Da (Mother) 138
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra HoseyniSeyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
Translated from the Persian with an Introduction by Paul Sprachman
2025-02-23
Da (Mother) 138
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
***
When I saw my stay in Tehran would drag on indefinitely, I raised the issue with the Martyrs Foundation. The Foundation wrote to the superintendent of the building, who put two rooms at our disposal. Habib was always annoyed by my constant need for things. He was even opposed to accepting gifts. He would say, “Be thankful for God allowing me to serve at the front.”
One time a Kuwaiti merchant, who had heard about the bravery of the Khorramshahri troops, sent the military a number of refrigerators and air conditioners along with boxes of chocolates and baskets with fruit and nuts. At that time most of the old soldiers had families and were living on the bare minimum in the way of appliances and furniture. As a veteran, Habib was entitled to one of the air conditioners, but they were all gone by the time he finally got around to it. We didn’t own an air conditioner, and Habib would not hear of using the one belonging to the homeowner because it might constitute theft. One day a truck pulled up in front of our house, and two men delivered a refrigerator, saying it was part of our allowance.
That afternoon when Habib came home and saw the thing in front of the door, he asked, “What’s that doing here?”
“I don’t know. They brought it and said it was ours.”
“Didn’t I say I didn’t want anything? Why are they doing this?” he asked.
He went to the army and complained. They told him he had been entitled to an air conditioner, but he never picked it up. So he got a refrigerator. Habib told them we already had a refrigerator and stove. We didn’t need a thing.
They said, “The appliances you have now belong to the area command, but the refrigerator is yours.”
Habib refused to bring the thing into the house. It remained sitting outside in the sun until Leila’s husband, Hoseyn Ta’i Nezhad, came and took it to Tehran.
Another time they brought around a machine-made carpet they were selling at cooperative store prices. Each family was entitled to only one length of carpet. Habib, as usual, refused to do anything about it, so Leila’s husband once again carted the thing off and stored it in his home in Isfahan. He said to Habib, “It’s fine if you won’t accept something for free, but this one cost money.”
After the first years of marriage, our possessions amounted to a few plates, a kerosene heater/stove, and some blankets the army had given us when we got married. The only thing that was truly ours was a suitcase Habib had. I used it to carry Abdollah’s things when we traveled to Isfahan or Tehran.
Now I found myself in the two rooms the building superintendent had found for us on the sixth floor, but without anything to put in them. I covered the floor with two pieces of carpeting I got from mother. Without telling me, mother had bought some things and put them aside for me. When I went to the new apartment, she surprised me by taking them out. A short while later, Hoseyn, learning we had our own place, brought the rug from Isfahan.
When Habib was turning over the radio and television house to the army, he called to ask what he should do with the things in it. I told him to keep them and bring them to Tehran the next time he came.
Habib was pleased to see we had our own apartment when he came to Tehran. Unfortunately, since our home in Abadan had been empty for a time, a number of our things had disappeared—among them books, tapes of mourning ceremonies, and interviews with the martyred brothers in the army.
Some time later, the building superintendent suggested that the two kids and I, mother and my sisters and brothers, including Mohsen (married that fall to my cousin), move to a large space on the seventh floor. He said it was empty and would meet our need for privacy. He also said since many families lacked housing, he could move them into our vacated apartment. Although we knew climbing all the stairs to the seventh floor presented a problem, we all agreed to the move.
The seventh floor was a large open space with floor-to-ceiling windows on either side. Moveable dividers sectioned off the space into two or three rooms. At one end of the hall was another room boxed off with drywall. It had originally been the grillroom for the Bureau of Budget and Planning cafeteria. Since mother’s room would always have guests coming and going, I chose a place at the end of the hall, where I could use the grillroom as a kitchen.
In the summer the sun streaming through the large windows was so strong it felt like we were in a hot house without any way of cooling the place. In wintertime, when it rained, water seeped through the cracks in the windows and pooled on the floor at the edge of the carpeting, and it would mold. Putting up carpeting up against the windows to protect us from the drafts was no use, because the room had a false ceiling that allowed the freezing wind to seep in from the roof and stairwell.
When Iraqi planes bombed Tehran or when they fired missiles at us, the windowpanes would rattle, making a terrible noise. I would always have Abdollah and Hoda sleep far from the windows and would position myself between them and the wall to shield them from flying glass.
Abdollah’s illness had passed, leaving him with a slight case of asthma. He was put on a strict diet, avoiding all milk products and vegetables. He would often wheeze, and his breathing got so labored at night that he would choke. He tugged on his hair, thinking it would help him breathe. In that childish voice of his, he moaned, “The air is bad, the air is bad.”
I placed an inhaler the doctor prescribed in his mouth and squeezed it. Abdollah’s difficulty breathing mostly happened when everybody was asleep, and I didn’t want to disturb them. At such times, I really missed Habib. I yearned for him to come home, but then, I thought, he was of more use at the front.
