Da (Mother) 27

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2022-12-28

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

***

Six: Search for Help

I finally fell asleep in the wee hours, only to be awakened by the old man body washer calling us to prayer. It was hard to get up; every bone in my body ached. After prayers, I wished I had been home sleeping; there was no escape here. Zeynab and Maryam were talking. Seeing me crumpled into a ball in the corner trying to snooze, Zeynab said, “My God! You didn’t sleep a wink all night, did you, girl?”

“Not true. I napped,” I said.

“Sleeping sitting up is no way to rest. We were fast asleep, but we still got up woozy, and we want to go back to bed. But you!” Then she turned away and said, “I wish to God they’d say the war’s over, and the Iraqi’s have gone. That way there’d be no more bodies, and we’d know where we stand.” She got up and brought the kerosene lamp outside. I could hear one of the men saying, “The kerosene’s out in this one, and the wick’s burned through. With your permission, I’ll use it without the wick. How are we going to find a wick anyway, the bazaars being what they are? Then there’ll be no tea for anyone.”

The sun was up by the time they had the tea brewing. Zeynab and I spent the intervening time walking in the yard between the building and the mosque, which had no minaret or dome and was used for prayers for the dead. The weather was great, but every breath I took came with a whiff of gunpowder. The shelling, which had gone on all night, continued. It would stop for a half hour and then resume. By now I was used to the explosions. I said, “Night or day, it makes no difference to them.”

Zeynab asked, “What’s gotten into them?”

The walk did wonders for the kinks in my muscles, but my stomach was sticking to my ribs and I felt weak. I sat by a container of water they used for cooking and washed my hands and face. I drank some water and gargled, but I was suddenly sick with a bitter taste in my mouth. I couldn’t get up. It felt like my teeth had sunk back into my gums. The muscles in my neck were knotted. To top it off, there was no feeling in my hands.

I got on my feet feeling dazed, as if the ground had collapsed under me and I was falling into an abyss. It was a struggle to walk back to the room.

Breakfast was a few potatoes and pieces of bread left over from the night before. Maryam added some petit beurre biscuits. It was a chore even to get down a few biscuits. I ate them only to stop feeling nauseous, but they actually tasted good and made me feel better.

The male body washers looked at the potatoes and bread and said, “We can’t work on empty stomachs. If this is all there is, we won’t even be able to stand up.”

It occurred to me that I should go to the Congregational Mosque and tell them to do something about the food. If things went on like this, we’d never last. But then I thought: With all the people I saw there, they still hadn’t sent anyone to help us. Why should they do anything about rations for the body washers? While it was true that the body washers who stayed out here were probably getting overtime, it was hardly enough considering what they were doing. Besides they were risking their lives. They could have quit and left.

It made me mad to think I had been fooled into thinking that reinforcements would come any minute. I made up my mind to go back after breakfast, and, if that young man tried to feed me a bill of goods again, I’d have it out with him. “I’m going,” I announced.

“Where to?” asked Zeynab.

“The mosque.”

“To do what?”

“To see what they can do for us,” I said.

“Weren’t you there yesterday? Have they done anything yet?” she asked.

“They probably forgot. Today I’m going to make sure they’ll remember us.” I started walking and by the time I got to the mosque my blood was boiling. I was on Ordibehesht when I saw a battered van coming. The driver stopped and said his route took him past the mosque and, if I was also going that way, he’d give me a lift.

I felt so worn out that it made no difference to me the man was a stranger. I thanked him and hopped in the back. Along the way every time he saw a pedestrian the driver would stop and ask if they needed a ride. Two men sat in the front and a woman with a four-year-old sat in the back. Two other men were added, but they got off at the Imam Sadeq mosque; the rest of us were going to the Congregational Mosque.

Despite the chaos I managed to find the same young man. People called him “Ebrahimi.” He was in constant motion, talking to this person and that, and whenever the telephone rang he would run to answer it. No matter how busy he was, he was always cordial responding to people’s demands. When he returned to the desk and before the phone could ring again, I saw my chance and said, “Hello.”

“And hello to you,” he said.

“Pardon me but the forces you sent to help us haven’t arrived yet. I’m here to find out what happened.”

He laughed and said, “Wait a second while I take this call.”

I paid no attention to his conversation and looked into the courtyard, which was a mob scene. A number of people were arranging equipment and relief supplies. They put women and the children in the prayer room; the constant moaning and howls were getting on people’s nerves. I returned to the desk where the young man was sitting. He put down the receiver and asked, “Well, what can I do for you?”

I sensed that he had forgotten all about me. I said, “Don’t you remember? I came here yesterday asking for you to arrange for more people to come to Jannatabad?”

He paused and said, “Jannatabad. Yes. Yes.

“So, where are the fresh forces you promised?”

“Where am I supposed to find them?” he asked.

