The Days without Mirror (Part 21)

2019-4-23

The Days without Mirror (Part 21)

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

Edited by: Golestan Jafarian

Translator: Zahra Hosseinian

Tehran, Sooreh Mehr Publications Company

‎2016 (Persian Version)‎

Chapter 9

The door of our house was open twenty-four hours for a week like a hotel. We had collected all furniture and tables and taken them to our neighbor's house. I slept in the kitchen at nights. With a pillow and a blanket, I cowered in a corner. Although we provided foods outside home, I didn't have enough time to entertain the guests with tea and fruit and pastry. So many flowers were brought for him that several times in a day I asked soldiers to take them out of the house. Journalists and cameramen had become like our family members. Everyone who came to see Hossein, said, ‘Describe all what happened!’ I suffered, all the time I restrain myself. I wished I shouted at them and said, ‘He is sick. He returned from captivity, not from traveling to Europe! What should he describe? The tortures!? Being away and unaware from his family!? It was hard for him to recall all these.’ Sometimes I saw that he was close to tears and his voice was shaky. He was nervous, his lips dried up, and he foamed at the mouth. Because he could not sleep at nights, he didn't have an appetite and didn't eat.

One week passed the same. Ali and I couldn't sit down beside Hossein at least for two hours and talk with each other. Then he was said he should go to Qazvin; to his hometown. The air force had provided him with a ceremony. We locked the house which was so messy as if a bomb had been exploded in it, and went to Qazvin. Everything was repeated again: welcoming ceremony... people's tumult... speeches... interviews... sheep sacrifices, and so on. After two days, I said, ‘Dear Hossein, I'm really tired. You saw in what shape I left the house and came. Ali and I go to Tehran. You also return when visits were over!’

‘You’re right, Manijeh. You both can go’, He said.

When I unlocked the door and entered our apartment, I sat down in the center of living room and cried my eyes out. Then I called my older brother and asked, ‘What should I do? This is my life! It is ten days Hossein came back, but I and Ali couldn’t still talk to him. I'm not in habit of such a life. I was alone for eighteen years; having a quiet life...’

‘I completely understand what you say...’ he said, ‘be patient, dear sister. Don’t welcome any visitor, when Hossein returned from Qazvin. Set the appointment hour; like, from 4:00 to 8:00 pm. don’t bother yourself so much! Again you fall ill, Manijeh.’

I said crying, ‘I fell ill... I can’t sleep at nights even by taking a few sedatives pills, my heartbeat has increased.’

My brother had phoned the air force. They sent three soldiers and we cleaned the house. They brought furniture, tables, and chairs from our neighbor’s house and we arranged them. The curtains were arranged... the decorative stuffs were put in their place... the kitchen was cleaned; in brief, the house was tidied and arranged. Three days later, Hossein returned from Qazvin. When he arrived home, turned around the living room, looked at everything carefully and wonderingly. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Wow, Manijeh, here’s our house? How good it is! How comfortable are we here!’ I smiled and said bitterly, ‘Yes, we can be at ease and comfortable if these people, who come morning to night, let us alone!’ He kept silent. I approached him; I wished to get his hand, but was embarrassed. I said, ‘Hossein, let's move from this base... let's change our house.’ He kindly looked at me and declared, ‘Oh, wherever we go, these people will come!’

We did what our brother said; also told the air force to set a specific time for visits. The invitations had begun: universities, the joint general stuff, the Air Force, the IRGC, etc. we both were invited, but I went nowhere. He was upset with me and we reached to quarrel point. ‘Dear Hossein, these people should understand that they must leave you alone for at least three months.’ I said, ‘They should let you to sleep comfortably next to your wife and child a few nights? So much insomnia, pressures of describing the past painful memories, these many repeats make both me and you crazy. You’re a simple kind-hearted man. You don’t have enough confidence to say ‘No. I can’t stand, I can’t!’

He only listened to my words and did not say anything. But whenever there was an opportunity to be together, I spoke for myself, I was close to explosion. ‘Hossein, my darling, you don’t notice that they carried you around from morning to night? You’re sick, you have stomach problem; I like to take care of you. These steamed rice, these greasy kebabs aren’t the food of the one whose all teeth have been broken and whose gums have been wounded due to malnutrition.’

My words did not make any difference. ‘Like tolerating eighteen years of captivity, this’s my duty too. I can’t step aside.’ Later on, I read in his notebook, ‘I thank God for a thousand times that I was able again to be with my family; with a wife whose nerves were so much weak due to eighteen years of tolerating and suffering great anguish and sorrow, that the slightest troubles remove her from the normal circuit, without being aware of it. Now I found out that I have not been captive, I have not suffered hardship at all; it was this woman who has endured eighteen years of hard captivity while she had been free. I'm glad to be with her today and maybe I'll be able to relieve a little of her suffering; and thank God that my son has grown up with safe body and soul; the boy who called me ‘Hossein’ in the first days of my return.’

One evening, when Hossein was invited to the Tehran University, he rang around eight or nine o’clock, ‘have your dinner, I'll return late.’ Ali and I ate dinner together. I performed my prayer and then washed the dishes. Ali went to his room. I roamed the house like my usual life during eighteen years, turned off the flame below the kettle, locked the door of apartment, turned the lamps off and slept. At midnight, I heard the ring of doorbell. I jolted awake frightened. I looked at the clock; it was one and a half after midnight. I scared, said to myself, ‘O God, who is knocking at this time? ’ My brain was locked. I didn't think of Hossein at all. It took a few minutes until I got up hurriedly. I slapped to my head and said, ‘Oh, it’s Hossein!’ I opened the door. He said hello and added, ‘Why have you locked the doors? You’ve put the key into lock? I couldn’t open it at all.’

I didn't want him to know I have forgotten him, ‘Sorry, Hossein, I'm always doing this habitually. I wasn’t sleep, just laid down. I thought that I myself open the door for you.’ They had not given us enough time to feel that Hossein was here; he had return and was a member of this family.

I ran to the kitchen and prepared tea. He sat on a chair. He was pale. He drank his tea and lit a cigar. ‘Didn’t say you’ve given up smoking in Iraq?’ I asked, ‘I didn’t see you smoke since you’ve returned.’

‘Yeah, I had quitted, but now I need to smoke.’ He answered.

I did all the normal housework; I completed the duties of a woman in the house, but no longer there was that previous romantic relationship; that near his homecoming my heart beat fast, and then I hugged him and kissed him. He was the same; Hossein wasn't that Hossein I knew as a curious, clever and humorous man, but he had become quiet and deep. Sometimes he sat in a corner for several hours and didn't say anything at all. He was so deeply sunk into his thoughts that I was afraid. As if he was not in this world. I began speaking with him. Early on he was friendly, but later I realized that he wished me not to disturb him and his privacy. We were two tired and suffered people, who were now trying to conceal their pain and suffering from each other and this made a distance between us. The captivity did not abandon Hossein. Early, at nights, he jerked awake several times, all in a sweat, and his face was red like blood. ‘What’s wrong with you Hossein?’ I said.

‘I always dream I've been captured again and the Iraqis are taking me... harassing me... torturing me...’ he said.

Sometimes, when he jolted awake, his muscles were cramped so badly that I was horrified. I insisted on him to visit my psychiatrist. We visited him. ‘General, you should use sedative pill;’ doctor recommended, ‘these problems are effects of captivity, and you can’t control them; you have to give yourself time.’

To be continued…