Meeting with Hossein Panahi and his wife

A story of the patience of a veteran who is still standing

Compiled by: Oral History Website
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2025-2-11

We went to his house in a winter day. It was raining. Small raindrops slid softly on the windows. As if they wanted to reach the ground, but the ground had another story. The story of a man named Hossein Panahi, a 60 percent veteran, and his wife who stood by him with all her love.

Their small, rented house was simple, but the hearts that beat in it were noble and noble. Mr. Panahi was sitting on the floor, a mask on his face and his gaze fixed on something far away. Perhaps he was looking back at the days with his friends in the Jerusalem operation. He spoke of the boats in which they had passed death by a few centimeters. He ran his hand over his features, smoothed a white hair, and said quietly: “Look here, my face still has no feeling…”

He was describing his memories cautiously. It was as if he was lifting an old wound from the midst of his words and putting it back in its place. He told of a night when, on the advice of a doctor, he practiced swallowing a drop of water with a hose on his head in the hospital. Of the prayer of a local mourner who had prayed for him with hope and faith on the night of the 21st of Ramadan. It was a miracle when he was able to eat his first spoonful of soup, without having to be sucked with a machine so that it wouldn’t block his throat.

***

His wife sat next to me and said softly, “By endless love, I puree all the food for my wife.” She had a smile on her face. It was as if she was a solid pillar that kept this house afloat. She sewed to help with living expenses. She didn’t complain about the hardships of life. She said softly again, “We have a son who has been a father for a year. But my husband is still the same war soldier. He says that if there is another war, I will go to the field with this same tired body.”

Although talking to him made me lose some of Mr. Panahi’s memories, it was worth it. The words of this devoted and patient woman are more than can be expressed in one meeting.

***

Hossein Panahi spoke slowly, but each of his sentences was a sea of ​​memories. Full of the sound of bullets, the smell of gunpowder and dirt, and the moments when death lurked just a few steps away.

He closed his eyes slightly, as if he had returned to distant years. He said, “I picked up two grenades. It’s a good thing I didn’t pull the pin, otherwise I would have been blown to pieces myself.” He remembered that moment clearly: the Iraqi sniper was supplying their forces from behind the rocks. When I ran, he stood up and suddenly fired a volley. One of the bullets hit my leg, the other my right jaw. I fell quickly to the ground. The edge of the water. When they wanted to transfer me to the boat, the paramedic said: Lie face down on the stretcher. They put a device like a pacifier in my mouth so that my jaw wouldn’t open any more. They were going to take me in the morning when they brought ammunition. I knew that after being injured, he would be cold. I said: Mehrali, pull the blanket over us. He pulled it. Then I didn’t understand anything else until morning. When the weather cleared up. They put me on the boat with two stretchers. All the wounded were sitting on the bottom of the boat. The battalion deputy was also shot, he said with difficulty: “Hey, did you say I should go? I should go? Are you okay?” I nodded and said: “Yes.” The boat’s helmsman carefully took the route sign so that they would not fall into the bumps in the road. They took them through the dam to the aid station, but this was not the end of the pain. Just as the Iraqis had scattered, another bullet hit his leg. Like a bee sting. This time he couldn’t stand it anymore. His eyes blurred and he no longer understood anything.

“When I came to, I was in a field hospital,” he said. “I looked at my hands; my head was bandaged, blood was flowing in my veins.” He had survived, and this was the beginning of a long journey; a journey that continues to this day.

When we left their house, the rain was still falling, but I felt that the raindrops, this time, were tears from the sky for a man who hides his pain and a wife who has given him her love ungratefully.