Da (Mother) 133

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2025-1-19

Da (Mother) 133

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

***

Chapter Thirty-Six: Life Returns to Khorramshahr

With Khorramshahr liberated, I begged Habib to take me there as soon as he could. I desperately want to see my city, but they had yet to give permission to civilians to inspect the damage and take up residence. When Habib finally said, “Let’s go and see Khorramshahr,” I couldn’t contain myself. After almost two years, I was going home. I thirsted to see it, imagining it was the same old place I had known. Little did I know what had actually happened to the city. The first thing I saw was the bridge over the waterway linking the city to the southern parts (Kut-e Sheikh, Moharrezi, and, finally, the Abadan Road) had been destroyed. We went over a pontoon dubbed “Liberty” to get to the other side.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was no sign of the city I knew; it had been leveled. I had no idea where I was. As we toured the ruins, Habib had to remind me what had been there before the war. Everything was strange and new to me now. I couldn’t tell whether what I was seeing was an avenue, a traffic circle, or a residence—the whole place was reduced to rubble. All that remained of the houses were piles of dirt studded with bits of steel. The only things standing in the broad squares were markers the Iraqis had posted to show where mines were. They were in such a hurry to get out of the city they didn’t have time to take them down.

First, we went to the Congregational Mosque, which, though badly damaged, still stood. I went inside and was reminded of the first days of the war. Nothing was left of the Sheybani clinic but a pile of rubble. I rummaged through the debris hoping to find Ali’s bag but didn’t find anything. Later I learned from Sabah it had been lost.

The city was as unfamiliar on the way back as it was when we entered. Even though the Taleqani district had not been hit as hard as other areas, the homes there had seen so much damage it felt like I was on foreign soil. Seeing what remained of our home brought back memories of father and Ali.

I heard their voices, the sounds they made as they were constructing the house, the house we had all pitched in to make. Saddam’s troops not only killed the residents, they destroyed their homes and looted their possessions. They even carted off parts of the metal gate to our yard, which they used to cover their bunkers. The relatively large kitchen and bathroom part of the house was gone. The roof had caved in. But, in spite of it all, the Taleqani district fared better than the other parts of the city.

We went to Jannatabad next. The graves were a mess, and the markers were gone. I went to grieve over father and Ali, but I was too shocked by what I saw to cry.

As we stood over Ali’s grave, Habib explained what had happened the day he saw Ali on the battlefield. “Ten days into the battle, we were at Railroad Circle fighting the Iraqis all day and into the night. Then they attacked with a large number of tanks. The boys told me Seyyed Ali had come. ‘Which Ali?’ I asked them. ‘Seyyed Ali Hoseyni.’ A few minutes later, I saw Ali crouching before an Iraqi tank with an RPG in his hands. He got up and took aim at the tank, but before he could fire, the tank’s canon went off, hitting the wall behind him and demolishing it. The air was so thick with dust and smoke I couldn’t see a thing. I was frantic—we were very close friends. It was just his luck, I thought, for him to show up at that moment and be killed. The thought was suddenly interrupted by a figure emerging from the smoke. It was Ali standing there like a man of steel. He had been caught in the blast, but to everyone’s relief he had made it. I didn’t see him after that. Our fighting with the Iraqis continued. The boys knocked out several of their tanks. Around sunset Jahan Ara ordered us back for a breather. He said we’d been fighting for almost two days straight, and he’d replace us with reinforcements. We returned to the Darya Bod Rasayi School, which was our base. Taqi Mohsenifar, Ali Vatankhah, boys from the Aqajari unit, a few others, and I stretched out on the floor in the foyer on the first floor and talked. I asked Mohsenifar, who was sitting cross from me with an RPG round beside him, where Ali was. He said Ali had gone to see his mother with Hoseyn Ta’i Nezhad. Later we were still talking when Ali Vatankhah and few other boys went over to the door and tried to sleep. I warned them not to, because the spot was directly in the line of fire. They needed to sleep somewhere away from the door closer to our side of the room. They got up, and a few moments later the Iraqis opened fire. Even though the sounds were steadily getting nearer, none of us imagined the Iraqis would bomb the base. Everybody agreed they were firing blind, but just then a shell landed in the yard. The next shell hit in the doorway, and the next landed right in the middle of our group. At that moment the last thing I heard was Ali Vatankhah shouting ‘God is great.’ I don’t know what happened after that. I thought I’d had it. After a while, I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see a thing. I ran my hands over my body. My legs were okay. I still had hands, a head, so I thought I was in heaven. But then I saw I wasn’t; my arms and legs were moving but sluggishly. There was something wrong with my eyes and ears. I couldn’t get to my feet no matter how hard I tried. The blast made my body feel like lead. I breathed in so much dust I nearly choked to death. Crawling to the doorway was pure hell; it felt like I was treading through flesh and bone. As fresh air entered my lungs, I realized I was outside. Then I called out to Ali Vatankhah. It was pitch dark, and I couldn’t see a thing. After a few minutes, Ali emerged from the building, and we stood there not knowing what to do. The Iraqis kept shelling. We went into the alley where we found several soldiers from the Aqajari unit, but, unfamiliar with the neighborhood, the poor guys didn’t know where to go. As we were about to leave the alley, I noticed three of them standing behind us. We decided to wait for things to quiet down, but just at that moment a very well dressed man came out of nowhere and asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘They blasted our base and tore the boys to bits,’ I told him. ‘The shell landed in the base?’ he repeated. ‘Yeah, a couple of them,’ I said. As we spoke it dawned on me that it was odd to find someone dressed so nicely in the middle of a war. But even before I had finished speaking, he was gone, and I never saw him again. Later on I figured out he was one of the Fifth Columnists who were target spotting for the Iraqis. He wanted to make sure the shells had landed were they were supposed to.”

