Da (Mother) 131

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2025-01-05

Da (Mother) 131

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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After spending a few hours with mother, I got up from the floor and was about to do my ablutions before evening prayer, when I overheard people talking about a family bereft of a father and a son, who now had just lost another loved one. They didn’t say the name. Dumbstruck, I stared at mother. I didn’t know how we would go on. How was I to break the news to her if it turned out to be one of us?

At that time Mohsen and Habib were at the front, and naturally I thought one of them had been killed. After prayers, I sought refuge in the Quran. It opened to the Throne Verse, which I recited and, at the same time, poured out my heart to God, begging Him to help me endure the agony of having to tell mother she had lost another child. Some of the sisters in the army came by to comfort me; Sima Bandari Zadeh was especially sympathetic. Trying hard to appear calm, I sat with mother on the floor, eating supper. The kids’ eyes were on me, but I was in my own world, oblivious to what was going on around me. I tore off a bite of food for mother. During the meal, I frequently put my arms around her and kissed her, saying how wonderful it was to see her, but my heart was in turmoil. What would I say?

That night passed without any news. The next day I found out the grieving family’s name was indeed Hoseyni, but they were not related to us. Afterward Sima Bandari Zadeh said, “I was watching you the whole time. Your composure was a sight. How you held up like that I don’t know!”

All I could say was: “My heart was in shambles. I had to call on the blessed Zeynab.”

Two days later they arranged to take the martyr families on a trip. The other sisters and I chose not to go. After the evening prayers, there was a knock on the door, and I was asked to come down. I found Habib standing there covered in blood. “Are you wounded?” I asked.

“Not me. One of the boys was hit.”

 “You’ve got blood all over you.”

“I grabbed the boy and took him to the hospital, but he died before we got there. I just stopped by to tell you Mohsen is with me and not to worry. Last night there was heavy fighting, and they gave the sector a good pounding. Two of the boys were killed and a number were wounded.”

Mother stayed on with us after the ceremonies ended. Habib told her I was pregnant. She was so overjoyed she kissed me many times and said, “It’s not right for you to stay here with the shelling and all.”

“I’m used to it. Besides, I like this place and wouldn’t be able to tear myself away.”

We argued back and forth—she telling me to go, me insisting on staying. I took advantage of mother’s visit to go to the bath a few times.

She would sit behind the cubicle door on the lookout for rats. Her visit lasted a week. When it was time to say goodbye, it was like I was losing part of my body. I can’t say how much I missed her. She took Mohsen back to Tehran with her.

Despite all the problems of life in the town—the water shortages, the frequent power cuts, the limited means of communication—people went on with their daily lives. They even celebrated the Return of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Triumph of the Revolution holidays under enemy fire. With danger all around and folks rightly fearing death, many many souls were willing to sacrifice their wealth—even their lives—for others.

During the first months of our marriage, Habib would get leave from time to time and buy things we needed at home, but not everything was available in the area. At one point I had this craving for sour pickles, and we happened to be in the Amiri Bazaar when I got a whiff of them. I asked Habib to get some for me.

“Where are they? I don’t see pickles,” he said.

“There’s this strong smell.”

We went around the bazaar until we found a shopkeeper who had boxes of them hidden under other boxes. Habib asked him if he had pickles. Holding a bag filled with them and so as not to be caught in a lie he said, “We had some but these are the last ones.”

“So would you give us two of those, please,” said Habib.

“They’re for somebody else,” the shopkeeper said. “They asked me to put them aside.”

But then he took out his hidden stash and gave us two kilos, explaining, “So many people have asked for them, I just tell them there are no more. I hide them so as not to disappoint people.”

As soon as Habib got the pickles, I wasted no time and finished a whole kilo before we reached home.

Around the time of Operation Fath al-Mobin[1], Habib and I were returning to Abadan from Tehran. With the bus on the outskirts of Andishmak, the driver wanted to stop for morning prayers. I suddenly heard Habib say in his sleep, “Mamad, Mamad.”

I woke him and asked, “What? Who’s Mamad? We’re in a bus.”

