Memoirs of Batool Borhaneshkouri

Wife of Martyr Mohammad Javad Tondgooyan

Selected by Fariba Almasi
Translated by Kianoush Borzouei

2024-11-6

She stirred the food and tasted it. Everything was ready. She turned off the stove. She took out cucumber, lettuce, and tomato from the refrigerator and placed them next to the salad bowl, then got busy making the salad. This afternoon, Somayeh-Hoda and Youssef were coming for lunch, and she had cooked Youssef’s favorite dish. While she was chopping the lettuce, the doorbell rang. It was them—Youssef and Hoda. They had arrived on time. Youssef hung onto his grandmother's neck and kissed her. He was waiting to receive his reward from her. She smiled at Youssef and opened the refrigerator, giving him a packet of chocolates. She said to him:

• "But remember, you must eat it after lunch, okay, my dear?" Youssef mischievously smiled and said:

• "Just a tiny bite!"

• "After lunch, my dear, after lunch..."

Youssef put it back in the refrigerator, laughed, and dashed out of the kitchen. Hoda also stepped forward and kissed her mother. She said:

• "I will make the salad! If you have anything to do, go ahead and take care of it."

• "No, I have nothing to do. I just need to set the table."

Hoda was quietly chopping the cucumbers when she asked her mother:

• "By the way, did you interview the journalist for that special issue?"

• "Yes, it felt like I was reviewing my whole life again. Many of my memories came back to me."

• "Me too. It was as if I was suffocating from nostalgia. The day before yesterday, I also went to see Dad!"

• "Alone?"

• "Yes, alone."

The mother frowned and fell deep in thought. She did not want her daughter to go alone to her father’s grave. It worried her. She did not want her little girl to feel sad and suffer. Despite this, she felt helpless. She knew that her daughter had become a mother herself, and now she was busy with her own life.

When she was younger than Hoda, she had carried the responsibility of three children all on her own. In fact, she had lived with her husband for only seven years. She had tasted the bitter flavor of separation very early on. A few months after starting their life together, Mohammad Javad was arrested and imprisoned by SAVAK, and shortly after the war began, he was taken captive by Iraqi forces, and then martyrdom...

From the beginning, she had known that things would be this way, because Javad had honestly told her during their courtship:

• "Any hour SAVAK could arrest me. Do you have any problem with that? Under these circumstances, do you accept to start this life together?"

• "No problem, I accept."

She had grown up in a family where most members were familiar with political activities, and she was not unfamiliar with such thoughts herself. That’s why they held a very simple engagement ceremony at Mohammad Javad’s father’s house, and a few months later, she simply went to her father-in-law’s house to start their married life there.

When Javad was imprisoned, they went to visit him twice with Javad's parents, and each time it was very brief. When Mahdi was born, she went once with her child to visit her husband. These visits were so short that they only had the opportunity to exchange greetings. Just once, there was a longer chance, and Mohammad Javad managed to tell his wife something:

• "Go to Qom and tell the scholars that here they do not allow us to pray in congregation. Tell them that prison guards take us under the arch for this and even do not allow us to use our prayer beads!"

Interestingly, when Javad suggested the name Mahdi to the family, his wife just smiled and remained silent, because she had also thought of that name. That day, Javad had advised them:

• "Make sure to pronounce this name correctly, not like the common folk. You must call him Mahdi."

After his release from prison, Mohammad Javad was very nervous and endured a lot of mental pressure. He had been tortured for seven whole months, but he never liked to talk about the hardships of prison. He had become very sensitive and easily hurt, always worried that he would be arrested again. He also had financial problems. He could not go to work because they required a clean record for government jobs, and due to his imprisonment, he could not obtain such a document. Until one of his friends offered him a job at a gas company.

Mohammad Javad went to work during the day and at night; to change his mood, he drove passengers with his friend Dr. Etemadi. However, after a while, SAVAK agents became suspicious of his activities. They came to his house and inquired from the neighbors to find out if he had left Tehran during this time or not!

Tired of this situation, Mohammad Javad decided to go somewhere else, but given the circumstances he was in, only one other place was left for him. That was the workplace of Mr. Engineer Booshehri; a company named Pars Toshiba in the city of Rasht.

