The 369th Night of Memoirs-1

Compiled by: Iranian Oral History Website
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2025-7-22

Note: The 369th Night of Memoir ceremony was held online on June 2 of 2025, in the remembrance of the martyrs of the Israeli attack. This event took place in the virtual space of the Islamic Revolution Arts Center. During the program, Seyyed Abbas Heydari Rabouki, Seyyed Amir Abdullahi, and Hajj Javad Aligoli shared their memories. The program was hosted by Davood Salehi.

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The first narrator of the ceremony is an old resident of Khorasan Square and a professional motorcycle rider before the revolution. In his youth, he practiced motorcycle riding in the hills of the Gisha region. During those days, he met Martyr Dr. Mustafa Chamran and his group. Martyr Chamran uttered a key sentence in a meeting with volunteer motorcycle riders: “Comrades!” These dramatic movements that you performed with heart and courage, could you handle it if you are on the front lines?" With this perspective, the idea of forming a group of volunteer motorcycle riders to participate in the war fronts takes shape. This story is about a time when only 45 days had passed since the beginning of the war and no specific military organizations—like detachments, companies, or battalions—had yet been formed.

Seyyed Abbas Heydari, the narrator of this section, continued to introduce himself and his living conditions and said: I am from Khorasan Square. I was born in Shush and lived there until I was ten years old. At that time, our house was in the middle of the beehive and the Arabs; the same place where the Kargar Stadium is now built. If I want to be more precise, I grew up right in the middle of the Soski Crossroads. We moved to Qiyas Street when I was ten years old. In those days, streets like Nader and Aref had not yet been built. When you came down from the Aref intersection, there was desert everywhere and they were planting cucumbers and tomatoes.

My neighbors and childhood friends were people like Ebrahim Mali, Amir Manjar, Qasem Takshori, Yaser Naqvi, and Gholamhossein Afshardi. We grew up with them, played with them, and were friends. Later, they all became martyrs one by one; some in Kurdistan and some on the southern fronts.

The narrator continued: To be honest, I was speechless from the very beginning. I spoke recklessly. Of course, if you asked anyone on the spot, they would not be any better than me. My father was a truck driver. He was illiterate, and he did not get a license until he died at the age of 83, and he drove without a license. My brother was also a trailer driver. When he sat behind the wheel and wanted to push someone out of his way, he would stick his head out of the window and do his job with shouts and gestures. In short, we grew up in such a family. Now imagine a person like me, with this background and lifestyle, entering the front and encountering someone like Dr. Mustafa Chamran in the irregular warfare headquarters. This in itself was a great achievement. In those days, not much time had passed since the revolution. The war had just begun. Islamic culture had not yet been institutionalized in society. Some were still involved in the pre-revolutionary lifestyle. The chador had also just become fashionable, but not the real Islamic chador; more of a type of external and fashionable clothing. Gradually, with the passage of time and the presence of clerics and the formation of ideological and political institutions on the fronts, prayers before operations and a spiritual atmosphere took shape. The atmosphere of the fronts changed and it became exactly Imam Hussein's war!

The narrator continued: "In the beginning of the war, there was no clear defense line at all. There were no trenches or trenches. There were soldiers who were resisting with the people in Khorramshahr. There were one or two brigades stationed in Ahvaz, like the 2nd Brigade of Dezful, which was also practically destroyed and was being rebuilt. In those circumstances, the best news that radio and television could give was that "the fighters of Islam succeeded in grounding the enemy forces in such and such an area." There were no serious operations and offensive capabilities yet. If there were, it was not in Ahvaz.

