The Days Without Mirror (Part 1)

2018-11-20

The Days Without Mirror (Part 1)

Memoirs of Manijeh Lashgari; The wife of released pilot, Hossein Lashgari

Edited by: Golestan Ja’farian

Translator: Zahra Hosseinian

Tehran, Sooreh Mehr Publications Company

‎2016 (Persian Version)‎

Indication

The Days without Mirror analyses the life of a woman who marries with love and enthusiasm at seventeen and tastes the motherhood at eighteen, and the same year is the beginning of her eighteen years of waiting: her pilot husband goes missing.

She spends fourteen years in unawareness and absolute waiting, and after being informed that her husband is held captive, it takes three more years to see him. Eighteen-year deep gap, waiting and being away of each other, and the personality differences which have come about over these years, force both of them to retry to get to know each other. Hossein Lashgari is about forty-six years old and Manijeh is thirty-six years old.

The feeling of being a stranger and suffering are dominated the love and passion of youth. The wife and husband, who have not seen each other for eighteen years and have not witnessed each other's physical and personality changes, should now know all these 18 years, fall in love, and live with each other under the same roof.

They once again begin their marital life; this time not with youthful passion, but understanding the suffering of eighteen years of waiting for union.

In this book she describes her life in a simple, real, and with no exaggeration way. Manijeh Lashgari's waiting starts at age of twenty, i.e., two years after her marriage, and it takes eighteen years. The hurricane of the war events throws her into a harsh world, without that she understands the excitement of her young days. Manijeh does not escape from the bitter truth of her life: "unawareness" and "waiting". She does not seek to save her emotions and youth; but in the shadow of years after years of waiting, she spends days with hope and love to her husband whom she still doesn’t know whether he is alive or not, and with her little boy who needs her much.

She keeps her younger days in picture frames in order that when her husband returns and sees her changes at twenty-five years old, twenty seven years old, thirty years old, etc. and sees what was the color of each year awaiting in her eyes, and how the days without mirror has elapsed for her.

This book is not just a narration of Manijeh Lashgari’s hard life who overcomes the violent storm of her youth desires and feelings, but it is the reflection of thousands young girls' life that from the heart of their life a window is opened to the lives of women in the Iranian society; Iran during war and post-war.

Perhaps this story gives a fillip to those who flee from the bitter facts and seek to save their lives and property with a little crosswind.

Golestan Ja’farian

Tehran, Summer 2015

A brief about Hossein Lashgari

I am with my wife; the wife who has been so tired and offended of eighteen years awaiting and of biting the bullet that she, without realizing or wanting, is went out of ordinary procedure of life by the slightest vicissitudes.

I am with my son; the son who called me ‘Hossein’ at the first days of my liberation, and now, after years, we understand each other better.

I am with kind and grateful people; they respect and thank me everywhere they see me, which brings a new spirit of serving to my country.

I am with my friends and colleagues; the loyal and intimate people who do not even allow me to bring a cup of tea.

After eighteen years of captivity, I’m living with these loved ones, and I become more and more interested in Iran, our people and culture every day.

The war and captivity were an opportunity for me; an opportunity to learn how to live, how to appreciate the family, friends, acquaintances and even to thank the smallest gifts of God.

Hossein Lashgari was born on March 11, 1953 in Zia Abad village, north of Qazvin. In 1971, after getting his diploma, he was sent to Khorasan to soldiering. During the joint military maneuver between ground and air forces of the army and because of being acquainted with pilots, he was filled with an indescribable passion for flight.

After soldiering and through taking part and passing the Pilot College Test, he was recruited by the Air Force.

In 1974, after passing the preliminaries of flight training in Iran, he went to America to complete his pilot training course. After obtaining pilot license, he returned to Iran with the rank of second lieutenant and went to the second air base in Tabriz as pilot of (F-5) fighter. In 1979, after being married to Manijeh Lashgari, he was transferred to Vahdati base in Dezful.

Following the abolition of The 1975 Algiers Agreement and Saddam Hossein torn the treaty in front of television cameras; the borders of Iran were subjected to ground and air raid by the Iraqi forces on April 1980.

On the morning of September 18, 1980, an operation was done on Iraqi territory; the second group of fighter aircrafts of Iran was sent to destroy Iraqi tanks which were bombarding the Iranian borders.

In this operation, Hossein Lashgari’s fighter was aimed by Iraqi rockets at a height of six thousand feet and fell down on the Iraqi territory.

Hossein Lashgari was captured in Iraq for eighteen years. Nobody heard of him about fourteen years, and his name was among the missing, because the Iraqi government did not allow the Red Cross to announce that the Iranian pilot is alive. Hossein Lashgari spent many years in solitary and group prisons of Iraq.

In all these years, only a short television interview - which was requested by the Iraqis - could provide the best conditions for the Iranian pilot who had trained in the United States and knew three languages; so that, he sits in front of cameras and acknowledge that Iran had begun the war and he had flew on Iraqi territory on September 18, 1980.

The Iraqis interrogated him repeatedly, even seven years after the beginning of war, and tortured him hard to submit to interview, and then using it to declare in international societies that Iran had begun the war.

On April 6, 1998, Hossein Lashgari was released after eighteen years of captivity. The spirit of this Iranian pilot was astonishing for the representatives of ICRC[1]. How Hossein had still kept up his mental balance and memorized the whole text of the Holy Quran, after spending a long time of captivity in solitary confinements.

After liberation, Hossein Lashgari lived eleven years with his loved ones, his wife and his son, Aliakbar. Suffering from injuries and tortures during eighteen years of captivity, and also seventy percent VA disability, the famous pilot passed away on August 10, 2009.

To be continued…