Da (Mother) 96

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-5-6

Da (Mother) 96

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

***

Twenty Seven: The Iraqi Encirclement Grows Tighter

I was in a strange mood these days. I was lost to myself. Everywhere I went, whatever I was doing, father and Ali were always with me. More often than not it was Ali’s face that appeared before me. I didn’t know why. Maybe being more recent, the searing pain of his death was more vivid to me. I was beside myself missing him. I had no desire to eat or rest. Nothing seemed important to me. I worked and went about the city out of habit. In my mind, I would hold conversations with them. I imagined them answering me. I felt the weight of their footsteps.

Seeing the city, which had now completely taken on the face of war, distressed me even more. Conditions had become worse, more critical. Traffic in the area away from the mosque was even lighter. Wherever we went we could see more signs of destruction. Very few houses were intact. Vehicles abandoned in driveways or by the side of the road because of the lack of petrol had become burned-out wrecks. The behavior of animals I saw here and there in town had also become erratic. Before, when they saw people the creatures would follow them in search of protection. Now, they would freeze in terror and then run away. Walking around, we would see the carcasses of animals that had fallen. The wind whipped dust and tumbleweeds from one side of the empty alleys and streets to the other. All the devastation conjured up the nightmare of the city falling.

Planes had no trouble flying at low altitudes. There was no sign of the antiaircraft batteries that had been operating in the first days. The enemy pilots maneuvered in the air, breaking the sound barrier, and, if they didn’t drop bombs, the roar of their engines shattered the few windowpanes that were still intact. The sound barrier booms also brought on horrible migraines.

There were now fewer girls working at the clinic. Only Zohreh Farhadi, Sabah Vatankhah, Maryam Amjadi, Belqis Malekian, Mehrangiz Daryanavard, and I were left. We no longer ventured out into certain streets and alleys. Even the Taleqani neighborhood, which I counted as a good area, had become a terrifying place to me. Only the sounds of enemy mortars and artillery broke the fearful silence. I had my heart in my mouth as I went to Jannatabad, expecting at any moment to fall into an Iraqi ambush. Word had it that the Iraqis had fanned out in the Taleqani neighborhood; it wasn’t far from there to Jannatabad. I was very worried about Leila and Zeynab. There was talk the Iraqis had taken a number of people in Taleqani and Qezeli prisoner, and they had raped girls in front of their parents and brothers in the Hizan neighborhood.[1] Then they killed the men and released the women, who were in a crazed state. It was said that when our forces reached these women they begged for death.

After hearing this, I couldn’t speak for a few days. I retreated into a shell. I didn’t even have the nerve to put myself in their shoes. It was insane to see how naïve people were to think the Iraqis wouldn’t harm them. How could they be so gullible? For a moment I feared for us, Leila and me. But then I asked myself: Didn’t you know how it would be from the start? Besides, this incident happened on the eighth day of the war, and I was just now hearing about it. I thought back to those days and realized the men at the mosque had a good reason to be hard on us about going out alone. They never came out and said it directly, but that was why they pressured us to leave the city. So it was not for nothing that when we had said that we wanted to go to the front to help the wounded, the men retorted, “With men not having died at the front yet, you women want to go there?”

There were no more fighting men in the mosque. They had all left for the front. Even Ebrahimi was gone. They had closed up shop on coordinating things from there. I didn’t see Mr. Mesbah and the others. Sheikh Sharif was mostly at the front and was working with even more conviction than before. The boys said the Sheikh’s son had been wounded and was in the hospital, but he didn’t even have a chance to visit him.

It was clear to everyone the war was a very serious matter, and the Baathist regime of Iraq—with all the forces, arms, and equipment they had brought to the battle—had more in mind than just taking Khorramshahr.

