Daughter of Sheena 56

2015-11-8

Daughter of Sheena-56

Memories of Qadamkheyr Mohammadi Kanaan

Wife of Sardar Shaheed Haj Sattar Ebrahimi Hajir

Memory writer: Behnaz Zarrabizadeh

Tehran, Sooreh Mehr Publications Company, 2011 (Persian Version)

Translated by Zahra Hosseinian

The next day we went to Hamadan. Samad said that he has some works to do in Revolutionary Guards’s office a few days. I didn’t want him to go alone, so I readied the kids. We took Sattar’s daughter, Somayeh with ourselves too.

All the way, kids were playing with each other in the car, laughing and making a lot of noise.  Sattar’s daughter also was playing with them and had fun.

I said: “What a good idea to bring her.”

With compassion, Samad looked at her and said nothing.

I said: “Did you see how he was martyred?”

His eyes went red. Clutching steering wheel and looking at the road, he said: “He was martyred in front of my eyes. I could not bring him back ...”

I wanted to calm him down, so I stretched my hand, hit his shoulder and said: “Your wound has become better.”

Indifference, he said: “From the beginning, it wasn’t something.”

I firmly pressed his wound by my hand.

He moaned. Laughing I said: “That isn’t something?”

He felt like laughing and said: “This is also another keepsake. Oh, Karbala-4!”

I said: “Your sister said that you had been trapped in a burned ship for a week.”

He turned and looked at me with surprise and said: “A week?! No, it’s much less, about 24 hours.”

I said: “Tell me.”

He sighed and said:  “What?”

I said: “How you were trapped in that ship?!”

“Sattar had martyred. Our operation had leaked. We were being defeated.  We had to come back. Many of my fellow comrades, who had martyred or were injured, were inside Iraqi territory. Enemy fire was so great that we couldn’t do anything. To those who had been safe, I said go back. You don’t know how hard it was the last moments; say farewell to fellow comrade, say farewell to Sattar.”

For a moment he put his head on the steering wheel. I shouted: “What are you doing? Be careful!”

He soon took his head and said: “It was a strange night. Arvand was at spring tide. I had to come back with Hamid Husseinzadeh together. We were knee-deep in the mud. Out of blue, I saw a burned ship that had run aground. Iraqis had then traced us and fired on our side with whatever they had at hand. The cannon balls had pierced hole the ship. We dragged ourselves into it through the holes. It was near morning. We had spent a difficult night. We had stayed awaken all the night; found a place to sleep a little, out of enemy’s sight. We were at low energy; properly had diminished.”

 I said: “So, your mother and I feared for a reason. Sattar had martyred and you had wounded when we were frightened out of our life.”

He didn’t hear my words, as if he wasn’t in this world. Even the noise of kids and their naughtiness didn’t distract him. He would recall his memories one after another and tell them.

We were into ship, without food and water, from morning of fourth of Dey (late December). We waited until night, so that if we could somehow inform our friends. At night, I took out my underwear and shook it toward our friends. By chance, my plan was successful. Insider guys could see me. A group even came to rescue us, but enemy fire and water flow did not allow them to approach the ship.

Samad turned to me and said: “Do you know Hussein' Budami?”

I said: “Yeah, how’s that?”

“He had placed a loudspeaker in front of river, and toward the place we were, he began to recite Sabah prayer. He repeated three or four times ‘O Sattaroloyoob!’, and pressed on Sattar to say that ‘Sattar! We have our mind on you. We are there for you.’ Also, once he clearly said in Turkish: ‘Wait about, we’ll rescue you at night.’”

He laughed and said: “The voice of the loudspeaker had made Iraqis angry. Qadamkheyr! I swear that they used up two thousand mortar shells for shooting it.”

I said: “Then, how did you survive?”

He said: “It was the night of sixth of Dey. Shiraz’s 33-Al-Mahdi forces who were very sharp and agile and highly trained, came by the ship through water and rescued us.”

Again he laughed and said: “After our friends passed us to the other side of water; Iraqis just began to shoot. They had targeted the ship, while we were on land.”

After a while, he took out a tiny Quran from his pocket, which I had put into his left shirt pocket at the time of his leave. He kissed it and said: “Keep it as a memento.”

The Quran had a hole and was bloody. I asked in surprise: “Why is this so?”

He changed the gear hardly. It was like his hand did not have any energy. “It wast because of this Quran that now, I am not gone with Sattar. I know everything that happened had been because of the greatness of this Quran. The bullet passed next to my heart and comes out of my shoulder. Can you believe it?”

I kissed the Quran and said: “Thank Heaven, a hundred thousand times, thank Heaven.”

He saw me with half an eye and smiled. Then he became silent and didn’t say anything, until we reached Hamedan. I was kissing the Quran continuously and thanking God.

As soon as reaching Hamadan, he got us to the house and he himself went and didn’t return until night. Kids had eaten their dinner and wanted to sleep, when he arrived with several cheese puff and biscuit packages. He sat among kids, gathered them around himself, and played with them. One by one, he put cheese puff into their mouth. I was surprised by his behavior. He wasn’t the same Samad of morning or yesterday. His behavior totally had changed. He tickled Sattar’s daughter, Somayeh, kissed her, laughed, and played with her.