road. The wind whistled through the branches and the leaves, making the place seem menacing in the darkness. Often I used to sleep on the roof of our house to escape the heat, and every time before I went to sleep, I would look up into the sky and stare at the moon and the stars. The silver sheen of the stars stood out against the navy blue sky. Nights in our town were so filled with stars that sometimes I feared the sky would buckle under their weight, sending them crashing to the ground. A poem that Mimi used to recite in her compound came to my mind: “O beautiful moon, did you not see father on the road? With his rifle on his shoulder he went hunting.”

I could have used the light of the moon and those stars then, but the clouds deprived me of the sight. I walked toward the unburied bodies. When we were talking earlier that night, Maryam mentioned the wild dogs weren’t the only beasts that might feed on the dead. Now that I was here, I wasn’t going to let my insomnia go to waste. I didn’t want to wake up the next day to find the corpses half-eaten. But my heart was filled with a strange dread. I was afraid that one of the bodies laid out here would suddenly rise. What would I do then? I had heard stories of how some of the dead would show signs of life after being in the morgue for a few hours—in a coma they had been taken to the morgue by mistake. For this reason, it had been ordered that the hospital issue a death certificate before bodies were brought to Jannatabad. It was creepy being out there, alone in the darkness with just those gruesome thoughts.

I listened intently to the sounds around me. As soon as I heard something, I would stop, all ears, trying to figure out what it was. Dogs barked and explosions went off in the distance. The unfamiliar sounds of the wind whistling in the trees gave me a start. I managed with some difficulty to break off a dry branch from a tree to defend myself. I trimmed the leaves and, holding it like a club, felt more secure as I patrolled around the corpses. Although I knew that the bodies had been there for a while, it seemed as if they had been killed not more than an hour ago; there wasn’t the slightest hint of an odor.

I looked up at the sky. The moon now appeared. As I walked I had the sense it was moving with me. Then it disappeared behind a cloud and everything was pitch-black again.

At one point as I walked around the dead, it felt like I had stepped on something soft. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t dare move or reach down to touch my foot. The sense I had stepped in something slimy got stronger by the minute. I froze but beads of sweat formed on my forehead just the same. I reached down gingerly and felt my foot. When I realized what had happened, a chill when up and down my spine. I was ankle deep in the bowels of a corpse. It was hard to pull my foot out. Unwieldly and lifeless, it seemed like it didn’t belong to me. I limped along until I reached a stretch of dirt. I took off my shoe and lay on the ground, which didn’t do any good. I took off my sock, but I still couldn’t move my foot. I took a handful of dirt and rubbed it on my shoe and foot. Then I went to the entrance of the building and picked up the ewer we used in the toilet. Leaning on a tree, I washed my shoe and sock with dirt and water. I rubbed my shoe and the curb to get rid of the slime. Then I slowly rinsed it with water. The earth beneath my foot became mud, making things even more difficult, but I finally managed to get everything clean. There wasn’t that much water but I had to make do with what I had. Then I went back into the room. I was shivering in the cold. My heart was racing so fast it seemed it would burst from my chest. I tried to sleep the bad feeling away, but it was no use; the palpitations wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t wait for it to be morning to drive the darkness away, and for people to come to free me from the torments of my conscience.

To be continued …