Da (Mother) 108

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-7-29

Da (Mother) 108

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 heard reports that inhabitants of a certain city had swindled and harassed refugees. They taunted them saying, “You’re cowards for surrendering to the enemy. Traitors, get out of our town!”

It broke my heart to hear such talk. At first I didn’t want to believe it, but later I heard some Khorramshahris had refused to leave the city. “Why go away?” they explained. “We wouldn’t be able to take what they’d do to us. Haven’t you heard about how they treat refugees?”

What the doctor said made the onlookers curious. “What’s going on in Khorramshahr?” they asked. “How far have the Iraqis gotten?”

That was my cue to tell them what had happened to the city. They became very upset. Some of the women broke down. Others, out of sympathy, asked if they could bring us anything. They even invited us to their homes. The crowd remained around the ambulance until it went away. People looked in through the door with the broken window, offering words of sympathy.

Such scenes recurred several times along the route. Leila gave a very good account of the state of things in Khorramshahr to onlookers.

I was in a great deal of pain on the ride to Shiraz. I napped and the next thing I knew we had arrived at Nemazi Hospital. The ambulance backed up to the emergency room door. A number of doctors and nurses eventually came out with a stretcher and carried me into what seemed like a staging room for patients undergoing operations.

The place seemed very neat and orderly. The nurses were very kind. They quickly x-rayed my back, placed a green, double-thick bandage on my wound, and examined me. Most of the doctors were brain- and neurosurgeons. They stuck pins in my legs, pushing deeper in places where I had no feeling. They pounded my back and … I failed to respond to any of these tests. It felt as if my legs were frozen. Then they said, “The wound is infected and under no circumstances should it be taped.” I didn’t understand much of what was said. The only thing I got was that there was no question of operating before they knew what Dr. Faqih, the hospital head, thought. Then they asked me question after question about how I had been wounded.

Finally I asked, “Well, how am I?”

The doctor in charge said, “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with your legs, but the explosion may have affected your nervous system. We’ll have to rest while you’re under observation, and your system gets back to normal.”

They cleaned my wound. They removed the heavy bandaging and placed gauze over my wounds. After about two hours, they notified the ward they were wheeling me down.

I stayed for a week or ten days at Nemazi Hospital. Dr. Mostafavi, who knew me from the Sheybani clinic, told the nurses in the ward about Leila and me. Despite this celebrity, I didn’t feel good being there. It was impossible to ignore the large number of wounded crammed in there. I felt that healing didn’t have to mean occupying a bed in a hospital. They could bandage wounds and inject sedatives and antibiotics elsewhere. When I voiced my unhappiness, they said, “You have to stay here until the treatment is over. We have to control the infection.”

Over time the numbness decreased, but the pain got worse. The fever and burning from the infection increased. The size of the wound also got bigger. I had to remain lying on my stomach. When I tried to lie on my side, the tremors in my legs became worse. My kidneys functioned once every few days. Apart from all the physical problems, seeing the wounded ferried in from Abadan and Khorramshahr made me more irritable. I wanted to get up and find out more about the situation from the newcomers. Sometimes I would ask people in the hallway. More or less they all said, “The Iraqis have advanced, and the city is about to fall.”

Later people confirmed the rumors. They said, “The city has fallen, and the enemy has massacred everyone.” But I wouldn’t accept it. It was unbelievable; hearing the news just made me feel worse. Words can’t say how I felt. It was like a nightmare. It meant Khorramshahr, like the former Iranian cities of Herat, Ganjeh, and Qarabagh, had been dismembered by one of the country’s enemies. The thought of it drove me out of my mind. The dearest people in the world to me were there. I sobbed and sobbed in the privacy of my room and stayed awake late into the night as the thought the city had fallen stoked my tears.

Seeing me in this state, poor Leila tried to do more for me. From time to time she would put me in a wheelchair and bring me into the yard. But the peace and greenery in the garden did nothing to soothe me; the sight of all that beauty made being there even more agonizing. The date palms in the garden reminded me of the trees of Khorramshahr. The flowers packed in their beds conjured up the floral pathways and lawns of Farmandari Circle and the roads leading to it. The hospital gardens were the last straw. I needed the Shatt and Khorramshahr with its heat and humid breezes. It felt like years since I’d been there.

One day while I sat in the garden lost in thought, a young man passed by. He walked on a few steps, then turned around and said in surprise, “Sister Hoseyni. Is that you?”

“Yes, and you are?”

“I’m one of the boys from Khorramshahr. I saw you a lot at the Congregational Mosque. I also knew Ali.”

