Da (Mother) 109

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-8-4

Da (Mother) 109

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

***

We reached Shahcheragh, and for the first time I set eyes on the dome and forecourt of Imam Reza’s brother. It gave me a strange feeling, and my body was tingling all over. I became choked up, sensing here was the one place where I could speak freely and unburden my soul. The shrine was devoted to the person who could well understand what I was going through. The sight of all the war refugees in the bustle of the crowd at the shrine—especially the ones dressed in Arab chadors—gave me a good feeling, but, at the same time, their presence made it harder to fight back the tears. I would have liked to throw my arms around them and tell them I shared their suffering. I spent several moments watching them as they sat grieving in a corner by the wall. Then I entered the shrine. I walked gingerly, said my benedictory ziyaratnameh to the Prophet and his Holy Offspring, and walked toward the metal grate around the tomb. My whole body shook. As I bent forward to kiss the bars of the grate, the tears wouldn’t stop. I wept and wept without uttering a word. Gradually I began to feel more at peace, unburdened. I stood in prayer. I didn’t have a chador, and my coat was torn. The lining of the sleeve was also frayed. I covered the hole with my headscarf and prayed. Again I sought refuge by the grate, this time fully emptying my heart of the grief and discontent I felt. We stayed for a couple of hours, and I became so relieved by being in the calm of the shrine, when I emerged I felt like flying. I was in less pain and was even able to walk more easily. We also stopped in at the traditional Vakil Bazaar, and I could now say I was much better. It was only when I stood that I felt a strong current shoot though my back and take my breath away. After it ended, my legs went weak, and I could only hobble along.

On my last visit to the hospital, the doctors told me, “The infection has healed nicely.” They gave me a prescription and said, “You can go back.”

As we left the hospital, I asked Dr. Mostafavi to have the ambulance that brought me take me back to Khorramshahr. “That ambulance is not always in service,” he explained.

“What do you think we should we do?” I asked him.

Dr. Mostafavi’s wife and Sonia, his teenage daughter, urged us to stay.

I thanked them, but after I insisted on going, the doctor finally drove us to central bus terminal in Shiraz and bought tickets for Mahshahr. The next day, accompanied by the doctor’s family we set out for the terminal. Having business in the area, the doctor joined us on the bus.

We passed the night in the dry cold of the bus. Unable to lean back in the seat, I had to rest my head on the seat in front of me. I had already begun to miss mother. I prayed to God she remained in the dark about Ali. The fall of Khorramshahr and the things I had experienced in the past weeks had made me more aware of how people suffered. I was afraid if I saw mother, I would lose control and blurt out everything. I begged Dr. Mostafavi to take us to Uncle Nad Ali’s home. I didn’t want to encounter mother first thing. As I expected, uncle was up at that early hour. His wife came to the door when we knocked. He was overjoyed to see me standing, albeit feebly. He begged Dr. Mostafavi to join him for breakfast. The doctor declined, saying he had made sure we arrived safely, but had to go.

Although I thought I would fall fast asleep when I arrived, the excitement of seeing my family again prevented that. The rest of uncle’s wife’s family came and said how happy they were to see me better. One person sent word to mother, who appeared several minutes later with Zeynab. When she saw me standing there, her eyes sparkled. She seemed in better spirits than the old, battered woman who had visited me in the hospital. She kept shooting glances at me and saying, “You’re so thin. There’s hardly any color in your face.”

Zeynab would not climb down from my arms. Even though she was more unkempt than before, she was still pretty. This reminded me of father, who used to say, “The Prophet adored His daughter. If we are to call ourselves Muslims, we have to love our daughters the way he did.”

This was the reason the girls—especially Zeynab, who was his favorite—were so important to him. Mother didn’t remain with me for

long. She said, “I’ve got to go.” She was anxious about the boys. “Let Zeynab stay,” I said.

After mother left, I asked uncle’s wife to give me a comb.

She said, “It’s shameful for the child to look like that. She’s starting to be a public nuisance.”

I ran the comb slowly and with difficulty through Zeynab’s tangled hair. It seemed like it hadn’t been combed in weeks. Combing her, I noticed she had head lice, which made me sick. My eyes teared up, and I said to uncle’s wife, “It’s not a problem. We’ll just cut her hair.”

She left and brought back one of her relatives who was handy with scissors. She gave Zeynab a boy’s haircut. Uncle’s wife also heated up some water and gave Zeynab a bath in one of the side rooms. The next day I sat outside uncle’s add-on room, removing lice from Zeynab’s head. She didn’t complain.

