Da (Mother) 53

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2023-7-9

Da (Mother)

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 older man said, “It’s like the older you get, the more you want to stay alive. But those young ones, they aren’t afraid to die; they just rush toward the bullets.”

At sunrise I told Leila and Zeynab I was going. I hadn’t gotten to the gate, when Hoseyn and Abdollah came running up, saying they would be coming also.

“You were up all night. Why don’t you get some rest?” I asked.

“We took turns sleeping.”

Iraqi shelling had been going on constantly for about an hour. I said, “You should stay; they may need you.”

Hoseyn went back, and Abdollah and I went off. As we walked, I noticed how the Iraqi shells would hit one spot, then hit another spot further along the road. No matter how far we advanced, we couldn’t get ahead of it. We could tell where their shells were landing from the smoke, fire, and the earth that flew into the air. First, they hit Amir Kabir Avenue, then they moved on to the Forty-Meter Road. A couple of shells landed about 200 meters from us, where the flour mill was. We ran to the mill to find two people running from it. When we finally got there, we saw they had dragged a third person from the rubble. All three were mill workers. One of them was badly wounded by shrapnel; blood was pouring from his wounds. Another had fine pieces of metal embedded in his face, while the third was in a state of shock. I asked  them to find something to stop the severely wounded man’s bleeding. The one with facial lacerations said, “There’s nothing around here like that.”

“Part of a blanket, a piece of cloth?” I offered.

I saw them look at each other. The poor guys were asleep when the shell hit and now they were running around dazed and confused trying to find a rag. “Never mind, I don’t need anything,” I said. “Just help me get him out of his shirt.” They took off his shirt and one of the men whose hands were shaking terribly tried to tear it into strips. Seeing he was unable to do it, I took the shirt from him. He was afraid they would hit the place again. Explosions were going off everywhere.

I tore one of the sleeves along a seam and tied it around the man’s thigh. The man raised his head to look at the blood-soaked bandage and asked, “Is it severed?”

“Don’t be afraid, it’s not severed,” I assured him and tied the rest of the shirt around his waist. The man moaned and cried out to the revered Abbas each time he moved. I needed more cloth to cover the wounds, but before I could ask them for their shirts, a car pulled up. Abdollah motioned for it to stop. They loaded the wounded man into the car. As it departed, Abdollah asked the workers, “Was there anyone else here besides you?”

“There was a watchman sleeping on the roof.”

With the car gone, I was about to ask the workers to try to find the watchman, but I realized they were still in shock, so I decided to go and find him myself. While they were getting the ladder, I looked around. There were bomb craters in several places, and the brick walls and wooden doors of the mill were studded with shrapnel. They produced the ladder and I climbed up. Standing on the last rung, I surveyed the roof, which was broad and higher in some parts than in others. The old man was stretched out in one of the sections directly opposite me. Shrapnel had bashed in his skull; the wound was a mass of large and small slivers of metal coated in scalp, tufts of hair, and bits of brain. Half his head was blown away, and his face was missing. A few meters away from him lay a red plastic water pitcher mangled by the blast.

I wasn’t feeling right, what with my nightmares, and now I had to look at this atrocity the first thing in the morning. I felt even worse. I regretted coming up on the roof and wanted to climb down, leaving retrieval of the body to the others, but looking down I saw Abdollah a few rungs below me, blocking the way. Having no choice, I climbed on the roof. Behind me came Abdollah and another man. I walked toward the corpse, and the horrible sight became even more nauseating. I felt myself gag, but managed to regain my composure. I was careful not to show weakness in front of the men. I stepped back a few paces. As soon as he saw the corpse Abdollah quickly turned his head saying,“God! What a sight to see first thing in the morning!”

The man behind the ladder took one look at the body and decided not to come up on the roof. I told Abdollah, who was still looking away, that I would take care of the body if he found a way to collect the poor man’s brains.

“Me?” he asked in disgust. “I can’t do it. Don’t even ask such a thing.”

“Fine, Abdollah, but we’re going to have to put him back together somehow. We can’t let him stay like this, can we?”

“Do it yourself. I’ll see to his body, you scrape up his brains.”

Annoyed, I said, “What do you mean ‘you’ll see to his body.’ What’s there to see to?”

“Whatever you were going to do for him.”

