Da (Mother) 140

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2025-3-9

Da (Mother) 140

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

***

Around the time Mansur came home, the weather turned warm. He was at his wits’ end, because his leg itched and he couldn’t do anything about it. He would bang on the cast in frustration. Mansur’s general weakness and instability, and the many times he was under anesthesia during the operations, had a bad effect on him. He would fly into a rage, making me feel helpless. I rubbed the outside of his cast, but it didn’t do any good. I pushed a kabob skewer down into it, and this relieved the itch for a time. There was no bath in our building; we had to go to the public bath at the corner of Nejatollahi and Villa Avenues to bathe. After we moved to the seventh floor, we converted the grillroom into a place to wash. We brought Mansur there and, protecting his cast with plastic sheeting, we sponged down the rest of his body with soapy water and rubbed him clean with a damp towel. We poured water over his arms. Knowing that if his wounds got wet it could cause an infection, we were careful to keep them dry. Bathing Mansur wasn’t pleasant; it made me think of the times I had hosed down Ali’s head when he was doing construction work on our house. After work Ali would have me hold the hose or he would hold it, while I washed his head. The memories brought tears to my eyes, but, not wanting to upset Mansur, I tried to hide my feelings from him.

Mansur’s treatments lasted a year. During that time they repeatedly broke open his cast, took x-rays, and refitted him with a new cast. His right leg ended up ten centimeters shorter than his left, which meant he walked with a limp. The leg was so frail and had shriveled up so much, it seemed there was no muscle in it. The doctor said he should go for long walks or do mountain climbing to bring it back. To this day Mansur’s right leg is not like the left, but, thank God, he can now stand on his own two feet.

In 1985, the composition of the Kushk Building changed. Instead of the refugee families from Khuzestan, martyr families from Tehran in need of housing moved in. With the passage of time, differences in ethics and background began to emerge and cause problems. Each family was left to its own devices. In the beginning the superintendent of the building was responsible for cleaning and sanitation, but, later on, this was left up to the residents, who were supposed to take turns doing it. Some families took their responsibilities seriously, while others did not. The matter was more than just a case of washing and cleaning up. At the beginning, the Cultural Unit would provide wholesome entertainment, and a clinic was set up to see to the medical needs of the residents. But the Cultural Unit no longer existed. I am not a big believer in the state providing martyr families with every service, but when they put people with different values under the same roof, there has to be proper supervision. Certain irresponsible and inconsiderate families had now taken up residence in the building and were becoming a nuisance to their neighbors.

One family man in particular, an amputee with one leg, engaged in certain immoral acts and medieval practices that disqualified him from receiving benefits. He became a kind of professional beggar and brought a number of others like him into the building. They would pierce their bodies with kabob skewers and use drugs to get into a trance. The man and his wife would lock their children in their room, while they went out for their own amusement. Occasionally they were gone for several days, while the children howled and screamed and banged on the walls. It’s not hard to imagine what five bratty boys were capable of when cooped up in a room for a week. Germs and waste literally streamed out of from the room, and, although the neighbors were sickened by the situation, their sympathies lay with the children.

People complained to the Martyr Foundation about what was going on, but it did no good. The man and his family stayed in the building until it was completely vacated, and anyone who had contact with the man became addicts themselves and left their families. Eventually his wife divorced him, his children went astray, and he left Tehran for Mashhad, where he remarried.

There were several cases like this at the Kushk Building. One man was sentenced to a long prison term for smuggling drugs, but after a few years he was pardoned. He reverted to his old ways and enlisted his sons, whom he’d addicted to heroin, in the business.

The son of the previous superintendent of the building formed a gang with several others, who were tough and capable of anything, including armed robbery. A person was killed during one of their robberies, whereupon the police caught some of the members, while others got away. The addicts in the building also stole anything they could get their hands on to support their habits. They even pried off the protective strips of aluminum on the edges of the stairs and sold them. The presence of these elements concerned everyone, especially the girls and women. I didn’t have the strength to put up with the situation. In the back of my mind was always the fear that my brothers would become involved with these gangs or Zeynab, now an adolescent, would get into trouble. They were good children, but there was always the possiblity they would be led astray.

Repeated trips to the Martyrs Foundation to complain about the families causing trouble in the building were of no use. The authorities said, “They are also martyr families and have a right to live there.”

I said to them, “When you allow drug dealers and other criminals to live in the same place as law-abiding martyr families, it doubles the agony they have had to endure. At least put the criminal elements together somewhere else. Why should the rest of us have to live in fear of our children going astray because of a few bad apples?”

