Da (Mother) 61

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-9-3

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 wanted to stay and hear what the young man was telling Hajj Aqa about the situation at the front, but Ra’na Najjar called me and said, “Come on, we’ve got work to do.” I went to see about the wounded lying on the floor of the infirmary, but I was still sick at heart.

The group of angry young men left. Taking their place were several others, who acted the same way, standing in the yard and yelling angrily, “What are you holding back? Get people to the front as fast as possible. Don’t let those boys be taken prisoner.”

The men in the mosque tried to calm them. They didn’t want the shouting cause a panic, but it was no use. These boys were spent. They said, “We’ve been at it at the front for a few days. By day we push them back, but at night the forces are so tired that they don’t have the strength to fight. Then the Iraqis see their chance to retake all of our positions and, what’s more, they advance even farther. We have no weapons, nothing the boys can use to stop their tanks.”

Mr. Mesbah said, “That’s no way to talk. Why scare people like that? We have our trust in God. We don’t have weapons, but we have our faith. We have the Imam.”

I had wanted to stay in the mosque just in case Ali came looking for me, but Mr. Najjar suggested we leave. Reports came that Heydariyeh had been bombed, and the wounded were piling up.

It wasn’t far. A number of people had taken shelter there. We took the road past the Congregational Mosque toward the Shatt and then turned into an alley.

After a brief survey, Mr. Najjar said to some of the less wounded that they would have to get themselves to the hospital. Then he removed shrapnel from the leg of a boy in his late teens and bandaged his wound, while I closed up the incision. He examined the boy’s forehead and found only a flesh wound, which we also bandaged. Then it was the turn of a twelve-year-old girl who had a large piece of shrapnel in her thigh. She was crying and wouldn’t let us stitch up her wound. She was right not to. The needle did not penetrate her skin easily. Unlike the mother of the boy, the girl’s mother remained calm and by soothing her daughter helped us immeasurably. As we were leaving Heydariyeh, a youth entered yelling and screaming. He was talking like the young men I saw in the mosque earlier. “The Iraqis are coming. The city is about to fall and....”

I felt terrible. Everybody was saying that the city was about to fall. A strange feeling of terror gripped my body. The panic was almost instantaneous, as people all began to scream. Some turned to us, asking, “What do we do now? What he’s saying, what does it mean? How far have the Iraqi’s come?”

I didn’t know what to tell them. Mr. Najjar took the boy aside and said, “Why are you saying that? You shouldn’t make things worse.”

“No, I have to tell them. Everybody’s going to be killed. They’ll all be taken prisoner. We’ve got to tell people the truth.”

Mr. Najjar repeated what Mr. Mesbah had said, “We’ve told them the truth. What’s the point of filling their hearts with fear? Making the situation worse than it is? It doesn’t help. Let people abandon the city in an orderly way. We’ll evacuate them, but without panic.”

The boy stopped arguing and stood aside. I told people, “Don’t worry. Keep calm. The situation isn’t that critical. Our boys are fighting at the front. God willing the war will be over, and we’ll return to our homes.”

As we were leaving, Mr. Najjar asked the boy to come with us. He wanted to bring him to people at the mosque who could decide what should be done.

At the mosque the debate about whether the people should go or stay was still raging. The previous day (September 30, 1980), the Iraqis had advanced to Railroad Circle, and this was exactly what was troubling the military, the clergy, and the mosque elders. Among them were Mr. Mesbahi, Sheikh Sharif, and Major Sharif Nasab, whom I had gotten to know at the beginning of the war.

I stood listening to what the girls were saying and to what they had heard from others. Everybody had something to say.

“We’d best evacuate the neighborhoods before we’re sorry we didn’t.”

“They’ll never go. Nothing you say will get them to leave their homes.”

“We’ve got to get them out, even if it’s at gunpoint. You’ve got to scare them. I don’t know how, but you’ve got to do whatever’s necessary.”

“We have to make a move, while the bridge is still intact. If the Iraqis hit it, then there’ll be no way of getting to the other side.”

Finally, amid all the arguing it was decided several groups of men and women would be formed and sent out to the neighborhoods closest to the fighting. These groups were to convince people to evacuate the city. In the meantime, they would get trucks ready to ferry people out and get them to the other side of the bridge at least.

