Da (Mother) 40

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-4-11

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 took his hand and put it on my head wanting to have him caress me, but he wouldn’t. I couldn’t believe he was gone. I placed my head on his chest, hoping to hear his heart beating. I told myself they had probably made a mistake; maybe he wasn’t dead, but his heart didn’t respond. I was powerless. I opened the lower part of the shroud and knelt down to kiss his feet, those feet that had been tortured with steel cable, bloodying and bruising them, feet that had walked all the way from Iraq to Iran, that had taken him this way and that as he bore heavy loads in the bazaar. Then I took his hands and looked at his fingers—these were the same hands that had held mine as we said goodbye for the last time. I ran my hands over his, noticing how calloused they were. I remembered the times he would go off to work in the fierce heat of a Khorramshahr summer, his tongue rough and dry from fasting. The molten asphalt they were paving a road with burned those hands, which were now motionless but nevertheless scalded my heart, burning my entire being. Nothing, no act of consolation, would quell the fire. I wanted so to use those hands as a pillow and sleep beside him the way I did when I was little, craving to be spoiled by him, hugged and kissed by him.

I reminisced about my childhood and began to tell him of what I was going through. I told him, “I’m seventeen and I still need you, want you forever. For five-year-old Zeynab; for Sa’id, seven; for Hasan, nine; for Mansur; for Leila; and for mother. What is mother supposed to do without you, father? What should I do with all the children? Zeynab, your pride and joy, the one so attached to you.…”

Father was very friendly to the neighbor’s kids, who didn’t have fathers of their own. He wouldn’t touch anything mother had prepared, not even the loose greens, the yogurt drink, or sherbet, until he had invited them to sit with us. He insisted on doing this himself, never letting anyone bring the food to them. He paid so much attention to those orphans that we would sometimes get jealous, but he made sure to help them in a private way so as to allow them their dignity. But now father was gone and we were orphaned. I don’t know why I started to remember these things, raking over old flames. I remembered how he was the last time I saw him, acting as if he sensed he was going to die and didn’t have much time left.

I remembered the last Ramadan, which fell during the summer, and how hot it was. We children were sleeping on the roof as usual and I woke up in the middle of the night to have some water. I saw father in the yard crying and asking forgiveness as he prayed. I tiptoed back to the roof so he wouldn’t notice me. Ever since then I would awake at about the same time of night and soon realized this was what he did every night. I would watch him secretly as he prayed and wept until the crack of dawn, when he would call us to breakfast.

Those were wonderful days and nights! We had just begun to feel that things were going our way. We had fewer problems, and it seemed the hardships were behind us. Those were the years father worked as a porter in the bazaar or did plumbing and construction work, but never took money from people he knew were in dire straits—even though we could have used the money ourselves. His word and his work were his bond. People naturally sought him out even long after we had moved from the old place to municipal workers’ housing. They would say, “The Seyyed’s hands are blessed by God; he’s more humane than other workers.”

Now the Seyyed was gone, and here I was weeping beside his corpse. It was only yesterday he told me he was entrusting me with the children. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant then; but now the full weight of it was dawning on me. I leaned my head on his chest again. I remembered the times he would send me to the head of the alley to see whether the security agents were waiting to ambush him. During those anxious moments how his heart must have been racing.

I don’t know how long the memories lasted. I lifted my head and looked into his face, sensing somehow that he would have been upset with such shows of agony. I sensed his presence all around me. His spirit, I thought, was probably not at peace. Then I felt very sorry for myself, enfeebled that I was without someone to turn to in times of trouble. I turned my rage against him and began to scold him cruelly, “Why did you abandon us? Why didn’t you give a thought to us? How could you? How?”

But I knew the answers to those questions; he was right to act the way he did. He behaved according to a pact he had made with God. If father hadn’t gone to the front, then others wouldn’t have either. Who would be left to defend the country in that case?

Then, regretting what I had said, I begged him, “Father, if I wasn’t the way you wanted me to be, if I caused you any grief, please forgive me. I’ll try to live up to the task you’ve given me to make up for the past.”

