Da (Mother) 119

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

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

2024-10-13

Da (Mother) 119

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: Visits with Leaders

The clinic was nearly at the end of the main road of the camp. It was actually a shipping container, ten by five meters—perhaps more—with a bluish tile roof. The walls were painted white inside and out. The container was divided into two rooms. The larger of the two was also divided in two; on one side was an examination room and on the other a room with two beds used temporarily for patients. The other room was for injections and bandaging patients.

The Red Crescent had done a good job of equipping the clinic. Doctors had been sent from Tehran, Shiraz, and other cities around the country to attend to the medical needs of the refugees. They also brought victims of the bombardments in Sar Bandar and Mahshahr there. Despite the good treatment at the clinic, diseases were rampant—especially eye infections, diarrhea, and vomiting. Children could be heard crying in and around the clinic. The rains had started and patients, most of whom wore plastic slip-on, plastic sandals, tracked dirt and mud into the container. During off-hours we would sweep the floor, but the carpeting made it difficult to keep clean. After sweeping it, we tried to wipe it down with a damp rag to get the mud out, but the rains made the job impossible. At one point we hosed down the floor of the clinic and stationed someone outside the entrance to tell the patients to remove their footwear before entering. Despite our best efforts to get people to observe basic hygiene, the general health of the camp was poor.

Water for the camp was stored in two large tanks that would run dry from time to time. The number of latrines and places for washing was limited. Communal toilets contributed to the rapid spread of disease. When the clinic was crowded, older people were forced to wait hours outside for treatment. They would gripe to us, “What kind of a set-up is this you’ve got here?”

We told them, “We’re all in the same boat. We’re doing the best we can. Why take it out on us? If you’ve got a complaint, you should tell the people in charge.”

Ordinarily this would satisfy them, and they would wait patiently for their turn. The crowds and noise around the clinic, though, didn’t prevent us from pumping people for information about the war. We put more trust in what they said than the news on the radio, which, we knew, couldn’t be trusted. Most of the talk was speculation about when the war would end and when people could stop being refugees.

“It won’t last long, and we’ll be back in our homes soon. After all,” they said, “Arabs and Persians have always been at each other’s throats.” Language didn’t seem to make any difference: Arabic or Persian—war was terrible on everyone. Everyone believed Saddam’s call to liberate the Arab nation was just a ploy for gaining power and territory.

We eagerly listened to what they said, and tried to finish our work quickly so we could hear more. To keep things orderly one of us made a list of the patients’ names. The doctors sent from the cities didn’t speak Arabic, so even though I had my hands full giving injections, I also had to act as translator.

In addition to Leila and me, nurses from the Red Crescent helped at the clinic. Brother Echresh was in charge. Sisters Karimi, Raziyeh, and Marziyeh Alizadeh (who actually were sisters), Shahnaz Kabiri and her cousin, along with several nurses from the Ministry of Health worked in two shifts: morning until noon and noon until evening. The women nurses did not stay at the clinic at night, but attendants were around day and night.

One day Ali Echresh asked, “Sister Hoseyni, do you remember me? I was the one who transported your Brother Ali’s body from Abadan.”  “No,” I said. “You don’t remember?” he asked. “I was the driver of the ambulance waiting in front of the mosque for wounded. When you said you wanted to bury your martyred brother next to your father, I couldn’t refuse. You were in an extraordinary state that day. On the way back to Khorramshahr, I watched you in my rear view mirror as you wept and spoke to Ali as he lay in your arms. What you said touched everyone beyond words. I was crying so hard I could barely drive, and it took hours to get to the cemetery. May God give you strength!”

One member of the medical team sent from Tehran was a large, slightly overweight doctor wearing glasses with thick lenses. He seemed around forty-five. He didn’t introduce himself to us, so we dubbed him “Dr. Esteemed Sir” because he would use this formality whenever he spoke to other men. After a while, it dawned on him this was his nickname. He was a humble, self-effacing man. It was strange; the moment I saw him he reminded me of Dr. Sa’adat. He prayed with the same feeling and devotion as Dr. Sa’adat. At night, when there were fewer patients, the attendants would take turns manning the desk and alerting the rest of us if someone came in. We would sit on the floor of the large room and listen while Dr. Esteemed Sir explained verses from the Quran. Poor eyesight made reading from his pocket holy book difficult for him. This prompted me go to a book exhibit in Sar-Bandar and get a larger print version, which he gladly accepted.