In 1982 Zeynab had started studying at the Shandiz School on Ramsar Avenue.[1] One day the teachers in the school, knowing Zeynab was the daughter of a martyr, brought the fifth-grade class to our home and asked me to tell them about how father and Ali were killed. Hearing I had been in Abadan, they said they would like to see Khorramshahr. I invited them to come. In September 1982, the principal and two teachers were our guests for a few days. Habib arranged for them to tour the areas affected by the war.

After the special schools for the children of martyrs were established, Zeynab enrolled in one called Shahed-e Rowshangar. Because she took part in school activities like Quran recitation, Zeynab became very popular with the teachers. The social studies teacher, Mrs. Ra’is Qasem,[2] and several other teachers were regular visitors to our home. Once, when Mrs. Ra’is Qasem was visiting, I brought up the subject of the bad elements in the building, expressing my concern about Zeynab and the other children. A short time later, Mr. Karroubi, an official with the Martyrs Foundation, came to the school for an inspection tour. Mrs. Ra’is Qasem protested to him that the place where the Foundation housed martyr families was beneath their dignity, a building where drug use and other immoral behavior were common. Mr. Karroubi asked her to give him a full report. Mrs. Ra’is Qasem dictated generally what was going on in the building and specifically what was happening to our family. Zeynab wrote it all down, and the report was given to Mr. Karroubi.

Two years later, in the winter of 1988, mother was issued a dank and dilapidated apartment, which had been confiscated from Zionists.[3] Around the time mother was moving from the Kushk Building, a room on the fourth floor became available. Everyone on the higher floors was ready to give their eyeteeth to get that room. To avoid arguments the superintendent announced he would give the room to anyone with priority. Mother and the kids wanted to leave our building before I was ready, so I didn’t know how I would cope all by myself in the humongous room on the seventh floor. It was far from the noise and shouting on the lower floors—especially the part where I was, which, being at the other end of the room, was always plunged in a eerie silence. Ignorant of what happened on the lower floors, we went on about our business as if they didn’t exist.

In Khorramshahr, where most families had children, the kids would play in the alley all morning until noon when they got hungry. After lunch, they’d run around the neighborhood until evening. I remember when we were kids, if we did something father didn’t like, he only had to give us “the look.” The weight of that look was enough to make us bow our heads and remain perfectly still until he said we could go.

That upbringing put us in a world of our own, which prevented us from associated with the ones on the lower floors.

The times I did venture downstairs, it sounded like the neighbors were at each other’s throats, and we had been blissfully unaware of it. Because there were no structures near the Kushk Building higher than the fifth floor, people living above that floor had unobstructed views of the surrounding area. With windows on either side of our room, we saw nothing but sky. This gave me the feeling we were living on a ship in the middle of an ocean, a ship that never reached land.

During the times when Tehran was being bombarded, making the building shake and the windows rattle terribly, the feeling of being adrift in the void became stronger.

The effort of going up and down the stairs put pressure on my back. The doctor warned me about moving too much, especially about bending up and down. He said the shrapnel could cut the nerves in my spine and paralyze me. He even advised me to pray in a sitting position.

Although I never liked to be a nuisance to others, Uncle Hoseyni and mother would go out and shop for me. Now with mother leaving, I had to do these things on my own. That was why I turned to Mr. Siyahpush, the superintendent, an energetic and thoughtful man.[4] I told him that I had a slipped disc and, with mother leaving and the two children’s father at the front, I couldn’t cope in that huge apartment on my own. Mr. Siyahpush sympathized, saying that even though he himself was athletic, he couldn’t climb up to the seventh floor without getting winded. He agreed to let us have the apartment on the fourth floor, which caused many of the other residents to complain.

When mother and the kids left the building in 1988, Zeynab was thirteen, Sa’id fifteen, Hasan seventeen, and Mansur twenty-one. Seeing them in a home of their own took a load off my mind. I was left alone with three young children (Fatemeh, my third, was three months old at the time). Having seen some of the misfit young men using drugs in the emergency stairwell, I was concerned that Abdollah and Hoda might come upon them shooting up in the halls as well. This was why I was forced to keep the children inside the apartment and entertain them myself. Although I knew I was no substitute for playing with children their own age, I read to them and told them stories. However, I would let them play with the neighbors’ kids as long as I supervised the visits. Occasionally we would go to the park or visit my friends. During these outings, it felt like my spine was breaking. Every time the bones rubbed together I’d let out a short, shrill cry of pain and couldn’t move forward or backward for a time. I was forced to sit down where I was, even if it was in the middle of the street, until the pain in my back went away. I didn’t want anybody to know why I couldn’t move.

To be continued …