While I was speaking I heard them knocking on the door. I sat cross-legged on the floor with my head on his chest, not wanting to leave him. I kissed his breast, throat, face and forehead. I ran my hand through his delicate, soft hair. The strange look in his eye, as if from joy, stunned me. His pallor and general state made him look different from the bodies I had seen during the past days. He wasn’t cold at all. His complexion was bright and ruddy; he seemed to be asleep rather than dead. He was even more handsome than he was before his death. Even the crow’s-feet around his eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead were gone. The glow from his face was so intense that after I had opened the shroud, I had to wait a moment before I looked at it.

They knocked on the door again and I had to close the shroud, kissing his eyes and begging forgiveness for the last time. It was very hard to say goodbye; closing the shroud was even harder than opening it—as if closing it meant finality: the last look, the last touch, the last time I would smell his scent. I asked God what to do. Help me, I begged Him, tear my heart away. Please God, I said, take my love for father from me, the way You took his soul. Remove the affection for him in my heart. How was I supposed to bear him not being around? I reluctantly tied up the shroud but placed my forehead on his, as if it were a prayer stone, and held his head in my hands, saying “Father, tell God to be patient with us.”

Then all at once I remembered what he had said when someone passed away: “I have no use for a natural death. I don’t want to give up the ghost in bed.”

“Is there such a thing as an unnatural death?” I asked. “Everybody dies naturally.”

He said, “A natural death happens when you die in bed or as the result of sickness or an accident.”

“So if somebody doesn’t die that way, how do they die?”

“They die in a way that is to God’s liking. It happens when one is doing something to please Him.”

“You mean if they die fighting?”

“Not just fighting,” he said. “There are many acts that please Him other than fighting. For example, if you die restoring the rights of someone who has been wronged—that’s also a beautiful death. If a man dies trying to feed his family: that’s good also. But these are not even the half of it. A person should put his entire heart and soul into something that will satisfy God.”

I raised my head. It was time to leave him, and leaving the mosque was much harder than entering it. I had hopes before that the news of his death was a lie and that he was in a coma, but when I put my ear to his chest and didn’t hear his heart beating, I lost all hope. Now I was leaving with the certainty that he was gone, and that was very hard. For a moment I thought of the blessed Zeynab. I said goodbye to father and crawled backward to the door. I had no strength in my legs. The life spirit had drained out of me, as if I were stone or wood. I felt terrible when I reached the door and said “Hoseyn” to bolster my spirits. I felt an energy go through me as I got up and looked at father for the last time. Before I left the mosque I adjusted my headscarf and chador and rubbed my eyes and face with my hand. I knew what I had been through with father showed in my expression. I so wanted to run away from everything and everyone, to put the scene far behind me. I didn’t want to see anybody, didn’t want them to ask me anything, because I couldn’t talk. It was as if there was something huge stuck in my throat, which was causing me to suffer terribly. I opened the wooden door and stood back.

As soon as the door opened I could feel the weight of everybody’s stares on me. Zeynab, Sa’id, and Hasan came running toward me. They seemed to want to confirm father was dead. Their eyes were riveted on my face. Although I had told them not to cry, it was clear from my face how many tears I had shed. Zeynab stepped forward and asked in a childish voice, “Father’s gone, isn’t he?”

I felt that all their senses were trained on my face, waiting for a response. Choked up, I nodded and said, “Yeah, Daddy’s gone.”

They were stunned for a moment. I saw Hasan claw at his hair to keep himself from crying. Sa’id and Zeynab were also visibly in pain, and I felt someone should hug them. All at once they surrounded me, and the tears came. I bent down and gathered them in saying, “Daddy’s with God. All of his sorrows are over now. You should be happy for him. He’s watching us from above seeing everything we do.”

As soon as mother, who had come a bit closer to the mosque, saw how much I had been crying, she started to wail like a banshee. These were difficult moments. I didn’t know what everybody had expected—maybe that I would tell them something hopeful, like father really hadn’t been killed. Through her tears mother said to me in Kurdish, “You’re going to kill me with those tears.”

I went over to her, embraced her, and tried to console her by talking about what the blessed Zeynab had suffered. She said, “I’d give my life for her.” Then, continuing in Arabic, she repeated what she had said when I first saw her, “I’ve lost my protector. How can I get him back?” I didn’t know whether to stay and look after her or to see to the children—whether to soothe my own aching heart or to lift the spirits of the others, people who at any minute could be killed by a rocket or a strafing.

To be continued …