Da (Mother) 129

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-12-22

Da (Mother) 129

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

***

Thirty-Five: Marriage and Liberation of Khorramshahr

The issue of my marriage came up in the fall of 1981. This wasn’t the first time, of course. It had come up often before the war, at the Molavi Camp, in Tehran, and even in the chaos at the beginning of the conflict. Each time I strongly objected.

At the time we were in bad shape financially. The burden of supporting us as well as several other family members had fallen on Uncle Hoseyni’s shoulders. Meanwhile Jahan Ara had assigned several of the brothers from the army with the task of going to various cities and seeing to the martyr families. Mr. Mohammadi, brother Behnam Mohammadi,[1] Mahmud Zamani, and (once) Seyyed Saleh Musavi along with his wife Batul Kazeruni visited us. I knew none of them except Mr. Mohammadi. I asked mother about them, but all she knew was they were army and had been friends of Ali.

One day when mother had gone out and Uncles Hoseyni and Nad Ali were at work, two brothers from the army visited us. Only Leila and I were at home. Though it was burden to have these strange men in our home, we made them feel welcome, and, during the course of the visit, I heard one say to the other in Arabic, “So, tell them.”

The other one said, “There’s nobody home. Whom am I supposed to tell?”

Thinking it had something to do with our funding, I thought to myself: So give me the money. Who are you waiting for?

I didn’t know what was keeping mother. When the two men got up to leave, out of politeness I offered them lunch; but all the while I wished mother would come back to take the money from them. There was one good thing about having them in our home, though; it brought back memories of Ali.

One of them, Habib Maz’ali, had almost lost a finger when an RPG round he was carrying went off. They reattached it at Taleqani Hospital in Abadan.[2] His finger was still bandaged. After I made the offer of lunch, he said, “No. I have to go and have my bandage changed.”

“You can stay, if that’s not a problem. I have everything necessary to change the dressing.”

“If you’re sure it won’t be a bother, I’d really appreciate it,” he said.

I went and got my medical kit. Then I removed the bandage and cleaned the wound. After his complanion left the room, Habib began to speak about Ali, and telling me he knew about what I had done at the front and how I was wounded. It was my modesty, decorum, and decency that impressed him the most. He said, “Before the war, I had intended to start the ball rolling toward marriage, but the war came, and I had to put it off.” Then he asked me for permission to talk to the family.

I was so unnerved by what he said my hands started to shake. Struggling to rebandage his finger, I said, “I actually have no intention of getting married. As far as I am concerned, it’s a dead issue.”

After we were married, Habib told me, “The way you reacted to my proposal I nearly ran from the room.”

Habib didn’t take my firm “no” for an answer and continued to pursue the matter. After talking to friends and checking on Habib’s character with people I trusted, I began to have second thoughts about marrying. One of the people I consulted was Hoseyn Ta’i Nezhad, a close friend of Ali’s and, for several months, Leila’s fiancée. Worried about what mother and the kids would do without me, I hesitated. Father had made me responsible for them. What would happen to them if I got married and moved away?

After several months of paying the customary visits to us, Habib came by one day to have a serious talk about my terms. Habib had no preconditions; his only real issue was my faith. “I am not concerned about your cooking or whether you’ll work or not,” he said. “I will accept your terms to the extent I am able.”

“I have two conditions,” I said. “One: I won’t be separated from my family. Two: You won’t prevent me from going to the front.”

He seemed to take this in stride and said, “I don’t have a home right now, and we can live with your family. I’m off to the front, and you can join me whenever possible.”

“Don’t say this just to humor me,” I warned him. “I’m serious about going to the front. Don’t say later it makes no sense for women to be at the front.”

With that our engagement became official. Several days later Jahan Ara, commander of forces in Khorramshahr, died in a helicopter crash.[3] Everyone was grief-stricken. Several months after that, in the winter of 1981-1982, Habib returned from the front, and with his family we made arrangements for the marriage. There was some dickering about the bride price. “It should be enough,” insisted Habib, “to protect the interests of the wife.”