After meeting Dr. Chamran, we set off for Ahvaz with our motorcycle group. On the way, one of the cars turned left. Of course, we were so carefree and happy that we fixed the car on the spot, got back in, and continued on our way. We reached Ahvaz in the same car. We hadn’t even reached the city yet when we saw people leaving the city in droves, in various cars, vans, and even Chevrolets. As the saying goes, everyone who could, packed their bags and fled. They were right; many of them had never seen a single bullet up close until that day, and now the artillery and mortars had reached their homes. The enemy had advanced as far as the Susangerd intersection, and people’s homes were under fire. When we entered Ahvaz, we felt like not even a mosquito was flying. The city was almost empty. They took us in a bus to a school. They said, “Get off, from now on this is your temporary headquarters.” When we entered the school, we saw that our motorcycle rider had arrived ahead of us and had been parked in the corner of the yard. We had brought twenty-six or seven motorbikes; ten of them were zero-kilometer bikes and the rest were racing motorbikes; the same ones we used to ride on the Shapour racetrack and the Geisha hills. Naturally, the first thing we did was get on a motorbike and start riding around the school yard. We would jump up, go around, and make turns. In short, lu.

At noon, they announced lunch was ready. We saw they were serving mashed lentils and rice (or "meatball rice," as some called it). One said that he wouldn't eat it. The driver shouted, "You don't eat it! Isn't it your grandmother's house?!" Five minutes later, the same people came back and said, "Give me another plate, I'm hungry!"

The narrator continued: A few days later, the deputy of Dr. Chamran came to us. I found that his name was Nasser Farajollahi, a local man. His house was on Sari Street, an alley that connected to the main street. We had been friends since before the revolution. I walked forward until I caught sight of Nasser. I said, “Sir, this regular war headquarters is no use to us!” Well, Nasser knew that we weren’t into fighting; we were all looking for motorbikes and showing off and all that. He laughed and said, “Abbas! What are you doing here?” I said, “I came to ride a motorbike.” He said, “I’m with Dr. Chamran too. I’m his deputy.” He said, “The doctor knows you’ve arrived. He said gather the motorcycle riders and bring them to the headquarters so I can see them.” We quickly got on our motorbikes and rode a bike to the irregular war headquarters itself. The headquarters was in the old palace of the Khuzestan governor. The city had been abandoned and lacked leadership, so Dr. Chamran and his companions took over the empty building and began organizing operations from there. Everyone lived in the same yard and rooms. A headquarters in that sense had not yet been formed. There was no house, the rooms were just being prepared.

When we entered through the entrance door, there was a central boulevard, with lines drawn on both sides. We started to circle and show off. We made a commotion by making turns here and there, jumping there. We had lifted the headquarters into the air. Suddenly they said: “Enough, brake. The doctor is here”! We stopped. We saw Dr. Chamran coming from afar, Seyyed Abolfazl Kazemi standing next to him, and Nasser Farajollahi here and there. We all fell silent. There were a few people. They were all wearing these commando uniforms. We said that these are empty-handed, they bought their clothes from customs!

The doctor came forward with his famous dignity and calm. He looked at us, then at the others, and said, “Dear ones, did you come to the front to ride motorcycles, or do you intend to use them for war?” We were at a loss for words. We saw that he was speaking in a high class manner, we did not understand what he was saying. His words were bookish. When he spoke, he was like someone reading a newspaper. He could not speak Persian fluently like us! It was obvious that he had read a lot of books. He did not know how to speak the way we spoke in the street. The narrator continued: “We had a supervisor, they called him Hossein Taherzadeh, he was known in the area as Hossein Lanturi. Chickpeas were everywhere, he was a handyman. When he saw the weather, he said: “Mr. Doctor! We brought these comrades here for the war. We will bring them back from our neighborhood whenever you want.” The doctor looked at him and said, "We brought you to help the front with your motorcycles." Then he said to Seyyed Abolfazl, "Let's take these to the camp and train them." We thought, "We're done!" We said, "We're definitely going to be Special Forces, paratroopers or commandos! Now that we're also on motorcycles, what's better? We told everyone we met that we were under the supervision of Dr. Chamran. We brought our motorcycles to be hunters; we're basically war hunters. In a way, this made us think we were someone!"

To be continued...