At the tail end of the discussions, a truck pulled up in front of the door. They announced all workers without other duties should help with the evacuation. Although I had absolutely no desire to help, I had no choice. I had to convince myself that under the circumstances there was nothing better for me to do. I went to get on the truck where there were three or four other girls whom I had seen in passing in the mosque. A couple of men also got on, and we headed for the Taleqani neighborhood. In the past they had told us not to go there.

The avenues were deserted, and the alleys were full of debris from the homes that had been hit. The truck let us out at the head of an alley. The alleys in the neighborhood were relatively wider and longer than those in other areas. We fanned out each of us going in a different direction looking for people. The area was badly damaged; many of the doors had been blasted off their hinges or peppered with shrapnel. In spite of this, we knocked on every door and, if there was no answer, entered the homes. After making certain no one was inside, we went to the next home. These inspections yielded some very strange sights: large chunks of shrapnel stuck in walls seeming to hold the compounds in place; the corpses of chickens or cats hit in the head or gut by meta fragments; the broken frames of family pictures and women’s long cloaks fluttering over the debris; old kitchen appliances that told of the poverty of the neighborhood.

In one of the homes a breakfast spread was laid out near the porch. It wasn’t clear how long the home had been abandoned. The butter had melted, dust covered the white breakfast cheese, and the bread had gone dry. Ants were having a field day with the food, though. The spread showed signs of disarray: cups spilled staining the cloth. It seemed the terrified family had escaped during breakfast. I wasn’t sure but maybe one of them had been killed.

I also looked in at a couple of homes leveled by the bombing to see whether there were any bodies I could bring out. In these homes, bedding was spread out and pots and pans lay in the middle of the yard. The place was a mess as if it had been struck by lightning. In another home there was an empty cradle, which made me think of the newborn at the body washers’. It also reminded me of Sa’id, who wouldn’t sleep unless he was in his cradle. Where was the baby that slept in this cradle?

I couldn’t hold back my tears when I saw a framed picture of the revered Abbas by the Aqalama channel. I remembered mother saying in Arabic, “That Saddam is the spawn of Shemr.” I reckoned these crimes were the continuation of those crimes at Karbala. The deeper I ventured in the neighborhood, the more deserted it was and the more terrifying the atmosphere. It was not just the Baathists that terrified me, there might also be Fifth Columnists. I set the G3 on rapid fire. Before entering a house, I would shout “In the name of God” and enter cautiously. Most of my focus was on what was behind me. Playing hide-and-seek when I was young, I would always hide behind a door. Remembering this, I would look behind the doors and search the rooms, always expecting a Fifth Columnist or a Baathist to jump out. At such moments I hoped to God they would finish me with a spray of bullets; I had not desire to be taken prisoner. The men with us were also very concerned about our safety, warning us not to go in the homes first. The fear and dread were so real the slightest sound made me jump out of my skin. The most comical things would happen when a dove would suddenly take flight or a cat would dart out or someone would bang his foot. This would draw our attention and make us blast away with our guns. The poor animals would dash off like bats out of hell.

Later I would agonize every time I fired my gun. Suppose one of the bullets killed an Iraqi. Wouldn’t that make me like them? Wouldn’t I be a murderer then? But then again, didn’t they attack us? Weren’t they the aggressors?

I remember father saying a few months before, after he had been in one of the border skirmishes, “These people have one goal: killing Shiis. They make people fight among themselves and then take advantage of the turmoil.”

This made me realize that many of the Iraqi soldiers were forced into fighting. I wondered what I would do if one of these conscripts appeared before me. I prayed to God that wouldn’t happen. If I had to kill someone, I wanted him to be a hardcore Baathist.

The people I met in these sweeps, people who had stuck it out in their homes under such impossible and terrifying conditions, were mostly men who had sent their women and children away. There were also women who stayed out of concern for their children.

Some of them believed us when we told them, “The Iraqi batteries are nearby. Why stay behind and get killed needlessly? Trucks are ready to take you away.” Others, mostly the old, would simply not be persuaded. “What good is staying behind here, dear sir?” I would tell them. “There’s no water, no food here, just fire spewing from the ground and raining from the skies.”

“This is home. Where are we going to go?” they’d ask.

Another said, “Seeing us stick it out here will make the boys at the front fight harder.”

“Death is at your doorstep,” I said. “It would be a sin to die this way.”

They responded by asking, “Why did you stay? You’re young; life has just begun for you. We’re old; it’s the end for us.”

To be continued …