Da (Mother) 29

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-1-10

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

***

The same tall girl with dark features that I saw the previous day stepped forward and said, “What’s the matter with you? Why are you making such a fuss?”

All at once I was on the verge of tears, but I described the situation at Jannatabad to her. Thinking that I had found a sympathetic face, I poured my heart out to her, as my body went into spasms I was weeping so much.

“Which high school were you in?” she asked sympathetically.

“I didn’t go to high school,” I said.

“So what made you go to Jannatabad?” she asked.

“They needed me there,” I said. Then I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Maryam Amjadi. What’s yours?”

“Zahra. Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni, but on my ID they wrote by mistake Zohreh.”

Speaking with Maryam made me feel better. Several other girls gathered around us while we were talking. It appeared that they were a group of well-bred young woman, all of whom became friends while working in the mosque. They were on a first-name basis. Maryam introduced me to them. Sabah Vatankhah was a slender girl with a dark complexion, tall with a unibrow and almond-shaped eyes. She wore a cloak with a floral check print and dark brown and white stripes. Her oversized crème-colored headscarf was fastened tightly under her chin.

Zohreh Farhadi like Sabah was tall and thin; but, unlike the others, very quiet and composed. When she did speak, I thought, she showed considerable strength and personality. She didn’t say much not because she was self-effacing but self-reliant. I also met Ra’na Najjar, Elaheh Hejab, Ashraf Farhadi, and Afsaneh Qazizadeh.

They had heard my conversation with Nuri and tried to console me, “Don’t get upset; everything will turn out okay. What good does it do to torture yourself? You just keep on doing what you’re doing, and good things will happen. Just think how those martyrs you’re helping will intercede for you in heaven! Look at us; we’re content just to work here. We wish we could be as brave as you.”

“What do you do here?” I asked.

“We wait for them to bring in the wounded, and we act as nurses.”

Snooping around, I had noticed they had turned the right side of the mosque into a small clinic with a bed, a hospital screen, a small table, a drug cabinet, and a trolley.

“Now, since you don’t seem to be busy, why don’t we all go to Jannatabad?” I suggested. “There’s no end of work there and you could help out.”

They were silent for a moment and stared at me. Sabah said, “The truth is I’m afraid. Not exactly afraid, but I think I’d be sick to my stomach if I worked there. That’s probably what the other girls are thinking also.”

“Why do you say you can’t?” I asked. “How do you know unless you try? It was hard for me at first, but I did it and stayed. Why not go and see if you could stick it out?”

Sabah was again very direct, “Why are you trying to strong arm us? We’re frightened. Understand?”

“Are you afraid of me now?” I asked.

“No, why should we be?”

“So, if I were to die right now, then you’d be afraid?”

“Yeah.”

“That makes no sense,” I said. “Alive I can hurt you, but after I’m gone what harm could I do?”

She smiled and said, “But you’d look different; you’d be stone cold and I couldn’t go near you.”

This annoyed me and I said, “You claim that you’ve come here to work. So let’s go; work is work—it makes no difference if it’s here or there. No more excuses.”

“But that’s so beyond what we can do,” said the other girls.

The severe spiritual strain I was under left no room for the normal niceties. I didn’t care whether I offended them or not. All I could see were the martyrs lying in piles. That was the reason I was so blunt. I didn’t have it in me to return to Jannatabad empty-handed again. Even  so, after all the running around and speaking to this person and that, the only people I could convince were a bunch of schoolgirls. I persuaded most of them to come to Jannatabad. Only Maryam Amjadi refused, saying she couldn’t abandon the mosque.

She went up the stairs to the second floor of the mosque and stood there. From what I understood, she was in charge of a small arms and ammunition cache, distributing guns and bullets to those who had permits for them. So I set out with Sabah, Zohreh, Afsaneh, and Ashraf Farhadi, a cousin of Zohreh. But it was only Afsaneh who, after all my badgering, agreed to come and help voluntarily.

I asked her, “Aren’t you scared?”

She said, “No, we were there to work and we’ve got to do anything we can.”

What she said pleased me, because here was at least one girl who was going to help with all her heart. But when we got to Jannatabad, Ashraf and Zohreh found they just couldn’t manage it. Sabah also said to me, “I’m afraid. I guess I’m not as cold-blooded as you.”

She went inside the body washers’ building to see what had to be done. When Afsaneh entered with me and saw the conditions there, she blanched. Registering her reaction, I said, “Okay, if you’re scared, you don’t have to touch them.”

“No, I will,” she said as if under an obligation. Then she rolled up her sleeves and together we dry-washed one of the bodies. After we had finished, she said, “I can’t stay. This is no place for me.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t force her to stay. We left the building together, and as we did I saw Zohreh sweeping the room and Sabah arranging some of the supplies. Then all the girls said their prayers. Zohreh turned her sweet and sympathetic face to me and said, “Sister Hoseyni, you were right to raise hell at the mosque. Nobody’s really going to come to your rescue. No matter how much you run after this person or that, you’ll only be running in circles.”

To be continued …