Da (Mother) 60

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-8-27

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 examined the boy’s face. He was around twenty-eight. He wore a bright blue shirt and jeans. His rifle, which had been mangled by the blast, lay near the foxhole. Apparently he had dug the hole, himself; it was about half a meter deep and was lined with sandbags.

The old couple’s faces put them in their sixties, and their eyes seemed glassy either from old age or cataracts. The man was tall and thin. He had a ragged turban on his head and was dressed in a faded grey and wrinkled dishdasha. His hands were unusually large, and I could tell from the calluses on them and his stubby fingers along with his sunburned face he had farmed the date groves all his life. Although only one of his eyes was completely filmy while the other seemed clear, he was completely blind. His son had inherited his regular features.

The woman was in no better shape than her husband. Her headscarf and dress were shabby and her feet stuck out from her plastic sandals. When I saw that she wouldn’t budge from her son’s side, I suggested to Zahra, who was standing to one side like a statue, “Let’s go and try to flag down a car so we can remove him.” We walked from the grove and sat by the side of the road. There was no vehicle in sight. Worried about the old couple, I couldn’t just sit there. “You try to flag down a car, and I’ll come back when you do,” I said to her.

When I returned to the hut, the old man seemed resigned to the fact that his son was dead, but said nothing. The old woman continued to beat herself and keen, “Hope is lost. Our lives are over.” But she pleaded with me to examine him to see whether he was alive. More than anything, this tore at my insides. It was noon and, instead of bright sunshine, a dusty haze hung over the city, probably caused by smoke from the refinery fire. I went to the head of the road several times. The old woman sensed my coming and going and asked, “What are you doing?”

“I want to find a car to take your son to the hospital.”

“Wherever you take him, I’m going, too. Don’t let him go alone. His father and I are coming, too.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“Why not? My son’s alive and I want to be with him.”

I was sick to my stomach. I realized that it was better to remove all doubts about the son. If they couldn’t see what had happened, at least they could learn about it. Taking the bit between my teeth, I said, “Mother, I’m no doctor, but it’s clear your son has been martyred.” With this they began to beat themselves harder and wail with their voices raised. I didn’t wait around and went back to the head of the road. We flagged down a Land Rover and, pleading every way we knew, managed to convince the driver to take the body. He put the car in reverse, bringing it as close to the hut as he could.

The driver got out and followed us to where the body was. I didn’t know how we were going to lift the corpse and keep it intact; with any movement it might have disintegrated. “You don’t have a blanket we can put under him? We can’t lift him like this,” I said.

The old woman said to her husband, “I can’t get up.”

The old man said, “There’s one in the room. Get it.”

Evil Zahra went inside the hut. With the driver’s help we managed to spread the blanket under the body. Then we got him into the car. The mother and father groped their way to the vehicle. When they reached it, they ran their hands along the side, trying to find the door. “Why do you want to bring these two to the other side of the river?” the driver asked. “They’re evacuating everybody from that side to this part. What’s the point of them going there and becoming refugees? At least on this side somebody may come by and rescue them. It’s much more dangerous on the other side.”

The driver was right. If the old couple came with us, we’d just have to take them to the Congregational Mosque where conditions were not all that good. If they remained in their home, their chances of staying alive and getting help would be better. Although logic demanded they remain, I couldn’t find it in my heart to abandon them. “You should stay. Why do you want to come with us?” asked the driver in Persian.

“Mother, you stay here. We’ll bring your son to the hospital,” I said to her in Arabic. “If you can, you can come later.”

I meant someone would bring them to the hospital and take them back. This way they would learn their son’s fate.

They began to wail, saying they wished to come. “Where are you bringing our son? We want to be with him. Let us die also. Our lives are no dearer to us than our son’s. There’s no reason for us to stay. We’ve lost all hope. Why should we stay?”

I signaled to Zahra, and we both got in the car. When the car started to move, the old couple, still gripping the side of the car, fell to the ground, but the driver kept going. The old woman was on her hands and knees. Then she got to her feet and tried to lunge after us, but she fell again. This time it seemed that she didn’t have the strength to get up. She dragged herself along the ground. The sight was gut-wrenching. I was disgusted with myself. I didn’t know which people to curse—the ones who started the war or the ones who betrayed us.