“Seems like you forgot that I had come yesterday,” I said. “You didn’t know who I was. You call yourself a serious person! Why did you promise to do something when you knew you couldn’t? If you had just told me that yesterday, I would have gone and asked somebody else.”

“I’m telling you now; it’s not going to happen,” he said irritably.

“Go ask somebody else.”

Angrily I said, “Now, I don’t care how but either you dig up some people or you give me some weapons!”

“Really? Did I give you a guarantee or something?” he said.

“Search me,” I said, “I didn’t guarantee that I’d stay in Jannatabad. I just know it’s my duty. By sitting behind that desk, you also should feel a sense of responsibility. So now you’ve got to do your duty.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Try to do something about the situation at Jannatabad. We need more people. It’s not the handful of body washers’ fault that they have more work than they know what to do with. During the last several days, they’ve been working from morning till night without even being able to go home, and nobody feels their pain. We don’t have any weapons to defend ourselves against the wild dogs that come around. Now no matter how much I complain about the situation there’s nobody here to help me. What happens when the dogs come and attack one of the corpses or takes it away? Then what?”

After I said this, I noticed that a number of people had gathered around. “She’s right,” they said. “It’s a crazy situation. You’ve got to do something for them. It can’t go on.…”

The young man was trapped, “I don’t doubt what the sister says—but what can I do about it? It’s not my job.”

“I didn’t say it was your job,” I said, “but there’s a telephone on your desk. Get in touch with someone who can help and describe the situation in Jannatabad to them. Tell them that I’ll be back every day to pester you. If you put it that way, they’ll be forced to think of something.”

“Okay. I’ll do it. If all it takes is a telephone call, I’ll do it,” he said.

“I’m staying here until you do, now,” I warned him. “I don’t want it to be like yesterday. If you ignore me again, I’ll be back to scream my head off until somebody does something.”

He laughed and said, “So what else is new? Why should you be any different from the others who come here to shout at me?”

This made me feel sorry for him. After a pause, I said, “God bless you.” Then I said goodbye and headed for Jannatabad. I felt miserable; I had high hopes of returning with more people and weapons. I knew that when they saw me coming back empty-handed, Zeynab and the others would say, “Told you so.”

Sounds of explosions came from all directions as I walked back to the cemetery. When I got to Ordibehesht Circle, I saw several dogs coming from the slaughterhouse. They began to whimper and run toward me. The noises they made were a mixture of fear and pleading. I realized that they weren’t going to attack; they were just looking for shelter amidst all the shelling. They were also, I guessed, hungry; when there was no food for people, who would feed stray dogs?

Still whimpering, they followed me down Ordibehesht Avenue. They seemed to be begging me to take them wherever I was going. Dogs were not unfamiliar to me; I seemed to know what they were thinking. I turned and said, “Why are you following me? Where am I supposed to take you? To Jannatabad? If I did that, the others would just make fun of me, saying, ‘Are these the reinforcements you were talking about? We have enough problems with dogs. Get rid of them!’”

I did everything I could to shoo them away several times, but it did no good. They insisted on following me. I wagged my chador at them and pretended to kick them whenever they got close. It was so frustrating I had to laugh. What would someone think if they saw me lunging and feinting like that? I finally gave up and let them follow me. It reminded me of at time the winter before, when we were returning from grandfather’s house, passing an empty lot where they were supposed to plant grass. I saw some puppies, not more than a few days old, and kids from the area were throwing rocks at them and kicking them. The poor things were whining and snuggling together trying to escape their tormentors. It was heartbreaking; I wanted to do something, but I knew that father would never let me keep puppies in the house. Besides, we were still at Behruzi’s home, and father was by no means on good terms with the engineer’s dog. He believed that God’s angels would not set foot in a home with a dog, and he’d never change his mind about this. In back of our house was an empty lot, which troublemakers might use to get in through the roof. Father was always warning us to keep on the lookout when we were on the roof. We were always telling him that a dog would solve the problem. The dog, we argued, would bark at any intruder; but he wouldn’t budge.

I told Ali about the puppies after I got back home, and at first he was also opposed to the idea of keeping them, but when I described how the neighborhood kids were torturing them, he went out to see for himself. He came back and told me he wanted to keep them too. He told Mansur and me to go and get one. He promised to mollify father. I was so happy that I nearly fainted. Mansur, Leila, and I raced to where the puppies were. There were only two left but the one I wanted, which was white with a few black markings around its eyes, was gone. I asked Mansur and Leila which one they wanted, but just at that moment several boys said, “These are ours.”

I said, “These puppies have been here since morning with no one claiming them. Now they’re yours? We’ve come to take them away.”

They softened and asked, “Auntie, do you think we could have just one of them?”

“Okay,” I said, “take the one you want.”

They took one of the yellow puppies and I asked them, “What are you going to do with it?”

“We’ll take it home and raise it,” they said.

“Don’t hit it,” I warned. “Be nice to it or you’ll feel God’s anger.”

“No, auntie,” they promised, “we won’t hurt it.”

To be continued …