On Thursday and Friday nights we would turn out the lights and say special prayers (the Tavassol and Komeyl) by candlelight. Most of the time Dr. Esteemed Sir acted as prayer leader. I found being in the presence of people who had remained decent despite the horrors going on around them gave me peace of mind.

Part of my arm had been itching me for some time. One day I noticed a lump there. I told the examining room doctor about it, and, after seeing me, he asked, “Have you ever been wounded? I believe this is shrapnel.” “Yes,” I said. “I was hit, but the shrapnel passed through me.” He said, “No, it didn’t. The shrapnel entered the muscle and has worked its way through your bloodstream toward your heart. This is what’s bothering you. You’ve got to be operated on.” Then he wrote out an admittance slip to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Mahshahr. I had no intention of being laid up because of a little piece of shrapnel, so I went to Mr. Esma’ili, the assistant at the clinic. Despite not being an MD, Esma’ili was an experienced surgeon; I asked him to take it out. The flow of patients had stopped for an hour, and they put me in one of the temporary beds. The two nurses from the Red Crescent, Misses Karimi and Alizadeh, prepared me for surgery. Mr. Esma’ili opened my arm and extracted a piece of shrapnel from it the size of a coin.

The whole time I was at the clinic, I reminisced about helping patients at Dr. Sheybani’s. I still hadn’t given up the idea of returning to Abadan. Work in the camp was satisfying, though, and I justified it to myself by saying people here needed me to make it easier for them somehow. One day they brought in a boy of about six, who, while playing, had been struck in the face with a stick. The three-pronged gash in his cheek was large and dangerously close to his eye. One of the doctors, a recent arrival, said, “Send him to Mahshahr.”

Knowing how busy they were at that hospital, I thought it would be better to treat the boy at our clinic. As the boy sat patiently in a chair, I told him to close his eyes. I sprayed the wound with a little anesthetic and very deftly stitched up the gash. Then, delighted, I led him to the doctor’s room and showed him the stitches. He immediately started to berate me in front of the patients: “I gave you specific instructions to send him to Mahshahr. Why didn’t you?”

I said, “There was no need, doctor. By the time he got to Mahshahr the wound would have bled out. I stitched him up, and that was the end of it.”

This didn’t satisfy him, and he continued to shout at me. Sometime later the boy’s mother turned up to say, “You did a great job. There’s hardly any scar.”

In time, even the doctor admitted, “I was too harsh on you. Between you and me, it was a very fine job; but I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Patients at the camp often came in with similar wounds. A six month-old, who was just able to sit up, had a metal door fall on him, making a triangular gash in his head. It took forty stitches to close. His mother brought him regularly to the clinic to have his bandage changed. Everyone was worried that the serious blow to his head might make him feeble-minded.

Worse than this was the case of an eighteen-year-old with a severe burn on his leg, which never healed properly. His callused skin had gotten as hard as a rock and was infected from the knee down. The burn was so disgusting it hurt just to look at it. Nevertheless, we forced ourselves to wash and disinfect it by extracting the pus with a fine pincer. After two months of treatment, the doctor concluded the leg had to be operated on. Otherwise, they would have to amputate.

Some of the patients exhibited hysteria. They acted sick but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with them physically. Once a newlywed came in saying she was ill and pretended to faint. The doctor examined her and concluded it was nerves. He ordered her to be sedated, but, as we were about to inject her, she jumped down from the bed and started running around it. We had to catch her to give her the sedative.

One night Evil Zahra came to the clinic. I was in one of the rooms when I heard her voice in the hallway. She was acting up, as usual. “What’s the fuss?” I asked smiling. “Causing trouble, again?”

She pointed to her son and said, “He’s got diarrhea and can’t stop vomiting. They’re telling me to take him to the hospital because they can’t do anything for him here.”

We took him to the hospital, where Zahra argued with the doctor so much he refused to see her son. I stepped in and explained to him that she wasn’t right in the head. After they got the boy settled in bed, I returned to the clinic.

A few times when the doctors were not around, I was forced to do things for which I had neither the training nor the nerve. One night an Arab man came to the clinic saying his wife was so ill he thought he would lose her. The assistant got an ambulance and drove to the man’s house, which was near the camp. She had been in labor so long without help at home she was at the point of giving birth when he got her in the ambulance. The assistant said we would have to deliver the baby there. Nobody was willing to assist him. This was to be the first time I saw a birth, and, naturally, I expected it to be embarrassing and frightening. But the assistant needed someone to help him.

To be continued …