Habib woke up and said, “I was dreaming I was sitting in a room with Mohammad Jahan Ara and the other boys who were martyred. We were joking and laughing. I was teasing them. Sitting behind a table, Mohammad Jahan Ara said to me, ‘I’ve come back to take the boys with me. No teasing now or I won’t take you.’ Then I pointed to the sandwiches and cool drinks on the table and said, ‘Give me one of those drinks.’ But Mohammad said, ‘Take this sandwich.’ I took the sandwich but kept on teasing the boys until Jahan Ara threw Farhad Mola’i[2] and me out of the room.”

I laughed and said, “You should have had the drink; it was the sherbet of martyrdom.”

When we got to Abadan, they told Habib the sector wasn’t safe because of the on-going operations, and he shouldn’t have brought me. I stayed in Abadan only two weeks and then returned to Tehran. One day the guard at the Kushk Building came to our room saying I was wanted on the phone.

I went downstairs to the telephone and heard Habib’s voice on the other end of the line. I wondered why he was calling, because I knew that during operations they cut off communications. “Where are you?”

I asked.

“Tehran.”

“How did you get here?”

“I didn’t come on my own. They brought me.”

Startled, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“I’m flat on my back. It seems I took a bite of Mamad’s sandwich after all!”

The squad evacuating the wounded said they wanted to take Habib to Dadgostari Hospital.[3] Not knowing Tehran, Habib told them to take him to Molavi Hospital. Uncle Hoseyni, mother, and I went there to see him.

Habib was resting in a large ward along with eight others. They were praying when we got there, and we waited for them to finish. Habib seemed fine on the outside. He had taken a lot of shrapnel on the right side of his body, especially in his leg. “This hospital being so far way is very hard for us to get to,” I said to him.

“It’s fine. They originally had wanted to take me to Dadgostari, but that’s even farther away,” he said.

“What do you mean? It’s almost next door!”

Habib insisted they release him. We spoke to his doctor, who said, “Impossible. There’s a good chance of infection. Some of the shrapnel is near the nerves. He’s got to stay here.”

The next day he was even more determined to leave the hospital. The doctor said he had to stay. They needed to operate, fearing pieces of shrapnel might be dislodged and get into his blood stream. In the end they had Habib sign a release before we could bring him home where I would look after him and change his bandages dressing. As I was cleaning his wounds, Habib said, “Use a pair of tweezers to take out the shrapnel so it won’t be a problem.”

 “I can’t,” I said.

I explained I only knew how to give injections and change bandages. I had no experience with surgery. All the shrapnel I had removed in the past had been from superficial wounds and that was under the supervision of a doctor or specialist medic. But Habib insisted. The pieces on the surface were easy to get out, but extracting the deeper ones was torture for me. I don’t know whether it was because I was pregnant that I had become so sensitive, or whether it was because  it was my Habib who was the patient. It was very hard. My body trembled as I dug into his leg with the tweezers, and I cried and cried as I took out pieces of shrapnel. I cleaned the wounds and rebandaged them. Habib was laid up at our place for two weeks, after which he returned to the front.

With the military operations over, I returned to Abadan and resumed married life in Ahmadabad. Some time later Mr. Musavi and Mr. Eqbal Pur went on leave, taking their wives with them, which left me very much on my own. Habib, who was often away at the front, spoke to one of his friends, Mr. Masbubi, and asked if I could stay with his wife at their home. I stayed with them, but once a week Habib would return and we would go home together. The next day I would return to the Masbubis.

As we were going back and forth, something occurred that told me Habib’s eyes were not quite right. He had been driving in the war zone with his lights off so long he had trouble with his night vision. “Something seems to be the matter with your eyes,” I said.

“No, my vision is fine,” he said as we drove. “I’m okay driving in the dark, thank God.”

At that point we were approaching a traffic circle, and I could tell he didn’t see it because he didn’t slow down or veer toward the entrance.

“Careful!” I warned him. “We’re going to hit the curb.”

“Impossible. We not at the circle yet.”

No sooner did he say that when the front wheels climbed the curb.

“Evidently the circle is not in the right place tonight,” I said.

 

To be continued …

 

 
Number of Visits: 110

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