When Engineer Tondgooyan started working at Pars Toshiba^[1], he was invited by the company owner to go study management. He came to Tehran and enrolled at Iran Center for Management Studies^[2], and after two years, he obtained his master’s degree from there. After that, he returned to Rasht. At that time, he took every opportunity that came his way to participate in protests against the government. Until he received a mission from the company to go to Japan. It was the month of Muharram. Those days coincided with the people’s marches during Muharram, and Engineer Tondgooyan was dissatisfied and worried that he had to leave his homeland under such conditions.

After the victory of the revolution, he first worked at the Tehran refinery and then went to Abadan. He was invited to work both by the Ministry of Oil and by the office for the cleaning up of departments. In any case, after some time, when the refinery was operational, Tondgooyan was appointed as the manager of the oil-rich regions in the south and shortly thereafter moved to Ahvaz with his family.

He continued to lead a busy life. He was an active man and felt a great sense of responsibility. He was devoted to his wife and children, but despite loving them deeply, he also felt a strong commitment to his work and placed great importance on it. He was very organized, left for work early, and returned home later than others. Nonetheless, whenever he had the chance, when the children were awake, he would come home, sit each of them on one knee, and play with them, showing his love for his children in this way. His wife was also very content and never complained about anything. As long as she saw that he was working hard and was happy, she was happy too...

In those days, Mohammad Javad was working very hard. He was extremely busy and didn't even have the time to scratch his head, but despite all this, he made the most of even the smallest opportunity to take care of the children. For example, when everyone was awake, he would come home, sit each of the children on his knee, and play with them. This was his way of expressing his paternal love for them. I was also very content and never complained about the difficulties that arose. Just seeing that he was making every effort and working hard satisfied me. The fact that he was happy made me happy too, until he was introduced to the parliament for a ministerial post... Engineer Tondgooyan moved from Ahvaz to Tehran. He had been nominated for the ministerial position in parliament. At this time, his behavior and ethics showed no sign of change. His office was open to everyone, and he carried out his work with even greater seriousness. In the new circumstances he faced, he became stricter with his family. He was very careful that no family member or close relative used public funds for personal gain or wasted public property. He did not use the government car for personal use. It was difficult for him to use that high-end vehicle, and many times he drove his personal Peykan to work. Sometimes when the driver came to pick him up, if he had an important meeting and the driver was driving slowly, he would say to him:

• "Let me drive, because I want to get to my meeting on time."

During those days, due to the conditions of war, Mohammad Javad had formed a headquarters at the office and stayed there at night. He approved leaves for others, but he took very few days off himself. Therefore, I must say that during that period, most of the responsibilities of life fell upon me, and my children did not even see their father at night. Of course, they had grown accustomed to this situation. On the nights when he came home, the children were usually asleep.

The situation was very difficult, and Engineer Tondgooyan had well understood the severity of the circumstances. However, even in those conditions, he was concerned about his wife. His young wife had been pregnant three times in a row and had given birth, and for this reason, he believed that she needed to take more care of herself. Engineer Tondgooyan, who was supposed to travel south, had told his wife before his trip:

• "I have vowed that you will not have any more children!"

When his wife asked in surprise why, he replied:

• "Because the children have come one after the other, you are weak, and taking care of them is hard for you. I vow from now on, and when I return from the south, I will sacrifice a sheep." After this short conversation, Engineer Tondgooyan said goodbye to his wife and children very casually and set off. Having just received his first ministerial salary, he put it in the pocket of one of his clothes to leave at home without telling anyone, taking only three hundred tomans for himself. It seemed he was aware of the lengthy nature of this trip in advance. It was as if he knew that in his prolonged absence, the family might need this money.

Then one day, Mr. Ali Asghar Loh, a friend of Mohammad Javad, called their home and asked his wife:

• "Mrs. Tondgooyan, have you heard the news?"

Mrs. Tondgooyan, who was very surprised to hear such a question so suddenly, asked:

• "What news?"

• "Mr. Engineer Tondgooyan has been captured!"

• "Mr. Ali Asghar Loh informed me about Engineer Tondgooyan’s capture over the phone. I was quite shocked, but the truth is that before he left, we had all asked him not to go on this mission this time. In fact, many of our acquaintances—friends and family—had told him that he might be captured, but Javad did not listen to anyone."

In the end, he did what he should not have done. After this incident, our first feeling was one of worry and uncertainty. Initially, we sought to find some news about him. Perhaps we could find someone who could somehow rescue him from the enemy. Mr. Sadaat informed us that the forces at the border had contacted Dr. Chamran and asked for his help. Dr. Chamran quickly gathered his forces and sent them to rescue Mohammad Javad before he was taken across the border, but when Dr. Chamran's forces reached the border, they learned that unfortunately, Javad had been transferred to Iraq, and thus they could not do anything for him.

