A review of "Three Halves of an Apple"

I leave my Ismaeel to you!

S. Pegah Rezazadeh
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2020-3-3

The book "Three Halves of an Apple" is the memoirs of Khadijah Shad, the mother of two martyrs of the defender of shrine, Mustafa and Mujtaba Bakhti which has been authored by Mohammad Mahmoudi Nourabadi. It has been published in 296 pages and in 2500 copies in 2019 by Khat-e Moghaddam Publications.

The book consists of 19 chapters; attached by photos given by the family of the two martyrs to the audience at the end of the book. The author by setting aside the linear narration, has tried to write the book in his own narration and pen, far from what is common in memory books and documented and fictional biographies which is the direct quotation of oral history.  It can be said that he has succeeded in this way with a high percentage. Simply put, this book, unlike many of the books that contain the oral history of war, does not begin with the narration of the birthplace of the two martyrs and how they grew up. The author has deliberately disrupted the linear narration.

This documented story is the result of hours of interview with Khadijah Shad who along with her family resides in the city of Mashhad. The first chapter begins with the ringtone of the mobile phone of the two martyrs' mother ringing on 23^rd of July 2015. The ring that worries Khadija's heart, and the reader along with her brings this worry and restlessness until the final lines of the book. Fatemeh is the younger daughter of Mustafa who comes to her grandmother to ask about the health of her father and uncle. Most chapters of the book are spent in Mashhad. Mustafa, 33 and the eldest son of the Bakhti family, along with his brother traveled to Syria by the Afghan's Fatemion Division to fight terrorists in the cities of Homs and Tadmor for reasons later elaborated in the book. Mohaddeseh, the older sister of Fatemeh and the eldest daughter of Mustafa with her childish curiosity wants to find out what is going on.

We read in the second chapter that the two brothers decided for the first time to travel to Syria in January 2014, asking their mother to obtain the heartfelt consent of their father, who has also spent many years in Shalamcheh and two operations of Karbala 4 and 5. The mother succeeded to do this very soon. Mustafa is the servant of the holy shrine of Imam Reza (PBUH) and previously intended to study in a seminary. He obtained with difficulty a Nissan pickup for a while in order to have an income for his family and left studying in the seminary for some one and a half years due to life problems. Mujataba has also an MA degree in law and is considered an elite. He also agrees with his older brother and eagerly wants to continue his brother's path. Mujtaba is single. In pages 32 and 33 of the book, we read how the two brothers want to ask the permission of their mother titled "Good Work". It becomes clear in this chapter that it is not so easy to be dispatched to Syria. In the same second chapter, Khadijah Shad got their permission for the Haj Ali, the family's father. The dialogues that are exchanged between the mother, sons and the father of the family in the second chapter are very calculated. The book's author makes good use of broken conversation language in the dialogues, and at the same time, does not cause a so-called interruption in the book visually. Haj Ali Kargar works in a woolen factory and his children have been in poverty and misery for many years and the children of such a family know the value of prosperity and the taste of poverty is not unfamiliar to them. It is these problems and calamities from which two great and at the same time true and inaccessible heroes are made.

The mother's quotations in the third chapter are readable and do not make the reader tired.

The book's fourth chapter tells the story of the mother's delivery at Razi's Maternity Hospital, which is special for low-income pregnant women, as she said. In the same chapter, the audience gets familiar with Khadijah's children, respectively. Mustafa, Maryam, Mehdi and Mujtaba.  

The book’s fifth chapter quotes the loss of the last child in Razi Maternity Hospital. The eldest child of the family, Mustafa was born in 1983.

The chapter six of the book narrates years of misery of Bakhti’s family as well as a letter written by Mustafa in the second year of elementary school to the Office of the Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution and after a while, the leader’s office sent him a prayer rug. The mother of the two martyrs narrates that she had been sitting on the olive green prayer rug and was praying. The book’s story narrates that her cellphone was ringing for a few days and as if they want to hide a reality from her; from 23^rd of July 2015 till the next five or six days. Mustafa’s wife is also Khadija’s niece. Mustafa married to his cousin at the age of 17. 

