Da (Mother) 137

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2025-2-16

Da (Mother) 137

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

***

The army would occasionally have women gather in one home for safety. Because of the threat posed by Hypocrites, they warned us to be more vigilant when we were alone or out and about. I had heard Hypocrites would monitor the movements of soldiers and took advantage of their absences to decapitate their wives and children. Despite the sweltering heat, on some afternoons there were strange men hanging around the neighborhood and peeking into compounds. For greater safety, all the neighbors would gather in one home.

One night when Abdollah and I were alone, the power went out. In the quiet of the night, I heard a suspicious sound. It was coming from the air conditioning duct and was getting louder and louder. I thought a rat had gotten stuck in the duct. Because the air conditioning didn’t work, rats could nest comfortably inside the ducts. In a panic, I didn’t know were I could go with Abdollah. The sounds of Saddam’s artillery were nothing compared to the noise the rats made. I took Abdollah in my arms and we went to the home of Mrs. Jabbar Beygi, the sister of Jamshid Panahi. I knocked on the door and said, “From the racket in our air conditioner, it seems like rats are about to attack.”

Mrs. Jabbar Beygi, who knew I was pregnant, said, “Come on inside.”

I said, “No. I don’t want to be a bother. Just ask Mr. Jabbar Beygi to do something so the rats will leave us alone tonight.”

Ordinarily it was Jabbar Beygi who watched out for us when Habib was not around. He came, inspected the cooler, and made a racket in the duct to drive the rats out of it. But when I got back that night, the sound was still there. Afraid they would hurt Abdollah if I left him alone, I stayed awake all night in that heat, cradling him in my arms. Adding to the misery, the mosquitoes saw the power outage as an opportunity to attack, making my body feel like a pincushion. I was afraid they would sting Abdollah, and he’d come down with one of the diseases they carried.

After a few days, Abdollah and I went to Isfahan, and we traveled with Leila on to Tehran. We had scarcely reached the city when I noticed Abdollah had a fever. This worried me, because I had been repeatedly warned about the water in Abadan, which was known for being a source of cholera and typhus. Even though I feared for the worst, I just told Leila he had caught a cold and was feverish.

“Give him a pill. It’s not serious,” she said.

I did, but the fever didn’t break. For two days I made repeated visits to a pediatrician. He said, “It’s a cold,” and all I could do was soak his legs. But he got weaker and kept crying. I ultimately had to take him to the hospital, where they gave him a shot. A short time after we got back home, he lost consciousness. He looked like he was dead, and I rushed him back to the hospital. Leila and I were so hysterical the doctors had to usher us out of the examining room and lock the door.

I overheard them saying to each other that whatever they did, the baby showed no response. One doctor injected him with anti-seizure medication, and Abdollah began to cry. They opened the door and one of the doctors raced to the dispensary with the baby in his arms. We ran after him. The doctor turned on a faucet and placed Abdollah under it for five minutes. The hospital was cold, but the water was even colder. I couldn’t help saying, “He’ll freeze to death!”

The doctor said, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”

After they put Abdollah to bed, his eyes remained open. I waved my hands in front of him, but he didn’t blink. “Don’t worry,” the doctor repeated. “He’s unconscious, which is a symptom of the seizure. He’ll be better in no time.”

Before they admitted Abdollah to the ward, the nurses asked about his father. Uncle Hoseyni told them, “His father’s at the front.”

They had me sign a release giving them permission to operate, if necessary. At that point mother turned up. When she saw the state the baby was in, she began to scream, “You made him sick, dragging the child from this city to that. How many times did I tell you not to take him to Abadan, where everything’s polluted, but you wouldn’t listen?”

Uncle Hoseyni stepped in, saying it wasn’t time for that kind of talk.

Abdollah remained in the hospital for a week. He had so many drips in him there was no space on his body for another. He swelled up from lack of movement, and he screeched whenever he saw a nurse. I didn’t want Habib to worry, so I kept Abdollah’s illness a secret. But when I learned from the doctors that the baby had typhoid, I telephoned Habib to say it would be good if he could come to Tehran.

Habib arrived around midnight the next day. There had been no busses, so he had to string together several rides on trucks to get to the city. In the morning we went to the hospital together. When I first brought Abdollah to the hospital, he weighed more than 26 pounds, but he lost almost 10 while he was there. He was very pale. They had shaved his head and, with his sunken, saucer-like eyes, he looked like somebody from Mars.