In the end Uncle Hoseyni offered a volume of the Quran and 100,000 tumans, which all parties accepted.

On January 2, 1982, there was a small reception held in the Kushk Building. Members of my family formed a small army, while Habib’s side was represented only by his father and brothers with their families. (His mother had passed on in 1979.) My relatives included Uncles Nad Ali, Salim, Aunt Salimeh, and all their families. One of Uncle Hoseyni’s friends by the name of Mr. Qaruni also came. Finally, a cousin of mother’s, Seyyed Jafar, came with his family. Some neighbors from the building also attended the ceremony. Abdollah and Khalil Mo’avi came with a basket of flowers, which was especially dear to me.

The number of guests, nevertheless, was limited; grandfather and Mimi didn’t even come. We had invited many others but conditions at the time kept them from coming. In any case, there wasn’t enough room to accommodate more people. I wasn’t all that happy with the celebration in the first place and insisted on economizing on the trappings. Habib didn’t agree, saying, “It’s true there’s a war going on and expense is an issue, but things aren’t completely dire.”

“With the war going on many things have lost their meaning for me,” I said. So what we spent on the traditional nuptials amounted to 500 tumans for the ring, 800 tumans for the mirror and candelabra, 13,000 tumans for the wedding dress, the reception, etc. Three days later Habib was back at the front. We had agreed he would find a place so we could begin married life in the region.

After he had gone, uncle’s wife asked me, “You’re not upset, are you?”

“No, why should I be?”

“You don’t realize it now, but soon you’ll see how hard it is to be alone.”

“It’s not all that unpleasant. God’s alone,” I said.

A month after my marriage, Mohsen and I decided to go to Abadan to participate in the ceremonies marking the Ten Days of Fajr, which took place on January 31, 1982 at the Persian Hotel.[4] The master of ceremonies was Behruz Moradi,[5] a gifted orator, who transfixed his listeners with his booming voice. That day he spoke of the Hypocrites, the antirevolutionaries, and those who were on the sidelines. He also mentioned the saboteurs.

The ceremonies that night lasted a long time. Mr. Hosam al-Din Sarraj along with a vocal group gave a beautiful rendition of “The City is a City of Blood.” When they sang, “The house is blood, so is the lane; The eye and the heart are blood from all the pain; Headless lies the brother’s sacred gore; The sister’s, the mother’s eyes fixed on the door,” all my grief and pain returned, bringing with them a flood of tears.

Mr. Kuwaiti also performed the dirge “How Like the Dispossessed Have the Friends Left Home.”

The shrapnel in my back kept me from sitting still for long periods of time. I also had trouble standing. The injury chose that particular point to act up terribly, so much so I couldn’t even stand. My kidneys hurt like mad. Not seeing anyone I knew at the celebration and separated from Mohsen, I didn’t know what to do. Toward the end of the program I happened to see Tahereh Bandari Zadeh.[6] Although we had been friends since primary school, we were always arguing. We would get mad at each other, but our disagreements never ripened into feuds.

I called out to her. “What’s wrong?” she asked after seeing the state I was in.

“It feels like my sides are made of stone. I can’t get up.”

Tahereh left and alerted a few of the other sisters, and they called for an ambulance. Two medics came with a stretcher and carried me to the ambulance, which took me straight to the Oil Company Hospital.

This was the second time I was hospitalized after Ali’s death, and it brought back painful memories of his martyrdom. The examination indicated that my kidneys were badly infected. Surprised, I said to the nurses, “You must be mistaken. I’ve never had kidney problems.”

They decided to take x-rays. After examining them, they said, “There’s a foreign object on the x-rays. We have to take another set to be sure.” The object was visible in the second set.

“What could it be?” I asked. “I took my clothes off and put on a gown. Maybe it’s something that stuck to me when I was asleep.”

I had completely forgotten about the shrapnel in my back. The third time they took x-rays, I said to the nurse, “The foreign object is a piece of shrapnel.”

To be continued …