The situation at the Congregational Mosque had become very critical. Soldiers were coming and going in greater numbers. Groups of people, who couldn’t bring themselves to leave town, had taken refuge there. The rifles of our forces couldn’t force them to leave, nor could the deadly fire of the Baathists drive them from the city. Heydariyeh and Abbasiyeh were deserted. I had heard that the bombing had reached those places. The kitchen was closed, and all the women cooks had gone. Even if they had stayed, there was no food. We were out of everything. We made do with bread, watermelons, or tinned food, the same rations the troops had. Sometimes there was nothing but dry bread, which we dipped in water and ate.

The body washers also left in the end. Maryam took her son-in-law, and only Zeynab remained. Jannatabad was not immune to the heavy Iraqi attacks. A bomb landed the old section of the cemetery, destroying many graves. Shrapnel struck the stone slabs, shattering them. I was petrified that the graves of father and Ali would suffer the same fate. I tried to monitor what had happened to them, even if it was from far away. Their resting places had changed slightly. The earth around them had lost its freshness. In the beginning when I watered it, it would give off a certain fragrance. That was gone now. The earth, which at first tended to be a reddish color, had dried and was a salty white. The level of earth around the graves had gone down, and every time I visited them, I would brush off debris brought by the wind and smooth out the surrounding earth.

Worried an animal had dug up Ali’s clothing, I visited the place I had hid it. With all my heart I wanted to take his clothes out and see them, but I never had the opportunity. I consoled myself by promising to put it off until the war ended.

I knew the situation was getting more desperate by the day. The Iraqi noose around the city was getting tighter, and they had brought their artillery closer. Compared to the first days of the war, the shelling had gotten worse. Their forces were advancing, while our diminished troops were falling one after another, resisting them. No munitions were coming to us from outside, and what we had was running out. Our own weapons were becoming useless. The Ahvaz-Khorramshahr Highway was generally closed. The shelling around the roadway was so intense no one dared set foot there. It was said the Iraqis had such a tight grip on it they could strike anything that moved.

Word from places farther up the Shatt had it that the Iraqis were approaching Ahvaz from the Hamid Base, and it was just as likely they would take Ahvaz as they would take Khorramshahr. It was also reported they had entered Dehlaviyeh and Susangerd.

Scattered and irregular forces, having heard about the clashes and the emergency conditions in Khorramshahr, had come on their own to defend the city. Among them were Mr. Sadeqpur and his friends. They had come at the request of Ahmad Shush from Rudsar (who was martyred). The poor souls didn’t have the temperament to withstand the heat of the south. In my comings and goings, I saw both locals and outsiders so exhausted they didn’t have the strength to walk. Unable to carry their weapons on their shoulders, they held them in their arms and dragged the magazines along the ground. It was obvious it had been several days since they last slept, and they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Some of them were stranded at the front for several days, but no one could get close enough to provide them with food and water. They themselves couldn’t get back behind the lines because the Iraqis had them pinned down in the alleys and lanes. The slightest misstep meant they would be slaughtered. Without food or water for a few days they were sick with hunger and thirst. At the hospital we saw people bedridden only because of physical exhaustion, but these problems also had an effect, more or less, on the defenders’ morale.

In the beginning everyone was hopeful that the war only last days. But now they were talking about the large size of Iraq’s arsenal and her supply of troops. Many had lost hope for our forces. But, when everything pointed to the Iraqis taking the city, others proudly and stubbornly proclaimed, “We’re not that far gone yet to let the Saddamites to take the city. Our trust is in God.”

Like them I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of the Iraqi’s taking the city. But, then again, I would ask myself: How long can our boys last? How much did we have left in the way of munitions? How many defenders are left? What is their strength? Is it realistic to hope for reinforcements from other cities? For that reason I asked the military types about Iraqi strength at the front. Almost to a man they said, “They’ve sent in three divisions of infantry and one of tanks.”

Following up, I asked, “How many in each?”

“It’s different with each country,” they said. “From eight to thirteen thousand. The Iraqis have between ten and thirteen thousand. Other countries have been helping them.”

