Da (Mother) 30

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-1-17

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

***

Seven: MIGs and Dogs

It was late afternoon on the September 26, 1980. I was standing outside the body washers’ building with the other girls. Leila had also taken a break and come outside. I introduced her to Sabah, Zohreh, Ashraf, and Afsaneh, telling them that we were sisters. As we exchanged pleasantries, I heard father’s voice calling me. I can’t describe how happy that made me; not having seen him for two days, I missed him terribly. Noticing my reaction, Leila and the other girls turned and saw him. Leila and I ran toward father. He took me in his arms first, then Leila. He said hello to the other girls, then stood quietly. He seemed very tired. There was a strange sadness in his expression. After Leila and the other girls left, he wasted no time getting to the point, “Zahra, I have a favor to ask you.”

I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What kind of favor?” I asked uneasily.

He looked down saying nothing. I examined his features. His face was drained of color, which told me he hadn’t been sleeping lately. The spark was gone from his eyes, those eyes that always had the look of an innocent victim. This was exactly his expression in the Iraqi state security prison, when he gave mother formal responsibility for the family and asked Ali and me to be good and not to cause her any grief.

I sensed he was searching for the right words. My eyes were fixed on his mouth and I couldn’t breathe. I struggled to anticipate what he would to say. Finally he raised his head and looked directly into my eyes. I couldn’t bear him staring at me like that and turned away. Then he broke the silence and in a gentle voice said, “Ali is not around and Mohsen, as you know, is not the most capable child. Until Ali comes back from Tehran, I am entrusting the care of the children and your mother to you. I’m going and I might not be back. Anything could happen. I could be killed, taken prisoner, wounded. So I’m going into this with my eyes open. Of course there is always God, but responsibility for the family after me, is yours.”

It was impossible for me to take this in, but I saw how calm he was, how determined. He had cut his ties with all that was dear to him; he was ready even to leave us—me!—behind and go. I tried with all my might to keep the intense feelings we had for each other under control. I had to answer him in such a way that would convince him he hadn’t made a mistake relying on me. I couldn’t dash his hopes, but I had to tell him that we still needed him. It was too soon to leave a seventeen-year-old alone in charge of a family. In our private moments, didn’t he tell me that I—apart from mother and grandfather—meant the world to him? How then could he so easily cut his ties with us?

I couldn’t breathe; it felt like there was a weight on my chest. The air had suddenly become too thick to take into my lungs. I wanted to relieve myself of all the stress I felt and rail at him: What kind of pledge do you want from me? It’s too early for you to saddle me with such a heavy responsibility. Don’t ask this of me, at least. But in the end the answer I gave him was personally reassuring and, at the same time, one that would end the conversation sooner than it needed to. “What kind of talk is this? God willing, you’ll go and come back without a scratch. We’re going to cut those Baathists to ribbons. We can’t lose.”

In a voice choked with emotion, father said, “We’ll always be victorious, my daughter, barring treachery. And with the treachery that’s going on there’s no turning back. During the past several days I was with the highway patrol, I met soldiers and other military people. They’re all running around without any orders. Banisadr won’t let the regular military get involved. The traitors have gotten us into this mess.”

He emphasized the idea of betrayal by banging his fist on a nearby road sign. I didn’t know what to say. A teary film covered my eyes, and a fierce battle was raging in my soul. I didn’t want my tears to weaken his resolve, but on the other hand, I wanted to shout with all my being that this wouldn’t be the last time I was going to see him.

After a pause, he said, “I’ve got to go.” We walked toward the gate and he took my right hand in his and knitted our fingers. I wanted to keep him there forever but couldn’t. As we got closer to the gate he squeezed my hand harder, and I felt I would always be the closest to him. He unhooked his fingers and held me around the waist, which allowed me to rest my head on his chest. I breathed in his smell, making sure it would remain with me always. I also committed all the signs of his love for me to memory: his embrace, the kindness in his voice, the gentle pressure of his hand on mine. I wanted again to say: Don’t leave me alone. Why do you want to go at the very time when I need you most? Why are you leaving me with this unbearable burden? My whole being was full of words, recriminations, but not a single sound emerged from my mouth. As we reached the gate, my heart started pounding, and my gut was in an uproar. I wanted to be by his side forever.

Leila saw that he was about to leave and came running. I left his embrace and he took her in his arms. I thought: Poor Leila doesn’t suspect how precious these moments are.