When Habib finished, I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to go on and see the rest of the city, but the road leading to the slaughterhouse and traffic police headquarters was closed off. The Iraqis were still in Shalamcheh. We turned around, and Habib, sensing I was in a state of shock, continued to explain what had happened while I just listened. We continued touring the city until 2:00 p.m. When we got back to our house, the lump in my throat burst, and I started weeping. It didn’t feel like that when I first heard the city had fallen. Perhaps I still had hopes it would be rebuilt. But now I couldn’t bear to look at it. I kept thinking about the cruelties inflicted on the city and visualizing all the young people slaughtered and homes destroyed by the enemy.

Some time later, mother along with a few of our relatives on father’s side arrived in Khorramshahr for a visit. The next day Habib took us to Jannatabad. Even before we got to the bridge, she was weeping softly and moaning things in Kurdish and Arabic.

Two years had passed since she last saw father and Ali. Their gravestones were covered in soil brought by the rains. It seemed the Iraqis had purposely damaged them to keep people from finding the graves of their loved ones. Mother was frantic. I showed her where father and Ali were buried. She threw herself on the graves and kissed the ground. She spoke mostly to Ali and wept. Modesty apparently kept her from speaking to father in front of others.

As if the agony of losing a husband and a son were still fresh in her mind, she emptied her heart out to them. Her withering howls and cries went on and on. Weeping ourselves, Leila and I tried to comfort her. After a while, I went and sat in a corner, reminiscing about the days I had spent there. After all this time, mother still couldn’t believe Ali was gone. At home the slightest thing would revive memories of him, and she would cry. I would often have to escape from her, because she just wouldn’t see reason. His was the only voice she’d listen to. She tried to get me to go out with her to find Ali or she would say, “If I could only stand over his corpse and unlock what is in my heart.” It reached the point that sometimes I found myself shouting at her. I couldn’t help getting angry with her for not accepting her son was dead. I wondered why every so often she had to say things that were torture to me. As I screamed at her and showed how upset I was by beating my head with my fists, she would whimper pathetically. That was when I just had to leave the house and walk aimlessly in the streets until I was calm again. I had no choice but to flee. At times she got so desperate, she’d say, “Why couldn’t he have just lost his arms and legs? Why didn’t he merely break his back?” No matter how many times I told her that such talk was torment to the souls of father and Ali and that she was ruining any chance of a heavenly reward for herself, she wouldn’t listen.

I finally had to take mother to the military sanatorium in Niavaran. I showed her paraplegics, quadriplegics, and soldiers suffering from shock, and said, “Look at the agony they’re in. Is that what you want for Ali?” She calmed down and said, “Thank God Ali was martyred.”

Some time later I introduced mother to a woman called Afrasiabi, who lost five sons in the war and still kept up her spirits. I reminded her, “We’ve got to remember there are families who’ve lost more than two loved ones.”

I would say such things to mother even though I myself couldn’t stand not having father and Ali around. I missed them so much they would appear in my dreams and guide me. In one dream Ali came to us, upset for some reason. We hugged and kissed. I knew he had been martyred, but because it had been a while since he appeared in my dreams, I complained, “It’s been such a long time. What kept you?”

He said, “I’ve got a house full of guests.” Then mother entered the room, and Ali scowled at her and turned away. I said, “Ali, it’s been so long since she’s seen you. Why are you behaving like that?”

He said, “I can’t stand to see her crying so much.”

Mother was very moved when I told her my dream. “What should I do?” she asked. “My heart just won’t be still.”

“By all means have a good cry,” I suggested, “but not for us, rather for the sufferings of the blessed Zeynab and Imam Hoseyn.”

I was repeating what grandfather would always tell me when the subject of Ashura and Imam Hoseyn came up. “We Seyyeds have come into the world, it seems, to suffer the way our holy forbearers suffered. We are descendants of a prophet who endured great pain. Seyyeds cannot be the same as other folk. God has given us the gifts of pain and suffering so we’ll know what our forbearers were forced to go through for Islam, so we’ll appreciate our faith.”

