Da (Mother) 45

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-5-13

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 man shrieked at the sight of his own blood. His face, which had been bronzed by the sun, now had the pallor of death. Several men tried to comfort him, telling him that at the hospital they’d take care of him.

I tied some cloth around his thigh to staunch the blood flow, something I had learned the previous night. I examined other places where shrapnel had penetrated his skin. I tried to stop the blood flowing from his calf and arm with the cloth. After I did the same for the younger man, I told the men there to try to find a vehicle so we could get them to the hospital.

One of the men went off to get his motorcycle. I showed Abdollah how to stop the younger man’s bleeding. The man with the motorcycle arrived, and we loaded the wounded men on it, first the older one, then the younger. The poor creatures were in terrible pain as they rode off to the hospital. Walking further up the lane, we met two or three men and several children wailing. A shell had hit their kitchen where the two young women in the house had been preparing breakfast, killing both. People helped us retrieve the bodies and pile them into a pickup. One of the men, who held his wife’s identity card in his hand, stared helplessly at us and then at her body as they transported it to the cemetery. He couldn’t believe how, in the space of a few seconds, his whole life had been wiped out. Time was short so Abdollah and I took a glance at the other homes down the lane, asking those standing around, “Any more wounded?” “No,” someone said, and I told people not to stay. “They’re going to keep on shelling, and no one will be here to help the wounded,” I said. “It’d be foolish to die just from a scratch.”

I returned to the Congregational Mosque, where they had placed five or six huge copper cooking pots in the yard. If I remember correctly, the first hot meal was split yellow pea stew. I told the women who had done the cooking to leave the washing up to me. After washing the plates and pots, I sat and cut up slabs of flatbread into pieces to put on the stew. A truck pulled up with a load of dry bread in bags, sacks filled with old blankets and clothes, and cans of preserved food. We carried the food and clothing into the prayer room, and, as I walked back and forth from the truck, I saw Khosrow, the dark-haired boy from yesterday dressed in the work outfit. At the same time one of the women helping to unload the truck emerged from the prayer room. I had seen her around a few times during the past few days. She seemed very good-natured. She helped out at the mosque during the day and went home at night. She reminded me of one my relatives. She stopped when she saw me talking to Khosrow and said, “This is my boy, Khosrow, but it seems you two already know each other.”

“Yeah, Mom, we do. This is Sister Hoseyni, the Zeynab of our time. You know she buried her father with her own hands. Do you believe that? It’s unbelievable. Could you imagine me burying dad with my own hands?”

The woman’s mood changed abruptly and she yelled at the boy, “Khosrow, when you speak of your father like that, you must say GOD FORBID!”

Khosrow, in with his own special accent, said, “That’s mom. I tell her that she buried her martyr dad, and she yells at me for not saying GOD FORBID.”

The truck was unloaded quickly. I saw Mr. Najjar seemed to be free for a moment, so I took the opportunity to ask him if I could help with nursing the wounded. In one way or another I was going to get to the front—even if it was as a nurse. I didn’t know Mr. Najjar well enough to predict how he would react to the request. He was a man of medium height, around thirty, with a dark complexion and frizzy hair. A piercing stare and a mustache conspired to make him look very serious.

He was Khalil Najjar, but he told the girls to call him Khalili. I decided to take the bull by the horns and walked over to where he was talking to Zohreh and Ashraf, who introduced me to him. It appeared that they had spoken to him about me, because his tone was polite and respectful when he said, “At such times we normally say: ‘congratulations,’ but I’ll offer my condolences. I was amazed to learn from the girls that such a young woman could bury her father with her own hands. I thought you’d be much older.”

I thanked him and said, “I would like to help out here, but I’m afraid I don’t know anything about medicine. I’m a fast learner, though!”

“Do you have any course work in nursing?” he asked.

“No, what course?” I asked.

“I mean in first aid, meaning do you know how to deal with someone who is wounded or injured?”

“Not a thing.”

“What about giving injections?”

“I’d be afraid to; never did anything like that before.”

He said, “Not a problem. You can stay here for now and begin with the light chores, things like rolling bandages, stocking the trolley with tape.”

“Do you operate on people here?” I asked.

“No, we don’t have facilities for that,” he said. “We only remove shrapnel from surface wounds, bandage people, and stop their bleeding. This place is not sterile enough for anything more serious.”

