Da (Mother) 103

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-6-23

Da (Mother) 103

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

***

The girls took me under my arms, and we struggled to get up the front steps. They held up my legs, and I managed to get me inside. This was very embarrassing, but the joy of being back and staying in the city eased the embarrassment. I couldn’t stand—not even for a second. My legs were still shaking. Terrible pain shot through me, reaching my head.

Doctors who had been sent in from outside the zone stepped forward to greet me. We were talking in the hallway, when a doctor emerged from the vaccination room. He wore a military uniform and was around thirty-five or forty. As soon as he laid eyes on me, he asked, “Where was she hit?”

“Her spine,” the girls said.

“Why did you lift her and bring her here in that condition?”

“They dismissed her.”

“Fine, but in this state she has to have as little pressure on her as possible. Take her somewhere where she can be absolutely still.” The girls carried me to a room with carpeting over a sheet of cardboard. When he saw me lying on my stomach, the same doctor asked, “Who said she was dismissed?”

“She said so herself,” they answered.

“The hell she did!” he shouted. “She’s got to be evacuated. Who said she could come back?”

He marched over to me angrily and pulled the sheet aside. He examined the wound, which had started to bleed heavily again. The girls showed him the x-ray of my back. Now even more furious he barked at them, “You haven’t mentioned she’ll have permanent spinal chord injury, be paralyzed for the rest of her life, and forever be a burden to everyone?!”

The girls didn’t know what to say. I looked so normal they couldn’t believe him. “We really didn’t know it was that serious,” they said.

“She told us she was better and insisted on returning.”

He said, “She can say whatever she wants. Didn’t you see the location of the wound? She can’t diagnose her own condition, and if she becomes paralyzed, it’ll be your fault!”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said. “I’ll be fine. It’s only superficial.”

“Who’s the doctor here?” he snarled. “You or me? Can you get up by yourself and walk?”

“No.”

“So why do you want to stay here?” he asked. “If they were to bombard this place, would you be able to run to shelter with the others?”

I didn’t know what to say. “God is great,” was all I could think of.

“What’s that supposed to mean? God is rational. Are you deliberately trying to get yourself paralyzed? As an orthopedist, it’s my opinion you must leave this zone and go directly to Mahshahr.”

I became very upset. If I had been able walk I would have gone to the Congregational Mosque, and if not there I would have gone to Jannatabad where I had started. There no one could say anything, but it was just my luck I was flat on my back unable to move.

The doctor said, “Change the dressing on her wound.”

The girls washed and rebandaged it. The doctor himself injected me with Cephalexin, a strong antibiotic, and said, “There’s no hope of healing this wound here, and if it becomes infected, she’ll definitely be paralyzed.”

“Give me the shot in my arm,” I said.

The injection burned my arm so much the fire spread throughout my body. I had to fight to keep from crying. As I twisted in pain, I thought to myself: This doctor is just making this up, trying to get people to feel guilty. He doesn’t want them to treat me here; that’s all there is to it. I’ll be well in no time and walk again.

When Hoseyn entered, saying the van was ready, I couldn’t bear to look at him. The girls gathered around me, and one of them said, “You tricked us. If we had known how badly you were doing, we’d never have brought you along. You’re definitely going back, and you have only yourself to blame.”

It was very hard to hear this. I started crying. With tears in my eyes, I pleaded with the doctor, “Let me stay. I beg you. I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise. Don’t send me away.”

The doctor was chuckling now and said sympathetically, “Do you think it’s in your hands whether you get better? I don’t want any harm to come to you. I’m not your enemy.”

“I won’t be a bother, I swear,” I said. “I won’t blame anyone else if something happens to me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“There’s nothing for you to do. Don’t talk nonsense!”

“I can prepare cotton swabs lying in this position, and I can clean weapons.”

Addressing me now as “daughter” and “sister,” he said, “I’m telling you for your own good. You have to go. It isn’t a problem for us having you here, but it’s going to cause you all kinds of grief. Stay and you’ll be paralyzed. But if you go, you’ll be able to recover and return to the city. By that time, God willing, the enemy will have gone the hell away.”

I knew he was telling the truth, but in my heart there was still this nagging doubt driving me crazy that I’d never see Khorramshahr again. This would be my last visit. Leaving, coming back; it made no difference. I didn’t give the slightest thought to paralysis, believing it wouldn’t happen if God didn’t want it to happen. Wasn’t He the only one helping me during these difficult days? Every minute of life I saw as a sign of His help. This was why I kept begging to stay. Ashraf Farhadi had opened a can of pears and insisted I have some. Before she could put the spoon to my mouth, I started bawling, stopping me from swallowing a thing. All the veins in my neck and muscles in my chest were aching. I wanted to scream but modesty prevented it.

They loaded me in the van. I said goodbye to everyone and begged forgiveness for being such a burden. My voice shaking, I said tearfully, “Take care of Ali’s pack for me; I wouldn’t want it to disappear. Don’t forget to stop by and visit me.”

