Da (Mother) 134

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2025-1-26

Da (Mother) 134

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

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Chapter Thirty-Seven: Abdollah’s Close Call

About to give birth, I naturally went to the Taleqani Hospital on the Abadan-Khorramshahr highway, but the operating rooms were reserved for wounded soldiers. The doctors advised me that under the circumstances it would be better if I went to a hospital in another city. It was September and I had Zeynab, Sa’id, and Hasan with me, as they had come to Abadan during the school summer vacation. There was no choice but to go back to Tehran. My kidney condition had made it necessary to take painkillers and antibiotics and have x-rays taken, which raised the specter, doctors said, of harm to the fetus. This made me focus all my thoughts and prayers on the health of my baby, but I tried my best to remain optimistic. “God can give me the ugliest baby in the world,” I prayed, “so long it’s healthy.”

A week later Habib joined me in Tehran. I was so sick the last week of my pregnancy I didn’t sleep a wink. Not wanting to disturb the others, I would leave the bedroom and pace up and down in the hall. Mother would come out and sit on the steps. On the last night I couldn’t even walk to the hallway. I was in torment and that night went to the hospital, which was full of wounded soldiers undergoing operations. My son was born in the late afternoon of the next day. I went into shock and lost consciousness from the intense pain and all the other problems associated with giving birth. I woke up worried about the child’s condition. Aware of my fears, doctors assured me the baby was fine. There was an elevated heartbeat, but this was to be expected given the sounds of explosions he was exposed to during my pregnancy. Nevertheless, they kept me and the baby under observation in the hospital for three days.

The baby and I returned to the Kushk Building on October 2, 1982. Aunt Salimeh and Leila, who had a one-month-old herself, were already in Tehran. My mother’s room was packed—two babies, our crowd, even guests visiting us.

That night it got dark early, but, still unwell, I couldn’t get to sleep and paced in the hall instead. All of a sudden there was a horrific explosion, followed by the sounds of breaking glass. My first thought was that the municipal building across the street had exploded, but people said it was the Telecommunications Building or the Artillery Building on Imam Square. I spent that night in a state of terrible anxiety. The sounds of sirens, ambulances coming and going, and fire engines droned on until morning. On the news the next day they announced  many were dead.

Three days later, I realized from the way she reacted that mother wasn’t very fond of the names “Hoseyn” or “Ali” for the baby. We called him “Abdollah” instead. After around two and a half weeks, we decided to return to Abadan. Aunt Salimeh suggested we go to Khorramabad first. She wanted show Abdollah to grandfather.

Grandfather was doing his morning prayers when we arrived in Khorramabad. After he finished, he turned to us, and the minute his eyes fell on Abdollah he burst into tears. Mimi asked in her Kurdish accent, “Are you insane, old man? Why are you crying?”

“He’s the image of Ali when he was a baby,” grandfather explained.

He got up and took baby Abdollah in his arms and kissed him. He whispered the call and the beginning of the prayer into his ear. While we were in Khorramabad, it was mainly grandfather who held Abdollah in his arms. A few days later we left for Abadan.

Mimi came to Khorramshahr for a visit a month after we had returned. Seeing the city after all that time was emotional for her as well. On a visit to Ali’s grave, she said, “I never believed I would outlive him.”

Mimi had been a great help to our family, especially to Ali and Mohsen. With mother having one baby after another, she was the one who cared for us children more than anyone else. We felt more comfortable speaking to her than mother, who had her own difficulties. Mimi was kinder to us. In Basra she would patiently tell us bedtime stories.

At grandfather’s request, we went to their home to find the scroll with the family tree. Everything had been looted. There was no trace of Aunt Salimeh’s wedding gifts, which had been stored in boxes, but among the junk the Saddamites left behind we found the family tree. Because it was so dear to him, grandfather had put the scroll in a bamboo flute and hid the flute in a metal pipe. Every time I saw the pipe I was reminded of the bows and arrows of ancient times. Finding the flute made me very happy because I knew this was the best gift we could give grandfather.

It was fall when Mimi went back to grandfather’s house, and the weather was getting chilly. With the many holes in the wall our house was drafty, and because there was no heater we froze. Despite the plastic we put around the doors and over the windows, the biting cold found its way inside. Because it was small and heated up quickly, the closet became the baby’s room.

Abdollah got bigger and more lovable by the day. He was a trouble-free child and a hit with the neighbors, who were always taking him home.

As there were no children’s stores to speak of in Khorramshahr, I had a hard time finding diapers and clothing for Abdollah. It was like we lived on a desert island. I had to ask anyone heading to cities outside the zone to bring back things for the baby. Whenever Ali Shushtari came back from the front to visit his sister, he would ask her to have Abdollah around. Once when I was there and before Ali had even arrived, I heard him tell her to go and get Abdollah. She told him Abdollah was already there.

I knew the Shustari family from childhood. The father was the caretaker at our school. Because of that acquaintance, I felt comfortable saying hello and joking with him, saying, “Brother Shushtari, your name isn’t on Abdollah’s official visit list, so you’ll have to wait your turn.”