“When did you get here?” I asked. “What’s the situation?”

“A week ago. When did you get here?”

“The twelfth.”

“I heard you’d been wounded,” he said. “It’s a good thing you didn’t stay to see what happened. What they did up on Forty-Meter Road! The asphalt is paved with the skin of the guys and their brains. They finished off our wounded with a bullet to the back of the head. They didn’t even take pity on their miserable corpses, blasting them with RPGs. They pillaged the houses and even violated the sanctity of the mosque. They blasted the city to bits. People who saw it said it was a blood bath.”

The tears kept pouring down the young man’s face as he spoke, and, though I tried to control myself, I too couldn’t stop crying. He went on, “After the base fell, they went on to Abadan. They want to surround it from the north and take it. Ahwaz is also in danger from that direction.

They’re attacking from the direction of the Hamid Base. But what to they expect us to do without arms? With no weapons, no ammunition? There’s no way can we fight like that.”

The boy was in despair. I tried to console him, “Don’t lose hope. We were fighting the enemy for God, and for Him we will defend ourselves. After all, we didn’t start the war. Trust in God.”

The boy, who was wounded somehow, calmed down. “Do you know what happened to Sheikh Sharif Qonuti?” I asked. His demeanor suddenly changed, and he began to moan, “The Sheikh was martyred in the worst way possible.”

“Meaning how? What did they do to him?” I asked.

“On the sixteenth the Iraqis reached the Forty-Meter Road. They fired at the Sheikh and several others sitting in a car, wounding all of them. One of the boys with the Sheikh was shot no less than sixteen times. Then they came and finished off the rest of his companions. They pulled the Sheikh from the car and tried to get him to curse the Imam. The Sheikh wouldn’t, so they urinated in his mouth and then emptied their guns in it. After he died, they cut open his skull and ran around the street crowing, ‘We’ve killed a Khomeini!’ The boys who had witnessed this are in a bad way. I found it hard to believe it myself. How, I asked myself, could people be so criminal and cruel?” After he left, I could scarcely breathe, but somehow I managed to clear the lump in my throat and cry my eyes out.

Three or four days later the radio and television announced the fall of Khorramshahr. The television announcer said, “Despite all the sacrifices made by the youth and people of Khorramshahr, regretfully ‘Blood City’ has fallen to the enemy.”

“Blood City” (Khuninshahr) was the name Imam Khomeini gave to Khorramshahr. He said, “I wish to express my sympathy to the families of the martyrs. Khuzestan has repaid the debt it owes to Islam and.…”

I could no longer stand being in the hospital. The doctors finally gave in to my demand to be released, providing I return regularly for observation. Dr. Mostafavi, who was familiar with my case, said, “You have to be under constant care. So let me invite you to my home, where you’ll be more comfortable with my mother and sister.”

I had absolutely no desire to accept the doctor’s hospitality, and declined his offer. But he went on and on, trying to convince me by reminding me I had no money to go back on my own. I’d have to wait for an ambulance or for uncle to come and get me. Left with no other option, I accepted. The doctor got a car and drove me himself. Members of his family, who had been notified, were there to welcome us. They had readied a room in their two-story home for Leila and me. It looked out on a green yard with plenty of trees. Dr. Mostafavi’s relatives, having heard he was back from Khorramshahr, came by to see him. While he was in Khorramshahr stationed at Dr. Sheybani’s clinic, he always went to the forward lines with a rifle. That was the reason I had seen him only rarely. Now I appreciated how much his family and relatives respected him. Having heard Leila and I were in his home, his guests came to visit us. They asked us about Khorramshahr, showing great interest in what we had to say. I wanted more than anything to get well quickly so I wouldn’t be a burden this honorable family. For their part they tried to make our stay as comfortable as possible. As soon I showed signs of dizziness and started to shake, the daughter would run and get some preserves for me. Mrs. Mostafavi made kabob and forced me to eat.

Once I said to Dr. Mostafavi’s father, “Please forgive us for putting you out like this.”

His was very noble in reply, “Don’t speak like that. The way I see it, we have three daughters now.”

After repeated visits to the hospital, they altered my medications. When I was feeling slightly better, the doctor’s mother took us to the shrine in the city at Shahcheragh. What I saw along the way fascinated me. The food stores were open and well-stocked. People went about their business without a care in the world. “Look,” I said to myself, “life goes on. It’s true that father and Ali are no longer with us, but we’ll all be part of a loving family again.”

To be continued …