Da (Mother) 35

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-2-21

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

***

 Eight

Transporting Bodies

At the crack of dawn on the fifth day I waited impatiently for the truck to come, poking my head out of the gate every so often, looking down the avenue for any sign of it. The sun had just risen when two vans—one a Nissan, the other a Peykan—pulled into Jannatabad and stopped in front of the body washers’ building. The two young men who had delivered the shrouds the night before along with a number of guards stepped out of the vans. The two young men led them straight for the bodies. Because their felt markers had run out of ink the night before, they brought new ones to finish writing the names of the dead on the shrouds. Then all of us grabbed stretchers to carry the dead to the vans. Some of the bodies were very heavy, and it took three people to lift one stretcher. The guards stacked the bodies in the back of the vans. It was gratifying to see that all the running around I had done had paid off; it made me work even harder now. Everybody was relieved that there weren’t as many corpses on the ground as we had thought.

Zeynab said, “Girl, I hope good things will happen for you because of this.”

While we were carrying the bodies, I overheard the drivers say that the Nissan would go to Mahshahr, while the Peykan, which didn’t have a motor to speak of, would have to go to nearby Abadan. They loaded twelve bodies into the Peykan, and Zeynab and a couple of guards went with it. Since Abadan was closer, and therefore was a safer journey, I told Leila to go with them.

I said to Zeynab, “Take care of yourself and Leila.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep a closer watch on her than you do. Let me say she’s become quite the young lady.” After the Peykan left, we filled the Nissan with eighteen bodies. I said goodbye to Maryam and the others and sat down on the space between the end of the van and the bodies. Hoseyn and Abdollah rode shotgun on opposite sides of the tailgate. One of the guards said, “Miss, you should sit in front.”

“No, I’m more comfortable right here,” I said. The guard sat in front and we were off. When we got to the Congregational Mosque the Nissan stopped and the guard got out, reporting to Ebrahimi that we were transporting eighteen bodies to Mahshahr and that the other van was carrying twelve to Abadan.

As soon as he heard this Ebrahimi jumped to his feet and made his way through the crowd around his desk. He stopped short when he saw me, saying hello. I greeted him, and Ebrahimi with a look of distress on his face surveyed the bodies. He seemed stunned and, waving his arms at the pile, he yelled, “What is all this? Where did all these come from?”

“Now you know why I kept coming back and making such a fuss; these are the bodies I was talking about,” I explained.

“Yes, now I see why you put yourself through all that hell! What do you want to do with them now?” he asked.

“Since there’s no water or people here, and with all the bombing, we thought we’d bury them somewhere else.”

He said nothing and merely stared at us with a look of disbelief.

Finally he said, “Well, I sure gotta hand it to….”

“Who do you have to hand it to?” I asked.

“I don’t know. To you, to them? I don’t know who,” he said.

At that point the guard who had been in the truck came with another guard carrying a G3 battle rifle. Abdollah climbed onto the roof of the van and sat down. The guard with the G3 took his place in the back.

When the van got going I said goodbye to Ebrahimi. He answered me calmly, “God be with you.”

Because the road along the Shatt was in range of Iraqi artillery, the driver turned around and took the Forty-Meter Road. Ebrahimi watched us as we raced toward the Khorramshahr Bridge. Once over the bridge we got stuck in the traffic waiting to fill up at the gas station.

It was ridiculous sight. People were fed up, shouting and blowing their horns. There was so much noise you couldn’t hear yourself think. Abdollah was shouting at the top of his lungs for the cars to get out of the way so we could pass.

The driver was honking madly, but it did no good. All at once Abdollah began firing into the air, causing people to turn and look at us in terror. There had been an air raid that morning, and fear was still etched on their faces. I said to him, “These people are terrified enough. Don’t shoot anymore, brother.”

We weren’t that far from the bridge but still stuck in traffic, when a guard with a G3 appeared and shouted angrily, “Why were you firing? What’s the point of trying to scare people already frightened to death?”

“We wanted to clear a path through the traffic,” said Hoseyn and Abdollah in unison.

“Everybody wants to do that!” shouted the guard. “Everybody wants to be on their way.”

“We’ve got dead back here,” explained the boys.

“Okay, so you do, but you’ve got to wait your turn just like everybody else!”

I knew the guard slightly. His name was Majed, and he had a bright and very attractive face. His family were Kurds from Elam who had been driven from Iraq. Father sometimes said hello to Majed’s father. But the way he was acting upset me. I got up and said heatedly, “Why are you shouting? We’ve got to get these bodies where they’re supposed to go quickly.”

He said, “Wait a little.”

“That’s not possible,” I said. “They’ve been out in the sun three days now and they’ll rot. Come and see what they’re like.”

He stepped forward and when he saw blood flowing out from the crimson shrouds, he blanched and started apologizing. Then he ran around trying to clear a path through the cars for us. When the van started to move he hopped on the side of the cab, waiting for the next bottleneck to form. Then he would try his best to move the cars out of the way. Other drivers tried to help, but some of the cars had run out of gas and had to be pushed to the side. The avenue, despite its width, was completely snarled in traffic. In order to maintain order around the station, Majed was forced to fire into the air himself. We all were shouting at the other cars to get out of the way, which attracted people’s attention. Some of them approached the van and, seeing the bodies, started weeping. Several old women began to chant dirges and wail. Others were stunned by what they saw and asked, “Is that how we’re going to end up? With this war going on, we’re all going to perish.” Some of the people even began to help Majed clear the way for us.

All the shouting was wearing me down little by little. The sun was directly overhead hammering us, and the sweat was pouring down my face. Now that the bodies were out of the shade, I knew they would decompose in the heat. Despite all the effort to free us from the traffic, we still hadn’t reached the gas station. But just as we got there, jets appeared in the sky, spoiling the relief of reaching the station. That instant the crowd began to sound weird. Drivers stumbled from their vehicles, leaving them parked in the middle of the avenue with their doors open. Women and children were shrieking in terror, running in every direction. Everyone was frantically searching for cover. People cried out, “Lord!” and “O Hoseyn!” I could see women clutching one child to their breasts, while holding another by the hand, running for their lives.

It was a strange sight. Masses of people got caught up in the stampede, some of them falling to the ground and getting trampled. Assured there was nothing to stop their attack, the jets flew low to the ground, so low their menacing shadows fell on the people. Faced with certain death, people looked up at the sky and raced in every direction.

To be continued …