Da (Mother) 57

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-8-6

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 was depressed. I went to the back of the prayer room to think. If he’s not a traitor and really cares about the people, why doesn’t he join the crowd? Why go to the municipality and not the mosque? Why didn’t they let anybody see him? Father must have seen something to make him say Banisadr was a traitor. He wasn’t the kind of person to say things off the top of his head. But why would the people at the mosque, people I respect, why would they take Banisadr’s side? They were decent people with college degrees, who understood politics. Where was I wrong? Why didn’t he order the planes to fly and hit the enemy targets, then? Why were his bodyguards behaving like brutes? Why did they speak to me that way?

After giving the matter a lot of thought I concluded that father was right; this man was an absolute bastard. My doubts were due to my own inexperience. I threatened Banisadr in my mind: Come winter, Mr. President, your face will be charcoal black from shame. We’re resisting and as soon as we kick the enemy out of Iran, I’m coming to Tehran and telling Imam Khomeini at Jamaran that you are a traitor.

I felt better after this, charged with new energy. We’ve got to stand on our own two feet, I told myself, with their support or without it, whether reinforcements come or not.

The next day I was even more convinced I was right. They played an interview with Banisadr on the two o’clock news. He presented the circumstances surrounding the war as normal, saying, “The problem is not as dire as has been reported. There was an attack and our forces repelled it.” The boys said that day they had been finally able to intercept Banisadr on his route. But instead of expressing his sympathy for their plight and offering encouragement, he said, “Phantoms are not candy that I can just pull out of my pocket.” “You’re the commander of the air force,” they objected. “It would be easy for you to give the order.”

“You don’t understand the inner workings of the military,” he said.

Later when I saw Shahnaz, I said, “See what I mean. So much for Mr. Banisadr!”

“Yeah, God help me. What was I thinking? I wish I hadn’t voted for him.” It was more painful now to dredge up those memories, so I got up, looked one last time at the building, and dragged myself to the Congregational Mosque. I was dejected, worn out. Though I didn’t have the strength to move, I somehow got to the mosque. As soon as I entered the girls gathered around me and I asked, “What happened?”

“Where were you all this time?” they asked. “Have you seen your brother?”

Stunned, I asked, “Which brother?”

“Your Ali.”

My heart skipped a beat. Still in a state of shock, I asked, “Ali? You’re sure it’s Ali?”

“Yeah. A tall young man with bandaged hands stopped by.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“We told him we didn’t know where you were. We guessed you were either at Jannatabad or somewhere in the city. You could be at the front, too.”

“Fine. He didn’t say anything else?”

“He said he was off to Jannatabad and maybe see you there. He gave us a magazine for a gun and a shirt uniform and told us to give them to you.”

“When exactly was he here?”

“About two hours ago.”

“If I go now I’ll probably find him.”

“Do you want the shirt and the magazine?”

As I left, I said, “Keep them here until I come back.”

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of what they said and raced out of the mosque. I thought I would go to see mother first, but I remembered Ali said he would be going to Jannatabad. I tucked up my chador and started to run.

Ali had finally come back! I was delirious. There were chills up and down my spine and even when talking to myself, my voice trembled. But there was also a lump in my throat. Now that Ali was back, I thought, everything would be the way it had been before. I could get rid of all those responsibilities that weighed so heavily on me and finally have a chance to breathe.

I was going to hug him as soon as I saw him no matter who might be looking—hug him tight and cover him with kisses. As I ran I thought about what I should tell him first. It was probably best not to start with father’s death, so as not to upset him. I’d let him get settled first before we had a heart-to-heart.

I remembered the last conversation we had. It was hard to call the hospital in Tehran from the pay phone. We kept getting cut off. I went with Leila to the shop of one of our relatives and called from there, but no matter how many times I tried I couldn’t get through. In the end I wrote to him, but there was no answer. When he first had gone to Tehran I used to include a letter with the dates and fish we would send him. He answered me and would ask about conditions in Khorramshahr. But there was no answer to my last letter. It probably had gotten lost because I knew ordinarily he wouldn’t keep me waiting for an answer like that.

As I ran past our lane, I looked back at the house as I always did. A few months earlier a neighbor’s house had caught fire. The flames reached the kitchen and there was the real danger that a gas canister would explode, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens. People gathered outside, but no one had the nerve to enter the house and retrieve the canister. All of a sudden Ali rode up on his motorcycle. I told him the problem. He immediately ran into the yard and grabbed a hose to wet some cloth. Then he entered the house, got the canister, and threw it into an empty lot. It was so hot from the fire that it burned his hands. Relieved, everybody praised Ali to the sky for saving their homes. When the neighbor returned from work, he came by the house and hugged Ali, unable to thank him enough.

I ran and ran but never got to where I needed to be. It was as if the road had gotten longer. Probably there was pandemonium at Jannatabad, everybody gathered around Ali, talking at once. I thought the whole world would be as delirious as I was. But when I finally got there and began to hug and kiss Leila hard asking her where Ali was, she said, “What’s gotten into you? Why are you doing that?”