As we drove over the bridge, I kept looking at the couple as they cried and wailed. The old woman beat her chest. She said things in Arabic and started to move faster, but when the old man, who was following her waving his hands in the air fell, she stopped. After she had gotten her husband to his feet, they disappeared from view. A few moments later we were in front of Mosaddeq Hospital. The driver got out and called out to several people. They unloaded the blanket. I also took one end and got out. A nurse who was in front of the emergency room door administering to the bodies said, “He was gone the minute he was hit.”

I said to her, “His name was Abd al-Rasul. We brought him from the other side of the bridge. They lived in Moharrezi; his parents are blind.”

The nurse wrote the information on the boy’s clothing with a magic marker. Then we took him to the morgue, which served as a kind of cold storage, and laid him on the floor.

I was very upset. I straightened up clumsily, as if struggling with a heavy weight on my shoulders. Thoughts of Abd al-Rasul, whose face was like his father’s, also brought those two young motorcyclists to mind. The hair of the man, whose throat was hit by shrapnel, lay on his forehead. His eyes were large with long lashes, and he had a thin mustache. Unlike the other man who had an olive complexion, his face had been white but was now yellow from loss of blood. I didn’t know whether they were alive at that point. Sick and tired, I returned to the mosque with Zahra. I had no desire to see anyone, but there was no way I could be alone, as the wounded were piling up as noon approached. I would occasionally leave the prayer room to see what was happening outside. I could see a halo of smoke and dust over the city. The clamor of people mixed with the wailing of sirens. The sounds of one explosion after another echoed through the city like fierce rounds of thunder.

This type of drawn-out attack was unusual. Some said the resistance put up by the boys at the front lines surprised the Iraqis, who were taking their revenge on the young men by slaughtering their relatives in the city. There was nothing we could do for many of the wounded they brought to the infirmary. We could only stop the bleeding, infuse serum, and things like that. A few of the wounded had superficial shrapnel wounds not requiring surgery. We laid them on the floor or removed the shrapnel as they sat. One of these patients was a young girl of four or five with wounds on her arms. As the girls held her down, Mr. Najjar took out the shrapnel. She squealed and cried out for her mother. She became more terrified when her wounds started to bleed. Mr. Najjar told the girl’s father, who was hugging her, not to let her see the blood. To try to calm her one of the girls brought her something to eat, but it was no use. Between her cries I heard several people in the yard shouting, “Why isn’t anyone paying attention to us? It’s a massacre. The Iraqis are advancing. They’ve kept us pinned down since morning with their constant shelling.”

I left the bandaging to the other girls and ran into the yard where a few young men in their twenties were shouting at the top of their lungs. Their heads and shoulders were covered in dust and their hair was all over the place. One of them in particular, tall, dressed in baggy jeans and a button-down shirt that seemed out of place on his thin frame, was the most upset. They were telling the crowd gathered around them about the conditions on the front lines. I stepped forward, and saw the tall boy had raised his weapon to show that there were no bullets in it. “What are we supposed to fight with? There’re traitors involved in this. If we had ammunition, we’d be able to push them back. If any of you have weapons or ammo, hand them over. Wherever we go they say there is none. You know what’s happening out there. Boys hungry and thirsty are standing up to the Iraqis. They’re all being cut down. You can put up with the hunger, but the thirst, no....”

“How far have the Iraqis gotten?” I asked.

“They were at the outskirts of the city by the time we arrived and nothing will keep them from taking it. We couldn’t just stand there twiddling our thumbs while the city falls. We don’t have the forces, though.”

Hearing that it was like I was jolted into action, and I yelled, “I’m ready to go. Can I?”

The young man exploded like a firecracker and stamped his foot on the ground. Then, still waving his weapon over his head, he gave me a hard, cold stare and shouted, “Go where? With me and be a millstone around our necks, forcing several of the boys to watch your back? We need men!”

To have him shout like that in front of all the others made me feel terrible. It also hurt to hear that our forces had to die at the front while having to beg for supplies behind the lines. I was even more put out now. Hajj Aqa Nuri said to the young man, “Son, we are trying to arrange reinforcements for you. We’re going to send water and food also. Trust in God and try to maintain your solidarity. Militia, military, paramilitary, everybody’s got to obey orders.”

As Hajji Aqa Nuri spoke, Mahmud Farrokhi and several others were loading two cases of Colt and G3 ammunition and a number of RPG shells in their van. Two others came forward with several canisters of water, a couple of cartons of bread, and tins of food.

To be continued …