Then by way of my first lesson he picked up a syringe and a pillow and quickly gave it an injection. He had taught many of the girls to give injections this way, and Zohreh and I took the pillow and syringe from him, bursting out laughing as we punctured the thing.

It was just my luck at that point they brought in a wounded man. He happened to be Maryam’s brother, Ali Amjadi, and his foot was badly infected from a cut. Because he hadn’t been able to remove his boot that day, the infection had spread. Mr. Najjar told Ali to sit on the floor.

Then he bent down and struggled to remove the boot, making Ali writhe in pain. He bit his lip but said nothing. Before removing Ali’s sock, Mr. Najjar poured disinfectant over it, trying to make it easier to pry from the infected skin.

Maryam couldn’t stand seeing her brother in agony. She sat on the floor behind him and tried to comfort him by putting her arms around his neck. “Stop that!” Ali barked. “What are you doing?” But Maryam wouldn’t stop. Seeing them like that reminded me of our Ali, also a member of the guards. I missed him badly and wished I could hug him the way Maryam hugged her brother. After a few minutes, Mr. Najjar was able to remove the sock and apply pressure to the wound to clear the pus. The pain made Ali squeeze his hands together and mutter prayers under his breath.

I had an idea of what he was going through. It reminded me of the time I stepped on a nail, and my foot got infected. I was nauseous and went into the yard to clear my head. Seeing the women washing rice and beans, I grabbed a tray and got to work. The mosque was a busy place, with people constantly coming and going. As I worked I kept my eye on the entrance to see if wounded were being brought in. After the pilaf was cooked, I began to ladle it out into sacks or pots for the fighters. The oil company had supplied disposable containers for food. As we worked Hajj Aqa Mohammadi, Hajj Aqa Nuri, and another clergyman around fifty with a face darkened by the sun and salt-and-pepper hair led us in rounds of spirited prayers. Everyone within earshot responded in loud voices. Upon learning that I was the daughter of a martyred Seyyed, the dark complexioned man, whose name I don’t remember, treated me with great respect.

Seeing the trucks had been loaded with the pots of rice for the front, I made up my mind. I had decided this was the time for me to go to the forward lines. When I saw the lightly armed police out there by themselves, I thought: The Iraqis had tanks, what did our boys have? In a port city like Khorramshahr, there were places to take cover, but out there in the field the police would be defenseless. We had heard rumors of soldiers bleeding to death from simple wounds. Medical personnel at the front could do wonders. I found it hard to believe reports of manpower shortages, what with the crowds at the mosque. They probably had no training, I reasoned, but then I thought: We would stop the enemy with sticks and clubs if we had to.

Wasting no time, I walked over to the men around one truck and asked, “Brothers, can I come with you?”

“Impossible,” they said.

“Why?” I asked.

“We’re on our way to deliver food.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll come and hand out food.”

“We’ve got enough people. You’re not needed.”

“I’ve been working since morning preparing the food,” I explained, “now all I want is to serve it to the brothers myself.”

“It’s dangerous. Tanks and mortars are operating there.”

“If it’s dangerous for me, it’s dangerous for you, too. What’s the difference?”

Realizing I had an answer for every objection, they stopped arguing. It seemed they weren’t prepared for this. I hopped into the back of the pickup as it left. There were many of them now in front of the mosque, each going in a different direction. The one I was on was heading for Railroad Circle. The driver sped along making my chador fly up. I had trouble keeping my chador in place, while, at the same time, helping the others steady the rice pots. They would spill over when the truck hit a bump in the road. The streets were full of craters from bombs and mortar hits, and the driver zigzagged madly around them. But sometimes he had no choice and the truck went into a hole, sending the pots flying into the air. The streets became more deserted the closer we got to the front. Signs of fighting were etched into the walls of the homes and in the tree trunks, many of which were stripped of their branches or charred by the shelling. Dogs and cats scrambled for shelter. As the shelling intensified, the driver slowed down. It came to a stop at the traffic circle, where the sounds of the two sides firing at each other were unmistakable. The boys on the truck ladled food into the nylon sacks and gave them to the defenders by the stadium wall. I looked at them closely. They were obviously from the city, irregulars without uniforms. They looked dead tired, but only one of them had opened the collar of his blue shirt because of the heat. He was wearing a dark green helmet, which was obviously taken from one of the Iraqis. As soon as he saw me, he asked, “What are you doing here, sister? It’s not safe.”

To be continued …