Now I was really sore at him. The past several days he would preempt me in everything I was about to do, but now that I actually needed him for something, he refused. It took a few minutes for me to change my mind. I felt sorry for him. He was no better off than I was, so what right did I have to expect more from him? I looked at him. During the last several days his face had become sallow. The lack of sleep and food, the impossible workload, and the unspeakable things we saw left us with no energy to take on more. When I first saw Abdollah with that posture of his, it looked like he was stooping, but now with the exhaustion, it was worse and he looked like he was bent in two. I had to do the job myself.

I looked around the roof for something to scrape up the brains, but found nothing. There was some cardboard the old man had used for bedding, but it was no good because it was drenched in blood. I looked at it more carefully. Some of the cardboard, where the old man’s legs were, was dry. I could use these sections as a broom and dustpan. I tied my chador around my waist and, fighting the urge to vomit, gathered the bits of brain mixed with scalp and hair that were plastered to the mud and straw surface of the roof. As I picked up the pieces, I was very careful not touch them, but twice small bits sprung into my hand, sending a strange feeling down my spine. I shook my hands frantically. Nerves and nausea made me tremble from head to foot, and the stress was becoming unbearable. Under my breath I called on the blessed Zeynab to give me strength to go on, which helped, but I still felt sick to my stomach from the stench of blood. I gathered the pieces and put them in the hole in the front of the old man’s skull. His sockets were so full of blood that you couldn’t tell whether he still had eyeballs. Every time I went back to deposit bits of brain in his head, I tried not to look. In the meantime Abdollah searched for something to put the body in so we could get it down the ladder. He yelled, “Nobody has a blanket?”

“No,” said the men on the ground.

“Try to find something,” he told them.

“There’s nothing to find,” they said.

“Let’s use the blanket that’s under his head,” I said.

It was drenched with blood. Opening it up, we found it had been shredded by the shrapnel, and not one piece was large enough to hold the body. One corner was torn off completely. Abdollah folded the blanket in half. When I was finished with the brains, I said to him, “Tell someone to come up and help us put him in the blanket.”

He went to the edge of the roof and repeated what I had said. A few minutes later the same man who had retreated down the ladder returned, but as soon as he got a glimpse of the corpse, he threw up. He went to another part of the roof and stood with his back toward us. Finally he climbed back down. “Forget about him. Let’s do it ourselves,” I said.

I had no choice but to take the old man by his legs. His body was heavier than it looked. Abdollah used the cardboard to shovel him on the blanket. We tied up the blanket with some rope we had gotten from the workers. We wound it all around to be better able to control the bundle as we lowered it to the ground. We also covered the head so no one below would see the horror of the man’s mangled face. First, we tried to lift the old man but he was too heavy. Then we slid him along the roof, but the ripping sound the tattered blanket made as it scraped along put an end to that. We had no choice but to inch him forward until we got to the edge of the roof, which wasn’t all that steady. Shrapnel had loosened the bricks and the adobe underneath it. I wrapped the rope firmly around my arm. Abdollah took one end of the blanket. The body was so heavy that if we had stood up and tried to lower it, it might have taken us with it. I knelt down and, propping one hand on something, held the rope with the other. Abdollah bent down and we slid the body over the edge. His end was heavier than mine so it went down first. To maintain his balance Abdollah stretched out on the roof. We were letting out more of the rope when there was a ripping sound. I had a horrible sense of panic, and it felt like my arm was being pulled from its socket. At that point Abdollah let out more of the rope from his side, and the body folded at the waist. “What are you doing, Abdollah! It’s about to drop!” I yelled.

“Faster, sister!” he shouted back in Arabic. “My ribs are breaking!”

The blanket was about to tear open, disgorging the body; but the man who had gone back down the ladder was now perched on one of the rungs and grabbed the rope on my end. Finally, as the workers shouted their prayers of thanks and salutations, adding their own advice on how to manage the rope, the body reached the ground. My palms were horribly chaffed; the rope was so rough it took off pieces of skin. As I climbed down, I noticed that the van that had taken the wounded was back. They quickly loaded the body of the old man into it and went to the cemetery. As soon as my feet touched the ground, it felt like there was no strength in my body. The bombardment and explosions went on nonstop. I asked the mill workers, still in a state of shock, for water to wash my hands.

“There is none,” they said.

To be continued …