When there was no news from Mohammad Javad reaching his family, they grew more and more worried. Day by day, they tried to do something for him, and Mr. Sadaat, who was Javad's friend, helped them. He wrote letters to Iranian and foreign officials and followed up on the matter. They even turned to the Red Cross for assistance...

• "We even turned to the Red Cross in hopes that they could meet Mohammad Javad in captivity and provide us with official news about him. Mr. Sadaat drafted letters, and Mrs. Booshehri, Mrs. Yahyavi, and I signed them and sent them to the officials. There were even meetings held on this matter that we attended to express our requests, but the outcome was not very satisfactory or promising. Nevertheless, we did not give up. We must not lose hope. We did not lose hope. In 1986, we traveled to Geneva to meet with the head of the Red Cross and the human rights officials. We even met with the Chancellor of Austria and asked the officials of that country for help. All of these officials warmly welcomed us and promised to cooperate, but it still yielded no results...

• In the same year of Engineer Tondgooyan's captivity, his daughter Somayeh Hoda was born. She was a sweet and very lovable girl, and her mother tried to take good care of her. When Somayeh Hoda was a few months old, they lived in a house across from the Russian embassy. It was a three-story house with three residential units on each floor. One day, early in the morning, a blizzard that had parked in front of their house exploded. The Monafeghin had placed some TNT in the car. At that time, the Tondgooyan family, along with the Yahyavi and Ayatollahi families, lived in this house. The house caught fire, and household items were exploding one by one. Mrs. Tondgooyan, trying to keep her children away from the danger of the explosions, had to throw Somayeh Hedi from the window into the arms of a neighbor, while she grabbed Maryam and Hajar and quickly ran out of the house. That day, Mahdi was at his grandmother’s house. In fact, since Hoda was born, the children’s grandmother had told her daughter-in-law:

• You’re on your own. It’s better for Mahdi to stay with us so you can take care of the baby.

• Fortunately, no one was seriously injured in this incident, and everyone was safe from the explosions.

• Now the war was over, and the time for the release of the prisoners had come. Mrs. Tondgooyan, knowing Engineer Tondgooyan’s character, could predict that Mohammad Javad would not be coming home anytime soon. He would not come until all the prisoners were released.

• I knew Mohammad Javad very well. I could easily predict that he would not be returning home soon. I knew that until all the prisoners were released, he would not come. Now, the expectation was exhausting. The Red Cross had not seen him, and it was unclear when his turn would come to return to the country. The prisoners who had returned said, “We saw Engineer Tondgooyan in the clinic and during exercise until 1986...” So, we still held onto hope that he was alive and one day would return home.

• The Tondgooyan family remained hopeful. They hoped that after all these years, he had survived and could return home. Until Engineer Bouchehri and Engineer Yahyavi were also released. Mrs. Tondgooyan was not feeling well, so they didn’t tell her about the release of these two. Everyone was worried that if Mrs. Tondgooyan saw that he was not with them, her condition would worsen.

• In 1991, they reported that Iraqi officials said Engineer Tondgooyan was not alive. Previously, they had once said that he had committed suicide, and now they claimed he had died. Mrs. Tondgooyan protested and said:

• Should not the government send a delegation to Iraq to find out the truth and gather accurate information on this matter? Ultimately, a delegation composed of the Red Cross, forensic doctors, a representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Red Crescent, and also the Commission for the Protection of Prisoners, along with the father and brother of Engineer Tondgooyan’s wife, went to Iraq.

• This time, after they brought Engineer Tondgooyan’s body back to Iran, Mrs. Tondgooyan saw her husband in Behesht Zahra. Now, only one question lingered in her mind. She wanted to ask Mohammad Javad:

• Tell me, what should I do with these children?
  But it seemed that the answer to this question echoed repeatedly in her mind with the familiar voice of Mohammad Javad. It was as if Mohammad Javad, with his usual gentle tone, calmly and fatherly told her:

• Take care of the girls, that’s all!

• The mother, with a heart full of sorrow and loneliness, watched over her beloved children. Besides the maternal love that propelled her forward, she felt they were precious treasures entrusted to her by her husband, Mohammad Javad Tondgooyan. Valuable legacies that she had to care for well in the absence of their father. Now, every time Mrs. Tondgooyan saw her children alongside their good families, she felt a sense of lightness…^[3]