Da (Mother) 89

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I didn’t find working at the clinic, gathering the dead, and tending the wounded in the town all that satisfying. The weapons they gave us to fix were useless, which was even more infuriating. I felt that none of these tasks was vital. What I really wanted to do was to go to the front. I knew that there’d be more work to do there. Zohreh Farhadi was like me, restlessly expecting something else to do.

Da (Mother) 88

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I felt really sorry for him. We waved and said goodbye. Somewhere along the way, the mosque boys got out, and Yaddi and his runner friends took us to the home of an old man and woman. They were very happy to see us. The old woman said, “You go and wash, while we get the food ready.”

Da (Mother) 87

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

There were several people from Jannatabad with us in the truck. We all got out. The path we had to take to get to the spot the driver showed us was under fire. The Ring Road was slightly elevated, nearly two meters in places above the surface of the land, and we had to climb down an embankment. The road ran through swampy land, which flooded when it rained.

Da (Mother) 86

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

It was, if I’m not mistaken, the sixteenth or seventeenth day of the war, around 1:00 p.m. I was at the clinic busy repairing and loading rifles when somebody said that they’d brought in wounded. I hastily grabbed a stretcher and went out. A wounded man lay on the floor of a fire truck. Shrapnel had hit him in the knee, and he was in agony. We called out to Mr. Najjar, who came and examined him.

Da (Mother) 85

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

We went over the bridge and from a place on Behruz Alley or Arya the truck entered a military compound and stopped in front of a building. It looked to me like one of the naval headquarters’ buildings. We got out of the car and entered the hallway. Metal plaques on the doors identified the offices: Logistics, Command…. The head of the group stopped ...

Da (Mother) 84

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

The soldiers laid the wounded man in the truck and put the boy at the other end. I sat on the edge of the truck with my legs dangling. We had yet to move when a mortar shell landed between the truck and the soldiers who had taken the pots. There was the sound of earth breaking open, and I saw and heard shrapnel going in every direction.

Da (Mother) 83

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

With the passage of time, the need for first-aid people at the front became clearer to me. In the beginning I had heard that some boys had died on account of needing some minor surgery. But one of the frontline soldiers told me a story, and then I knew I could no longer stand quietly by. He said, “One of the boys defending the city was hit in the stomach by shrapnel, causing his intestines to fall out.

Da (Mother) 82

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I don’t remember what day it was, but it was around 11:00 a.m., and I was busy sweeping the mosque with the long-handled wicker brooms they had recently brought. They were always telling us the mosque was the house of God and to let it get dirty would be a sin. We took up the carpets in the prayer room and swept everywhere.

Da (Mother) 81

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Ever since I started working in the clinic, whenever there was nothing to do, I would go to the new place where meals were being prepared. They had transferred the kitchen at the Congregational Mosque to a bank compound. To get there I walked toward the Shatt. The glass building was located on the corner of an alley, on the left side of the road just before Ferdowsi Avenue.

Da (Mother) 80

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

The first place we went was the Mosaddeq Hospital. It was deserted. It had been hit once or twice during the heavy bombardment of the bridge and the municipality. When I entered, it seemed abandoned. I tried to find Abdollah, and they told me they were no longer admitting patients and were about to move the ones already there.
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Is oral history the words of people who have not been seen?

Some are of the view that oral history is useful because it is the words of people who have not been seen. It is meant by people who have not been seen, those who have not had any title or position. If we look at oral history from this point of view, it will be objected why the oral memories of famous people such as revolutionary leaders or war commanders are compiled.

Daily Notes of a Mother

Memories of Ashraf-al Sadat Sistani
They bring Javad's body in front of the house. His mother comes forward and says to lay him down and recite Ziarat Warith. His uncle recites Ziarat and then tells take him to the mosque which is in the middle of the street and pray the funeral prayer (Ṣalāt al-Janāzah) so that those who do not know what the funeral prayer is to learn it.

A Critique on Oral history of War Commanders

“Answering Historical Questions and Ambiguities Instead of Individual-Organizational Identification”
“Oral history of Commanders” is reviewed with the assumption that in the field of war historiography, applying this method is narrated in an advancing “new” way, with the aim of war historiography, emphasizing role of commanders in creation of its situations and details.
A cut from memoirs of Jalil Taeffi

Escaping with camera

We were in the garden of one of my friends in "Siss" on 26th of Dey 1357 (January 16, 1979). We had gone for fun. It was there that we heard the news of Shah's escape from the local people. They said that the radio had announced. As soon as I heard this news, I took a donkey and went on its back.