I felt confused and panicked. I was suddenly blind and disoriented. I ran toward Zeynab and began to hug her. “Ali’s come!” I said.

“How wonderful!” she said with a smile. “Thank God! You’ve been Ali-ing and Ali-ing so much he’s finally back.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting like that?” Leila asked.

“She’s got a right to be,” Zeynab said. “If I were her, I’d be the same way.”

“So where’s Ali?” I asked.

“He went.”

“Where?”

“To the Sheikh Salman Mosque, to mother.”

I grabbed Leila’s hand and said, “Come with me.”

I sensed she was over the excitement of seeing Ali—she was so calm and quiet.

“Hold on a minute, don’t pull me like that,” she said.

“No, we’ve got to run or we’ll miss him.”

As I pulled her by the hand and ran, I kept saying, “Run, Leila, run!”

I was out of my mind. I couldn’t contain myself and with my hands held up to the sky, I whirled around. I took a deep breath and said, “Oh wow, God be praised. Ali’s come and all our troubles are over!”

Leila said, “Zahra, don’t do that. They’ll think you’re crazy.”

“I am crazy, crazy about Ali; you have no idea how happy I am. You didn’t have the responsibilities on your shoulders, but now I’m free!”

The road was empty up to the Ordibehesht Circle, but after that there was a crowd. We started running faster and, with mounting excitement, we turned into Rudaki Avenue and followed Fakhr-e Razi until we reached the Salman Mosque. In my mind I saw Ali everywhere. I opened my chador and let the wind raise it. I ran and whirled about. The world was mine; my worries were over. Ali was going to make everything better.

When I got to the door (how I don’t know), I scarcely said hello to the people I knew. I kept saying, “Ali’s come back!”

All my relatives said, “Wonderful! Thank God!” I rushed passed them and yelled in the yard, “Mother! Mother, Ali’s here!”

This was the first time since father’s death she seemed happy. No longer gloomy, she was standing with the other women from the family instead of huddling alone in some corner. I ran up to her and asked excitedly, “Have you seen him?”

“Yes, my sweet, I have.”

Her tone said it all. She was overjoyed. We hugged and kissed each other. “Thank God, mother, nothing to worry about now!”

Her eyes welled with tears. I stared into her eyes. I knew mother’s moods well. It seemed that in addition to the normal worry, there was a deeper anxiety. I sensed that she was anxious about Ali, who didn’t seem able to stay put anywhere.

I was so excited I hugged and kissed mother’s neighbors at the mosque. Ali had finally returned. I was beyond happy and wanted to go into the yard and jump for joy, run around making my chador twirl in the air. I turned to mother and took her by the hand. As we looked at each other, I asked, “Where is he?”

It had slipped my mind that he had told Leila he couldn’t wait to get to the front. I didn’t say anything. Mother said, “Ali said he was going to the military. Pray he doesn’t go to fight.”

“Don’t say that, mother. Is Ali any more precious to you than the other boys are to their mothers?”

She didn’t know what to say but tried to justify what she had said, “No, but his hands are not right.”

“That not a problem,” I said. “God is great. Your son’s a lion. You should be proud he wants to go fight the enemy even with those hands. Pray to God to keep him safe so he can fight.”

“Trust in God. Put your faith in Him,” she said.

The neighbors stood around us and said happily, “God preserve him. May the blessed Imam Hoseyn watch over him!”

“Mother, what am I supposed to do? I haven’t seen him yet,” I said.

“He’ll be back.”

Hoping to see him or just get a whiff of the shirt he had left with Sabah, I raced back to the Congregational Mosque. It was dark when I got to the mosque where I saw a soldier from the base stretched out on the ground, his long frame blocking the entrance to the prayer room. There was no blanket over him or pillow, which was strange. I went closer and saw in the darkness he was dressed in army boots, pants, and jacket. I could make out his face in a light somebody had placed nearby. His young face was pale in the dark, but even whiter in the light. “Who’s that, sleeping there?” I asked.

Somebody said he was an officer who’d been like that ever since they brought him in. No matter how much they spoke to him, he wouldn’t say a word. It was heartbreaking to see him like that on the cold ground. How much must his family, especially his mother, be worrying about him being at the front? I went into the prayer room and got a blanket for him. On the way back I stopped in at the infirmary and, seeing there was nothing going on, left. Then I covered the soldier with the blanket and sat by his head. I couldn’t tell whether he was suffering from shell shock, not knowing exactly how it affected people. I began to recite a verse from the Quran, the Throne Verse, and prayed that God would restore him to health. He seemed to be staring at the sky in horror. Occasionally he turned his head, looking this way and that. One or two times he stared right into my eyes so fearsomely it terrified me. I kept reciting the verse. Now and then some of the girls passed by and asked, “Don’t you have anything better to do? Forget about him. There’s nothing wrong; he’s trying to get a medical discharge.”

“Nobody here is stopping him,” I said. “If he wants to escape, there’s nothing to stop him.”

I imagined how it had been for Ali in Tehran for months, not knowing anyone, how he might have felt alienated himself.

I tried to flag down Mahmud Farrokhi as he ran around the mosque to help me bring the soldier inside.

To be continued …