Da (Mother) 27

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I finally fell asleep in the wee hours, only to be awakened by the old man body washer calling us to prayer. It was hard to get up; every bone in my body ached. After prayers, I wished I had been home sleeping; there was no escape here. Zeynab and Maryam were talking. Seeing me crumpled into a ball in the corner trying to snooze, Zeynab said, “My God! You did not sleep a wink all night, did you, girl?”

Da (Mother) 26

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I listened to them as they hopped from one subject to another. Zeynab said, “I am not worried—my daughter is with my husband, who took her away from the shelling. If he had not, I would have never been able to work here. Whenever I heard a sound, I would think that it was our house that was bombed.” I knew her daughter. Her name was Maryam, and she was in the habit of pacing on their roof when she had to study for school.

Da (Mother) 25

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

We took hold of a stretcher and walked to the graves. As we passed the mens building several people came to help us with the stretchers. Jannatabad was almost deserted; no more than a dozen mourners were there. We got to an empty grave and put the stretcher down. We were about to hoist the body to maneuver it into in the grave, when suddenly we heard the terrifying roar of planes breaking the sound barrier.

Da (Mother) 24

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

We got into Parvizpur van and headed for the city social services office. When we pulled up in front of it, Parvizpur said, “You come also.” I entered the building with him. He told one of the men to fill our order for bolts of shroud fabric. Then he said, “Wait here until I get back.” After ten or fifteen minutes the same man returned carrying the fabric we needed. He put it in a gunnysack and handed it to me.

Da (Mother) 23

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

The third day was extremely busy. The number of dead increased, especially in the residential areas that took direct hits. Most of the dead were women and children, which meant the female body washers would be under even more pressure to finish their work. By contrast, the number of people volunteering to help decreased. Some of the volunteers stayed for a couple of hours and left saying they would return but never did.

Da (Mother) 22

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

She was in a bad way, almost sullen. I could tell she was tired and hungry. But, more than that, the sight of all those mangled bodies, I was sure, had an emotional effect on a sixteen-year-old girl. It wasn’t just seeing the wounds and broken bones; she also had to come to grips with the nakedness, which had to violate her sense of modesty. That had been the most stressful thing for me.

Da (Mother) 21

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I left the building. The Jannatabad administrative office was one of three adjoining rooms not far from the body washers. I knocked on the door and entered the office, where a tall, thin man around thirty-six was sitting behind a desk. He had a fair complexion and was wearing horn-rimmed glasses. There was a large registry in front of him. I had seen him several times before out of the office when he was wearing sunglasses.

Da (Mother) 20

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

She was right. Early in 1980 the city announced that Jannatabad was closed, telling people that they would have to bring their dead to a new graveyard near the shrine of Ali, son of Hoseyn, on the road to Shalamcheh. After this announcement, visits to Jannatabad went down a lot. Exceptions to the prohibition were made in the case of martyrs; three of them—Musa Bakhtur, Abbas Ferhan, and Seyyed Jafar Musavi,...

Da (Mother) 19

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Mrs. Goruhi immediately bit her hand, showing how much the news upset her. The other women asked her who Effat was. She was about to explain when I begged to be excused; I did not have the strength to listen. When I got home, Mansur opened the door for me. I went into the yard. Mother was standing in front of the porch. She seemed exhausted. She answered my greeting sarcastically, “So, you are home. How strange!”

Da (Mother) 18

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Zeynab returned to find the old and round woman who washed bodies smoking a water pipe and Maryam a cigarette. The rest of her staff was busy with other things. She called me and said, “Come and grab her head.” She meant the body of a young girl. I had resisted doing such things. Until this point, I would only lift corpses if they were on stretchers, but now I had to lay my hands on one of them.