He said, “You’ll have to excuse me this time. I’ll be gone soon, and this will probably be the last time I see him again.”

“You’re forgiven this time, but next time I won’t be so lenient!”

“I don’t think there’ll be a next time. My time is up.”

Then he left and, sure enough, he was martyred during the next operation. I was in his sister Fatemeh’s home the day they brought the news. She accepted it calmly and went to pray and give thanks for his martyrdom. I appreciated what she was feeling at that moment. As she bowed in prayer, it seemed as if her back was breaking, but she stayed strong, never shedding a tear. When she laughed, though, it was no ordinary laugh.

One night when he was about three months old, Abdollah suddenly became ill. He kept vomiting, but I had no idea why. That night he soiled every stitch of clothing he had. The next morning I got up to feed and clean him. Around 9:00 a.m. I laid him outside on a mattress on the terrace so he could get some sun. I put mosquito netting around him and went to the tanker truck with a basin to wash his things. The water pressure was low, and it took two hours to clean the clothes. Then, with the sound of mortar shells in the distance, I patiently hung them on the line. Used to the explosions, I ignored them and went on with the work.

After all the clothes were on the line, I picked up the basin and was about to step away when I heard a high-pitched whine coming closer and closer. From the sound it seemed like a 230 mm shell. I raced to Abdollah, who was about ten meters away, but it seemed the whole world had gone to pieces. Rocks, shrapnel, and earth went flying through the air. I managed to keep running toward him through the dense cloud of smoke and dust. I yelled out to the Lord of Time at the top of my lungs to give me strength. Pieces of our home came shooting out at me. Terrified by what I might see, I didn’t dare open my eyes. I groped for Abdollah’s mattress and found the mosquito netting studded with shrapnel. Large chunks of cement studded with stones were strewn around—as if a truck had dumped them there on purpose. I picked up Abdollah and looked him over carefully. To my amazement there was no blood, not even a scratch on his body. It seemed he was still asleep, but then I thought—God forbid he had had a heart attack! I put my ear to his chest and heard his heart beating rapidly. Realizing the baby was fine and had actually slept through the horrid noise, I nuzzled him and wept. This was the first time I had had a good cry since the explosion at the Islamic Republican headquarters.

My screams brought Mrs. Gol Bahar, a neighbor, running from her home. I heard her call out to her husband, “Mohammad, run! Something terrible’s happened to Abdollah!” As I said, because there weren’t many babies or children in our place, people in the radio and television homes had adopted Abdollah. Before I knew it, I saw the whole neighborhood had gathered in the yard near our house. A few moments later, an ambulance, siren blaring, pulled up. A medic came out and asked, “What happened? Who’s hurt?”

“Nobody, thank God!” I said.

Later people would tell the story of how their favorite baby boy caught a 230 mm shell with his hand and hurled it back at the Iraqis.

After that good cry, I got up and went to see what happened to the clothing hanging on the line. It was gone and so was the clothesline. Shredded baby clothes lay here and there among the rocks, and plastic buttons were fused to the scorched cement. At first I wrongly assumed the shell had landed on our house, but it had struck the top of Mrs. Abbaspur’s duplex, which was next to ours. The well-built English roof took most of the impact, saving the rest of the house. There was only a big hole in the ceiling. Luckily Mrs. Abbaspur was not home, having gone to the hospital to give birth to her second child. Her husband, Yusof, had been killed by Hypocrites a few months before. He stipulated in his will that the baby, if a boy, should take his name.

Mrs. Abbaspur didn’t return to Abadan after the shell hit her home. Relatives came to pack up her things and send them on to her. Watching them emptying the house, I recalled the first time I met the late Mr. Abbaspur. I had been working at the clinic. At that time the uniformed soldiers and paramilitaries, who were sorely needed at the front, had priority. Mr. Abbaspur and Fatemeh, pregnant at the time with their first child, Zohreh, were waiting in line to see the doctor. Mr. Abbaspur complained, “We’ve been here a long time. How come you’re letting the soldiers in ahead of us?” I said, “We take the military first; it makes no difference whether they’re regular army or paramilitary, because they have to get back to the front.”

Yusof said, “Fine, but I’m paramilitary myself.”

“How was I supposed to know that? I’m no mind reader,” I said. “You should have said something.”

As luck would have it, we became neighbors. Whenever I saw a gecko in our house, I would go out and call out, “Zohreh, Zohreh!” This was a signal to Mr. Abbaspur that another one of those creatures was in our home. Then he would come, slipper in hand, and kill it.

The Abbaspur home remained empty after the shell hit it and I no longer dared put Abdollah out on the terrace. Instead I would pull aside the plastic and blanket and lay him down in front of the open window. Friends joked, “Happy now? What a safe place you’ve found for the baby! Now if the ceiling falls in, he’ll be crushed.”

“That’s in God’s hands,” I told them.

End of Chapter Thirty-Seven

To be continued …