I heard him tell her, “Now mind what your sister says. Take care of yourself and try to stay together at all times.” Leila stared at father stunned. Her face was strained with the effort to keep her emotions in check, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Father hugged her again and with his usual kidding about her chubbiness, said, “Don’t cry, my little Chieftain. We will all have to watch out for one another.”

Leila calmed down. Father hugged me again. Then he walked away quickly, and, without a backward glance, left the cemetery. I was certain he was now divorced from the real world and everything in it. We stood there watching him go, the father that we adored. Leila asked, “Zahra, why was father speaking that way? What did he mean?”

Choked up, I said, “It was like his last will and testament. We will probably never see him again. He’s going to his martyrdom.”

Her tears started flowing again. Father’s leaving set off waves of emotion in me. I couldn’t stand still. All the girls had left, though I had hoped one or two would have stayed.

The sun faded and Jannatabad emptied out, leaving no more than seven or eight of us standing by a graveside. We wanted to bury a boy of ten or twelve. Some earth had spilled into the grave and one of the men was digging it out. The old man who said the prayers, too tired to stand, sat on the loose earth. He was short, around sixty, with a light complexion. He came each morning to Jannatabad, preferring not to spend the night there. He would always take off his shoes and hang up his street clothes and change into a pair of loose-fitting pajamas. He wore a white skull cap and went around the cemetery barefoot. He rolled up the pajama pants so they wouldn’t get in the way when he worked. I felt very sorry for him. With his skull cap he reminded me of grandfather. Before all this happened I would regularly visit grandfather’s house but it had been several days that I had no word from him.

When the grave was ready, the old man went inside and they passed the body down. As they were uncovering the boy’s face and reading the prayer, I went to get two gravestones. The old man said to me, “Give me that stone, my daughter. Be careful, don’t throw it” (after he had gotten to know me, he always called me “daughter”).

But before he could finish, we heard the sound of jets coming from the south. We all looked in that direction but didn’t see anything. Suddenly someone shouted, “There coming from that direction, that direction—behind you!”

The two MIGs were flying faster than sound, so we saw them first and then heard a terrifying roar later. I felt so much pressure on my eardrums, I thought they were about to burst from whatever held them in place. The sound went through my heart, causing it to quake, and I didn’t know why I couldn’t breathe. It was like a violent wind had blown all the air away from my face. The MIGs went by so quickly I couldn’t tell anything about their size; the only thing that was apparent was that they were extremely low to the ground. The jets started coming at the beginning of the war, but yesterday, the third day, the bombing intensified. Aware that there was no antiaircraft, the pilots started flying low to the ground. I had heard from military people who were scattered about that the AWACs came to reconnoiter, and the MIG 21s and 23s were Russian fighter planes. They dropped their bombs on the base and in the wasteland between the base and the houses on Abbasabad Lane. The ground shook under my feet. The air was filled with the sounds of the blasts and plumes of dust. We could even hear the sound of glass shattering on Abbasabad Lane. The ugly roar reminded me of what happened during the solar eclipse that happened when I was in school one day. Everything went dark and there was a terrible storm with lashing rain and thunder and lightning that split the sky with a piercing blare. All the children were terrified and most were crying. The MIGs brought back that kind of fear. We all lay flat on the ground with our hands covering our ears, waiting for what would happen next. When I got up to see, someone yelled, “Down, girl! Why are you getting up?”

Out of curiosity I couldn’t help following the flight of the MIGs as I sat there. After dropping their bombs, they returned to where we were, this time hitting the area near the Police Station. There was a thick cloud of black smoke rising over part of the city. Clearly they had hit some of the garages in Diesel-Abad. The sounds of explosions also came from Farmandari Circle, which certainly meant that they were going after the bridge. Everything was happening very fast, but, as I sat there, it seemed to take ages. The MIGs circled in the sky several times and then headed for Shalamcheh. I was worried that if they bombed Jannatabad, they would destroy the graves, making it impossible to sort out the remains afterwards. When I was certain they had gone, we got up and went on with our work. One of the men cursed, “Goddamn the lot of you, you heathen Baathists! May you and your whole generation be wiped off the earth! You’ve murdered everyone dear to me, and now you’ve no mercy for their graves! What the hell have we done that you don’t even let our dead rest in peace?” Another said consolingly, “If our Phantoms had been flying, they wouldn’t have had the nerve to do what they did.”

To be continued …