As soon as he saw Habib, Abdollah seemed to perk up. His condition improved daily until, on the ninth day, he was discharged. A week later, Habib said it was time he went back to the front. I said, “I’m coming with you.” Leila, who had been a big help to us during this time, begged me not to go back, but I couldn’t stay and returned to Abadan with Habib.

After we got back, it didn’t take long for Abdollah’s temperature to shoot up again. He showed the same symptoms, but not only did he have a fever, I also developed one. My whole body shook and my voice cracked. Afraid he might go into convulsions, I never left the baby’s side. The medicine we had didn’t seem to make any difference. At that point I recalled the story about the pomegranate the blessed Zahra lying sick in bed asked her father Ali to get for her. Ali went to get some pomegranates, but on the way back he gave them to a beggar. When he got home he saw a basket of pomegranates, gift from heaven.

Thinking Abdollah would get better if he ate a pomegranate, I had Habib get some from the market, and, after eating one, the baby’s fever broke and he was well again.

After Imam Khomeini had removed Banisadr from the post of commander in chief, and after his disgraceful escape from Iran dressed like a woman, our forces were successful in four large-scale military operations. We pushed the enemy artillery back, and the shelling of the city decreased. Fewer planes were able to hit Abadan, as well. The situation at the front stabilized.

But, at the beginning of 1984, the attacks on the city intensified once more. Shalamcheh remained under enemy control, and our boys were getting ready for a new offensive.

The army announced we had to leave our homes for safer areas. Whenever the enemy attacks got worse and there were appeals for us to move, I knew another offensive was in the works. Abdollah had become quite familiar with the sounds of war. As soon as he heard the guns, he would say, “Mommy, sleep.”

Almost all the families in our devleopment had gone. Even the caretaker had sent his family away. Mrs. Jabbar Beygi and I were the only ones left. Life under those conditions was very difficult. I began to be afraid in a way that was different from how it was before Abdollah was born. Having a child made the situation much worse. We decided Abdollah and I would go to Tehran, and, to take us there, the army had put a Peykan and a driver at Habib’s disposal. The enemy shelled the road heavily between Abadan and Shush, where the driver’s nephew lived. Habib accompanied us as far as Khorramabad where grandfather lived and then immediately went back. I was sick all that night from the horrors of the road. The next morning Aunt Salimeh and her children drove on with us to Tehran.

We arrived in the city on February 20, 1984, two months before my second child was due. However, the next day I gave birth to a baby girl we named Hoda.

When I was released from the hospital, we went to live with mother. As she was very frail, I didn’t want her to do the housework for me. That winter was very cold, and the Kushk Building had no hot water. Because I insisted on doing the work myself, I landed in the hospital again. I had on my hands eighteen-month-old Abdollah and Hoda, just two months old. I called Leila, who came from Isfahan to take care of the children. Habib also managed to visit me in the hospital, but since he didn’t have leave, he had to return to the front. Leila and mother brought Hoda to the hospital three times a day to be breastfed. After a while, the children and I returned to Abadan.

The Iraqis at that time were engaging in the widespread use of chemical weapons in Shalamcheh, Faw, and other cities. I would often smell the chemicals, but I didn’t know what they were. The air was full of the smell of bananas, garlic, and cucumbers. On windy days the odor of fruit was everywhere. Habib told me once, “If you smell fruit, try not to inhale it, because the Iraqis are using poison gas in Shalamcheh, and the wind is carrying it here.”

That was when I understood what the odors were. At the time

Habib had gone to another sector to carry out operations. He said, “I’ll probably be out of contact for several months.” He urged me to go back to Tehran, which, for the sake of the children’s health and Habib’s peace of mind, I did—though it wasn’t what I wanted. Hoda was eight months old when we arrived in the city. We weren’t able to go back to Abadan, where all of our things were.

With all the children around and the constant flood of guests, life in the one room in the Kushk Building was difficult, and I didn’t feel comfortable being there. Habib would come for the occasional visit when he had leave, but he told me he felt like an intruder. It was hard on him seeing my family put upon like that.

The home or, in reality, my room was like guest central. If someone had work to do in Tehran or was accepted to university or wanted to see a specialist, we played host to him. Apart from that, the affection mother’s brothers and other relatives had for our family was itself the cause of all kinds of congestion. Whenever a single man visited, we had to curtain off part the room to maintain propriety.

To be continued …