I knew about the aid they got from states in the region and from America, but I didn’t know the extent of it. Many nations were involved in the conflict. This was at a time when we didn’t have more than three tanks total. I had heard this from the soldiers. I often asked the soldiers at the base, “Why can’t you stop the Iraqi tanks?” They answered, “With what? We only have three of our own.”

I saw myself that one of the tanks was stranded in the mud by the police station. They said it had been under fire and one of its treads sank in the mud. Another had been out of commission by the wall at Jannatabad since the tenth day of the war. Later I heard they had taken this tank to Ahvaz for repair. The only working tank we had was forever going this way and that—sometimes to the police station, sometimes to Railroad Circle or customs—laying covering fire for the front-line fighters. Recently they had taken a tank from the Iraqis. It was new and fast, clearly not one of ours. It had a different shape than ours. Unlike the Chieftans, which tended to be green, it was khaki color. They paraded it all over the city, letting everyone know it was booty liberated from the Iraqis. This, they thought, might breathe new life into the forces defending the city. But seeing how the port and customs had been looted, no one took any joy from a single liberated tank.

During our forays around the city, we visited the port area several times. It was full of goods. They said that those responsible for customs originally intended to clear it of all goods, but since it was the first spot that had come under heavy Iraqi shelling, they couldn’t. Again I heard that they wanted at least to take out the airplane parts that had been purchased, but even that wasn’t practical.

One day they brought burn victims to the clinic, explaining there had been a fire at the port. Mr. Najjar applied vaseline and gauze to their wounds and I, along with a couple of others who had secured a vehicle, went to the port to find more victims. We entered through the Sentab gate.

The port area was so vast we couldn’t tell where it began or ended. There were so many pieces of equipment, so many goods, it was easy to get lost among them. I didn’t see many people. The place where unrefined cooking oil destined for the factories was stored had caught fire. The oil was burning producing a thick, foul smoke. Workers were trying to smother the fire with dirt. We found only one person with burns on his arms and legs; fortunately they weren’t severe. He continued to work in that condition, and, no matter how much we insisted he come with us for treatment, he refused, saying, “I’ve got work to do. I’ll come later on.”

We scoured the area in the car for wounded we could bring back to the clinic. The imported machines, large containers, boxes, and voluminous bales were evenly spaced, forming avenues and secondary roads. The boxes contained all sorts of goods—from screws and bolts, toys and sewing machines, to machinery and parts for factories and airplanes. Some of the boxes were the size of a large room, and it took a crane to move them. A large number of brand new cars imported from Japan and Germany were parked in a vast area at the port. The brand new Toyota passenger cars, pickups, Mazdas, Mercedes, and BMWs sparkled in the sun. Our own exports took up another part of the port: hand-woven carpets, dates.…

In several spots goods were stored in warehouses and steel structures. Most of these were state-owned. Another set of goods was destined for trading companies and factories in other cities. These had been ordered by foreign companies and duly sent to them. Most of this commerce was carried on by post.

Now all these goods—all this wealth—were burning. Several of the ships bearing goods had no chance to unload their cargos, and having come under fire, were smoldering by the jetties. The flames were so intense porcelain pots burst from the heat. Crates had been hit by mortars, their contents destroyed. Large containers of clothing like jeans, high-quality cotton shirts, electrical equipment, bicycles—all were reduced to ashes. Large boxes of imported fruit were left rotting.

It made my blood boil seeing all these goods bought with the wealth of the nation now being consumed by flames or wolves, and it broke my heart there was no way to get them out of the city. At the very least we could have moved them to safety with the cars.

The scene made me even more furious with the treacherous few, who had brought all this misery upon us. In the last few days, the boys returning from the front reported the Iraqis now had the port. They said they were looting the area by crossing over the Shatt or coming through Shalamcheh.

End of Chapter Twenty Seven

To be continued …