I gradually got used to life at the camp. The first thing in the morning the women would go off with pots on their heads. “Where are they going?” I asked some people.

“They’re going to wash dishes, but because there aren’t enough spigots, people cut in line and fights break out,” they said.

Around noon there was a commotion coming from the area where uncle’s house was. “Again? What going on?” I asked.

“This time it’s coming from the kitchen,” explained uncle’s wife. “People are running to get food before it runs out.”

Not wanting to take food from people in need, uncle used his savings to buy things from the market. “Right now we can manage on our own,” he said. “Let the others have it.”

Using the few pots and pans she got from relatives at Sar Bandar, his wife would cook outside, picnic-style, over a camp stove.

I spent time shuffling around Camp B, which consisted of trailers and pre-fab homes big enough for one to four people. The refugee camp was about fifty kilometers from Mahshahr. The main camp roads were paved, while the secondary ones were covered by sand. The camp was surrounded on all sides by a fence, parts of which totally disappeared under the bedding and laundry people hung over it. The small camp was now home to some 200 to 300 families, and, naturally, facilities for hygiene and medical care, water, and food were overtaxed.

The demand for water was so great the tanks emptied frequently. The sewers couldn’t keep up with the waste, which pooled by the medical treatment facilities. The stink of stagnant water and waste was enough to drive one crazy. Because there was no one to collect it, the refuse piled up. The bins overflowed, and hordes of mosquitoes added to the misery of the inhabitants. Rats were everywhere.

Such sights gave me the feeling that the place was teeming with germs. The reality of this was seen in the clinics, which were filled with people suffering from dysentery, diarrhea, and eye infections. Many children were in such a bad way surgery was needed, but the hospitals were overflowing with the wounded needing operations. At times the landscape would be engulfed in frightening sandstorms. The winds proved excellent vectors for camp epidemics.

After several days, mother said, “Come home already.”

Ever since returning to Sar Bandar, I nurtured the hope of going to Abadan and therefore chose not to spend much time with mother. I feared if I stayed with her, responsibility for the children would fall on my shoulders and keep me from going back to the region. Having read my mind, mother said, “I won’t let you go. Stay until Ali comes back, and you can return with him. I can’t let you go just like that.”

I didn’t know how to break it to her Ali was no longer with us. One day I finally went with uncle’s wife to mother’s trailer. It was almost at the beginning of the camp, some distance from uncle’s house. Mother had gone to the market and bought a chicken. About to enter the house, I saw an old man who lived with his son and daughter-in-law in the next trailer cutting the chicken’s throat. “What’s this all about, mother?” I asked.

“I vowed if you got out of Khorramshahr alive I would make a sacrifice.” I entered the one-room trailer. The floor was carpeted in green felt. On both sides of the room were two bunk beds, which took up most of the space. A metal cabinet and a device for heating and cooling were the only other furnishings in the room. A small window let light in. Uncle’s home was the same type, only with two rooms. I didn’t like it there either, but it was even harder for me to call this home because it was now mine. I felt I had entered a cell in a prison camp. The limited freedoms we had were the only differences. I became very depressed. It was not the size of the place, of course, that annoyed me; I just couldn’t feel at home there. I wanted our old one, the home that became ours after enduring so much pain and bitterness, the home we built with our own hands. “Why,” I asked myself, “do I have to be a refugee? Whose fault is it?”

As I hunched in a corner in a daze, mother came in with a skewer of chicken kabob. “Eat,” she said. “You’re very anemic.”

The skewer was a straightened length of wire. With the children around, I didn’t want to keep the kabob all to myself. Seeing me hesitate, mother figured I was reluctant to eat meat roasted on a wire and said, “Don’t worry. After the boys gave it a good washing, I got it red hot over the fire. It’s clean.”

“It’s not that, mother,” I objected. “The thing is I can’t eat. Give it to the children.”

“How much do you think there is that I can it give to the children?” she asked.

“I don’t want it, mother.”

“Get up and leave,” she ordered the children.

Upset, I said, “If you act this way, mother, I won’t have a bite.”

Finally she gave in and divided the skewer among us. Then, using a makeshift wood stove behind the trailer, she spent the morning cooking a stewed chicken dish with the rest of the bird.

She substituted chickpeas for the required split peas and added potatoes without frying them. She also made rice. At noon, explaining it was part of a vow, mother gave most of the food to people she had become friendly with at the camp. I was finally able to have one of her home-cooked meals again.

To be continued …