Da (Mother) 125

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-11-24

Da (Mother) 125

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

***

Abdollah didn’t remember any of it. I went over to his companions and asked them what was wrong with him.

“He’s got amnesia from being hit in the head by shrapnel,” they said.

I saw him several days later, but this time he remembered me not Leila. We visited Abdollah several times. Later I learned from his friends he had succumbed to the head wound.

Though I was in Tehran, I never stopped believing I’d go back to Abadan and help the wounded at the hospital. I set my mind on either taking a course in nursing and returning to the zone armed with a degree or volunteering at one of Tehran’s hospitals. I applied to the Red Crescent but got nowhere. They told me, “Because the instructional material contains terminology in English, only people who know the language can take part in the classes.” Not having completed my education, I didn’t know any English. I kept promising to learn the words, but the teacher wouldn’t let me in.

Dr. Kamarizadeh and his team regularly visited the building to check on victims of the fighting. Dr. Kamarizadeh knew me because he was one of the doctors at the infirmary at the Sar Bandar camp. I invited him, a very kind and committed older man, to our room. He was very impressed by how clean it was. The old carpeting we had laid was swept so often it had no pile. He said, “You keep this place as sanitary as you kept the infirmary.”

“Well,” I said, “this is where we live.” Then, given our acquaintance, he insisted I come to work at his clinic. “The secretary at the clinic,” he explained, “is a Hypocrite supporter and always arguing politics with the patients.” He planned to use this as an excuse to make a personnel change.

I went to visit his clinic in the city of Rey. It seemed a long way to commute. Besides that it was a private clinic, which was not for me. I wanted to work with the wounded, so I had to turn him down.

Though the many chores at the Kushk Avenue clinic kept me very busy, I couldn’t help thinking how much I detested Tehran. Everything about the city was so unbearable living there almost killed me. I felt desperate and wanted to take the kids to Sar Bandar or Molavi. They weren’t in school, so they had free time. On top of that, we had come in the middle of winter, when they gave the trimester exams, so the kids had already fallen behind that year.

Afraid the kids would be led astray or have some other calamity befall them in that monstrous city, I made them come with me on errands. I drew the line, however, on the trips I made to Sar Bandar due to the heavy bombardments. There I went to the home of Mrs. Barati, a nurse I had visited several times before while we were at the camp. Her husband worked at the petrochemical plant, and they lived in company housing. I no longer saw any familiar faces among the workers at the camp clinic; even the refugees were new to me. Many of the old families had left for Shiraz or Behbehan or were renting homes in Mahshahr and Sar Bandar. The only people I knew were one who had stuck it out, hoping to get back to Abadan some day.

I felt comfortable leaving mother on her own when I went back. Because of the heavy shelling, Uncles Hoseyni and Nad Ali had been transferred to Tehran and were now living with us. A few times bombs landed so close to Uncle Hoseyni’s home that he was forced to move. But every few weeks or so, they would visit their families in Khorramabad, which the Iraqis were also bombarding regularly. Having the two uncles in Tehran gave me peace of mind. Nevertheless, mother was saddled with the burden of being the only parent to the children. She had to feed and cloth them on the meager allowance from the Martyrs Foundation.

My brother Mohsen, though the eldest, didn’t feel ready to take on the responsibilities of the older son. His mind was badly affected by the fall from the roof. He liked to work, but only preferred the heaviest kind of labor. That was why he didn’t last long answering telephones at the Kushk Building. He was so stubborn about this mother finally had to give in and allow him to take father’s old job at the municipality in Khorramshahr. The Iraqi occupation had forced them to move the town administration south to Kut-e Sheikh. Even though father had been with the municipality for a shor time, they were willing to hire Mohsen as a member of the team extinguishing fires set off by the bombardments. Fearing he might be injured, mother at first withheld her permission but in the end gave in.

What was happening in the war was still not clear. No one on our side ever imagined it would go on so long, which was why no thought had been given to the fate of the refugees and victims of the fighting. As the conflict dragged on, the Martyrs Foundation began to set up programs and pass laws dealing specifically with refugees. They allocated living expenses to martyr families. After a couple of years the municipality took over the expenses for the families of martyred municipal workers. We would no longer receive support from the Foundation, so to arrange our allowance from the municipality mother had to become the family’s legal guardian. We went to the local police station to fill out a form, after which several people from the police came to inspect our room and, in their words, “take inventory” of our possessions. We tried to convince them we were refugees from Khorramshahr and had nothing to our names when we arrived. They wouldn’t listen when we told them we had bought all the things in Tehran.

They made a list of the things in the room: blankets, a kerosene stove/lamp, utensils, and plates and bowls. They handed back the application for aid and said, “You have to get written confirmation of the father’s death from Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery before the paperwork can go through.”

We didn’t know the way to that cemetery so Seyyed Abbas, the husband of Aunt Salimeh, accompanied us. It was the middle of the week, which meant we had to wait ages for a ride. We finally arrived at around 2:00 p.m., just as the office was about to close. I had mother sit outside, while I went in with Seyyed Abbas. A man sitting behind a desk opened a large black register. He took the IDs belonging to father and Ali and recorded the information in the register as the afternoon sunlight illuminated the page. He stamped “invalid” on the last page in the IDs and returned them to me. I started to weep, which was a first for me in front of strangers since the death of father. It was impossible for me to watch the last vestiges of father and Ali declared void, to accept that the two of them—albeit officially—no longer existed. Their IDs had been tokens of their continued existence; but now they were “invalid.” Now there was no escaping the fact that father and Ali were no more.

The trip back was a somber one for the three of us. We had been running around like mad since morning, but now it was over, and we were in no hurry to get back. We left the cemetery with our heads hanging down.

Later on, when we visited the graves of Jahan Ara[1] or Hoseyn Hamzeh’i[2] at Behesht-e Zahra, the black register reminded me of what had happened on that awful day.

End of Chapter Thirty

To be continued …