We stayed a few hours in Jannatabad and around noon took mother to our old municipality-provided home. She peered into every nook and cranny and, with each look, dredged up memories of our life before the war. The Iraqis had looted most of our things and ruined the things that were of no use to them. Clothes, bedding, and foodstuffs father had stored up before the war had been strewn in the yard. The miserable Iraqis even littered the house with rice. They pried open our big cooking oil can, dumped mice in it, and then closed the lid. I looked for my picture album but couldn’t find it. The only pictures left were a framed one of father and a group picture on the wall of the room Leila and I shared. Evidently they didn’t have time to take them. I found a roll of film among the piles of clothing. Mother salvaged some souvenirs from the debris, but I was so sickened by what I saw that possessions seemed to lose all value. During the war, death could come any moment in the form of shrapnel, a missile, or a mortar shell. I had to be prepared to die, and I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. All the folks in the region had this mentality. This was why I had no interest in keepsakes. The only thing of sentimental value was father’s old welding motor, which he kept, thinking it might be of use to a soldier.[1]

The day we went to Jannatabad was a bad one for mother. The stress threw her into a depression that went on for several days. She withdrew deeply into herself, and no matter what Leila and I did to get her out of it and change the subject, we couldn’t. Mother insisted on going back to Khorramshahr every day, but because the area hadn’t been swept clean, revisiting it was difficult.

At checkpoint after checkpoint on the road, soldiers tried to dissuade people from entering the city. No place was safe, they said. Mines had been placed in various parts. The inhabitants, who had been far from their city for ages, were desperate to go back. Mother insisted on returning and staying for good, but we argued every way we could to convince her it was impossible. The whole time she was in Abadan, we would visit Khorramshahr every few days. We gave the roll of film we found in the rubble to a photographer for developing. Some of the negatives had been burned, but the ones that came out were of Ali and his friends.

As we roamed around the city, a poem performed at the Congregational Mosque after the liberation of Khorramshahr kept running through my mind:

How dispossessed they are

The dear friends have left home.

Our candle is burned,

And so is our moth.

Our wine cups are smashed,

And there is blood in our hearts.

Full of cries and howls

Of the drinkers in the tavern.

Wherever I looked,

Wherever I went,

I saw only blood and ashes,

Ruin after ruin.

Heads lolling to one side,

718 One Woman’s War: Da (Mother)

Hair crimson with blood,

Nowhere is there a hand

To comb the hair.

So long as there is a head on this body,

These clothes will be a shroud.

The cries of Abu Zarr

Have blocked the enemy’s path

Where are the smiles of joy?

Where are the giddy heads and thrills?

The wine jugs are upended,

Spilled is the wine from the goblets.

Torched are the haystacks,

Woe is me! Woe is me!

Woe to my dear friends,

Woe to the blooms of my spring.

The dear friends have left home,

How dispossessed they are![2]

Enemy fire intensified after the liberation of Khorramshahr. Our side moved an artillery base near where we lived. The shelling was often so heavy we rarely left home. The houses were shaken to their foundations, while the outsides were being sprayed with or actually penetrated by shrapnel. With the passage of time the destruction grew worse, and the plastic we put over the windows was always being torn away. The Hypocrites continued to harass us as well. One night somebody cut the plastic sheeting at Abbas Parhizkar’s house, apparently trying to enter. When they switched on the lights, the intruder ran away. This happened to several people in the area, which is why I slept in the storage closet when Habib wasn’t home. The small room had carpeting on the floor and was the safest place I could think of. Even on those sweltering nights in Abadan, I had to be constantly vigilant. I slept with my chador, overcoat, pants, and headscarf at hand. If I was to be martyred, I thought, at least I’d preserve my modesty.

I had become fed up with the scorching heat, but there was no remedy except to grin and bear it. Our cooler didn’t work, and it got so bad one day I came down with heat stroke. I said to Habib, “It’s impossible to take this heat. You’ve got to get the cooler to run.”

“I won’t use things that don’t belong to me,” he said.

“Fine. When they gave us permission to live here, did it include permission to use the cooler?”

“No.”

“I can take it for now, but you’ve got to think of our child who is about to be born. The baby won’t be able to take the heat.”

“Any child of mine will have to take hardship,” he declared.

Later, having consulted a cleric about the legality of using a cooler that didn’t belong to us, Habib was satisfied that it was okay. That same night Hoseyn, Leila’s husband, said to Habib, “You’re away from home weeks on end. If your wife, given the state she’s in, had a problem, there’d be no one to come to her aid.”

That night we agreed Hoseyn would bring Leila from Isfahan so she could live with us. I was overjoyed that I would no longer be alone. The bouts of insomnia, the anxiety, and the nights in the storage closet were over.

Leila and I were under the same roof again, talking and recalling the past. My prayers had come true. Some memories brought us to tears, while others made us laugh.

End of Chapter Thirty-Six

To be continued …