The girls, who were in tears themselves, consoled me, “God willing, you’ll be back. You’ll get better. Don’t worry.” Ashraf, who was weeping more than the others, patted me on the head. Zeynab and Leila got in the ambulance. Hoseyn and two other men, one of whom may have been Khalil Mo’avi, the brother of Abdollah, came with us. Khalil sat on the roof of the van, and the other two stood in the corners. I was on my stomach, and Zeynab held my head in her lap and covered me with a blanket.

The van started to move. I was so distressed I didn’t even look at the Congregational Mosque. I covered my face with my hands and kept crying. These were very difficult moments. The thought that it might be the last time I would see the place forced me to raise my head and look out. We were at the Farmandari Circle. I saw that there was no sign of the flowers in the middle of the circle. The road signs had been obliterated, and the pedestal in the middle of the circle, which once supported a statue of the Shah, was pockmarked by shrapnel. I also glanced at the Mosaddeq Hospital. I recalled the times seeing Shahnaz’s body; the child who had lost everyone; the horrid noises made by the man who had lost his wife and child; and the sentry, his head severed from his body by shrapnel. Do Ali and father know they’re taking me away? I wondered.

The thought they were just standing by and letting it happen made me want to scream, “Father, come and bring me back, I’m begging you! Don’t let them take me away! Ali, you were always my rock, why won’t you do something for me now?”

I also imagined them saying goodbye to me. I want to join you, I said to them, but, it seems, you don’t want me to. You’ve both abandoned me, and now you’re driving me away.

Tears flooded my eyes, blinding me. On the bridge I spoke to the waves below, “Why didn’t you swallow me up the time I came to fetch water?”

I saw myself a tree with deep roots, resisting being pulled from the ground. How could I allow myself to be uprooted? Although born in Basra, I felt no attachment to the place. I loved Iran, so I learned Persian almost as soon as I had come to Khorramshahr. I had the feeling I had been here before and knew every place in it. I grew up in Khorramshahr, and all of my emotions, feelings, and attachments belonged to the city. My heart ached for the kindness of neighbors, who with all their own wants and poverty put others above themselves. I shouldn’t have left. Those who wished to send me away were not from the city and would, in any case, be returning to their own home ground. They didn’t realize my city was on the verge of enemy occupation. They didn’t understand my city needed me. It was as if the whole town had its eyes me. I felt myself a fish out of water, struggling for breath, dying to get back into it—a struggle going nowhere. I was exactly like the fish I had seen at the market—alive, flopping in a basket or on the fishmonger’s stand, floundering about frantically to the point of self-injury. I would stare at them struggling like that, but, afraid of what the fishmonger might do, I didn’t throw them back in the water.

Leaving the bridge was like having all the familiar doors in my life slam shut. I wanted to hurl myself from the car but didn’t have the strength. I finally had to admit that the doctor was right, but my love for Khorramshahr overwhelmed all reason and logic. To the piece of shrapnel I was hosting in my back I said, “I wish you had hit me somewhere else, cutting my leg off rather than taking my feet from under me.”

Hearing the sounds of the bomb blasts, mortars, and bombardment, I hoped for death from the air. I prayed and prayed for them to say the road was closed and no one could leave the city. These wild thoughts to some extent dulled the pain, which had died down for a while. We passed Taleqani Hospital, and I hoped someone would say, “Find a bed for her. She can get better here.” But no one said anything. We were nearing Station Twelve of Abadan. Seeing the Seyyed Abbas Shrine in the distance, I turned to him for help, “By your blessed grandfather, I’m begging you to send me back to the city.”

I was crying so much I couldn’t open my eyes. Noticing the state I was in, Zeynab asked, “Are you in pain, girl?”

To keep her from asking more questions I said, “Yeah.”

She said to the nurse who was with us, “Can’t you give her a shot? She’s in a lot of pain.”

“No,” she said. “She just had a sedative. Not now. This one’s fighting it. Given the dose we gave her, she should have been asleep by long ago.”

As we passed Station Twelve, I became convinced there was no turning back. We drove by refugees on their way out of the city; they were pitiful—as I was—shuffling along carrying as many of their belongings they could. Children were wailing, and people besieged any passing vehicle begging for a lift. Fearing he would cause further injury to my back, our driver was forced to go slow, which let people we passed take hold of the side of the van. They said, “For God’s sake. We’re human, too. Can’t you at least take us out of the city?”

When they saw a wounded person in the back, the people stepped aside without complaint. At one point jet fighters appeared overhead, flying so low their shadows fell on me. People screamed and ran away. I heard several say to Hoseyn Eidi and Khalil Mo’avi, “You’ve got weapons. Why don’t you shoot at them?”

They started firing, and the fighters fired back with their cannons. One person said, “Shoot! You can shoot them!” Another said, “Forget it. Stop shooting.”

The driver also tried to escape the firing by speeding up and leaving the paved road or coming to a halt on the shoulder. The air filled with the screeches of women and children and the shouts of men, which combined with the sounds of bombs exploding and jets flying overhead. My head was bursting with the noise, and the chaos made me feel worse. Nothing could console me now, and I began to sob. I thought: Leila would definitely want to return to Khorramshahr, but I couldn’t let her stay there by herself. Gradually I went to sleep.

End of Chapter Twenty Eight

To be continued …