In the book’s sixth chapter, we read that the mother is praying on Mustafa’s memorable and valuable prayer rug and she does not know when and where her eldest child has prayed on the rug.

The seventh chapter starts with these sentences, “Mommy, I swear by God to pray for me, I am supposed to be authenticated within one hour later…” and the reader is thrown to February 2014.

The eighth chapter quotes the marriage of Mustafa with his cousin Zahra. Mustafa, who was 17 and still had no job, fell in love with his cousin.

In the ninth chapter, the guys were dispatched from Qom to join the Fatmeion Division.

In the tenth chapter, we read another mental quotation of the mother which changes the audience’s mood very well and alters the reader’s mind a little in order to continue reading the book more fluently and differently.

The eleventh chapter is the narration of Literacy Movement which Khadija enrolled and the day when her little children took the pills of one of her relatives which had a happy ending by God's help and they survived. In the twelfth chapter, Mustafa and Mujtaba took part in the funeral ceremony of two Afghani martyrs of the Defender of Shrine. Haj Afghan Bakhtiari who did not agree with their presence in Syria, attended the ceremony. He was insisting that if something bad happens for them, the heart of their mother will be harmed for life.

In the thirteenth chapter, we read form the Khadija's language that she had heard the name of Qom so many times from the language of others during the past two or three days and says with a pat tense very, "What really happened that the guys were sent form Qom?!" and the same thing caused the mother's heart to stir.

The fourteenth chapter is another narration of the dispatching of the guys from Qom.

 The fifteenth chapter spends in their house and Mujtaba says, "Mother, what about if you did not see me anymore?" and he massages head to toe of his mother and kisses her face the night before their dispatching. 

In the book's sixteenth chapter, Maryam, the sister of the two martyrs is preparing to see them off.

In the seventeenth chapter, the toddling Mohaddesseh is looking for her grandmother with her curiosity and eloquence in order to get a news from her father and hears from the language of Khadija what has happened to her father.

The book's author in the eighteenth chapter managed very well to depict the mobile current of the mind of the two martyrs' mother one at home and the other in Mashhad's bazar and the faces of her two sons, Mustafa and Mujtaba were associated in her mind. The same chapter narrates 13^th of July when Khadija goes to deliver the bags of her children and found them very light. Mehdi, the other child and the only surviving son of the family is the third half of the apple of this book as it seems, and Khadija in the same lines mentions that she is the mother of three Ismaeels and still hopes wholeheartedly that Mustafa and Mujtaba return home. Mehdi told her mother, "Never say die! It is ominous". And we read in the book's last chapter that Khadija tells Mehdi, "it is a few days that everybody is telling me a lie, hiding me something. Mehdi, don't tell me a lie anymore." Form the very beginning of the story, Khadija has been told that Mustafa has lost one of his legs but Mujtaba is healthy. But in the final lines of the book, the mother found out when the backpacks of her children were brought home, one pair of Mustafa's shoes was not in it, and she discovers that something important has been hidden from her. In the last few lines of the book, it came to the creative mind of Khadija that she tears the payer rug into two pieces, putting one piece under the head of Mustafa and the other under the head of Mujtaba. She does not want to see the bodies of her sons and intend to say farewell with her two Ismaeels with same image she has in mind from them.

The book ends with these lines, "Your voice is lost in all the weeping and screaming; but there is still one more thing the mother can do: that olive green prayer rug which had been sent by the Leader as a gift for your second elementary school Mustafa, has to go underground along with Mustafa. He had said on that memorable day: "I would keep it for myself as long as I am alive, and then bring it with myself in hereafter home." Now the rug should be cut into two pieces; Mustafa had not thought of this. In front of the wondering and curious eyes of the people who had gathered, you cut the rug into two pieces, and say, "One for under the head of Mustafa and other for Mujtaba." And again your voice is lost in the sobbing of manly weeping and womanly screams…

The shovels with an indescribable violence want to pour soil on the beautiful memoirs of a mother. But the memoirs of the mother cannot be buried. You have pledged yourself and your Ismaeels."