Even with a room all to myself, mother was constantly on my mind. While we were on the lower floor, she was always busy cooking with the neighbors in the communal kitchen. She didn’t have a chance to sink into one of her depressions. But after we moved to the seventh floor, it was easier for her thoughts to take a downward turn. She put up pictures of the martyrs of Khorramshahr on the wall. She would walk around the house, mumbling to herself in Kurdish and Arabic and weeping. I tried to put up with it or cover my ears so I wouldn’t hear her, but no matter what I did, it would make me burst into tears myself. When I realized her tears wouldn’t stop until someone came in and comforted her, I went to her room. I saw the children curled up in the corner, and my heart melted. I lay mother’s head on my chest and kissed her. I kept speaking to her soothingly until she was calm, but all the while I was in agony on the inside. After mother, it was the children’s turn. I took them to the park and bought them something to eat. Then we would stroll along the avenue and go home. During this time there was no one who could understand what I was going through. Some people made pointless expressions of sympathy, while others, knowingly or not, would say hurtful things. Still others would be genuinely kind, but that only made me more heartsick.
In 1985, the army brought Habib to Tehran for a two-year weapons training program. The entire time in the city was a nightmare for him. He would howl when they played martial music on the radio. On the verge of a breakdown, he would pace around, slapping his head, and cursing himself, “Goddamn you, Habib! How dare you stay here safe and sound in Tehran, while the boys are back there in the thick of it? I wish to God I knew how they were doing.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go back, instead of eating your heart out here,” I said.
“I can’t,” he said. “The course is important; I’ve got to finish.”
In the end, he didn’t even complete one year. This was typical of Habib. As soon as he came to Tehran on leave, he’d be champing at the bit to go back. During those rare times when he did notice how hard life was for me and the kids, he’d say, “If you’re not happy with me returning, I won’t.” But I knew if I had told him not to go back, he’d invent all kinds of excuses to return to the fighting. That was why I pretended it wasn’t a problem for me.
Habib often asked me, “What would you do if I were martyred?”
I had seen many women whose husbands had died: the wife of the martyr Abdol Khani, the wife of martyr Abbaspur, and Rabab, the wife of the martyr Khosravi. I had seen a picture of her wiping the blood from her husband’s face. She was pregnant at the time and gave birth to their daughter Vadi’eh just days after her husband’s martyrdom. I often thought of what I would do if I were in their places. I felt the agony they were feeling, and I grieved for them. I told Habib, “I’m nobody special. I’ll just be like the other wives.”
But whenever I saw Habib about to write his last will, I begged him not to write that I shouldn’t cry for him, that I should stay strong. I said, “I don’t have it in me any more to be that strong and do what you want. It would be impossible for me not to cry.”
Habib laughed and said, “Fine. Cry as much as you like. How do you know I’m going to die anyway?”
“Whatever happens, I’m ready.”
Certain goods were rationed in Tehran in those days because of the war and the economic sanctions. Uncle Hoseyni would leave work at 2:00 p.m., eat lunch quickly, and go out to buy powdered milk for Abdollah and Hoda or get other things needed for the house. Uncles Hoseyni and Nad Ali were a godsend for us at that time. Uncle Hoseyni, always the good manager, saw to it we didn’t lack for necessities or funds. But there were times people behaved improperly toward me on the street, and I realized if I had had a man with me, such things wouldn’t have happened. Uncle Hoseyni’s presence offered some consolation and bucked up my resolve.
Habib’s salary when we got married was around 2,000 tumans. It rose gradually to 4,000. At one point early in our marriage, I asked him, “Can I give money we don’t need to a deserving person or to the front or to earthquake victims?” He said, “The household is in your hands. You want to burn it, go ahead. You want to give it away, fine.” Although we were not well off, Habib gave me a free hand with the expenses. Economizing as much as possible, I was able to open a savings account at the Mellat Bank on Ferdowsi Avenue. This meant that if the need arose, Habib wouldn’t have to ask others for money.
My brothers Hasan and Sa’id insisted being like Mansur and Mohsen and go to the front, but they were too young to join up. Finally, in 1986, they were able to enlist. Hasan went first and did a six-month tour, while Sa’id did three tours. Each time they enlisted they brought me along in place of mother to sign their applications. Because of my poor track record when it came to telling mother about Ali, I wasted no time telling her about Hasan and Sa’id. I knew if something happened to them, she would never forgive me, but I managed to convince her not to oppose their enlistment. The only thing she said was: “As long as they’ll come back safe and sound, let them go.”
Hasan had completed two of his final exams for the first year of high school when his call-up notice came. He spent six straight months at the front. Although I didn’t like to write letters, we corresponded frequently. I would always leave Habib’s letters unanswered, using the telephone instead to answer his. Habib loved to write letters, but, after I didn’t respond, he stopped. Nevertheless, he would still send me a letter from time to time.
The circumstances with Hasan were different. I felt obliged to write to him. Habib went to see Hasan several times. They didn’t send the boy to the front line; instead, they found a place for him in one of the military police guardhouses in the rear. Although it was in a sensitive area and often under enemy fire, he wasn’t thrilled about being a guard.
Hasan’s letters bristled with excitement about the war. He wrote once about how one of the boys shot down an Iraqi plane and how they watched it crash. Hasan’s enthusiasm was contagious. Before his tour was up, Sa’id started to pester us about joining up. Sa’id was a strange boy, well mannered and studious. His behavior made him the center of attention. The two boys went to the same school, but Hasan was often criticized for acting up, while everyone had nothing but praise for Sa’id. Sa’id’s personality and character reminded me of Ali; their features were also very similar, especially with their unibrows.
To be continued …
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