Da (Mother) 87

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

There were several people from Jannatabad with us in the truck. We all got out. The path we had to take to get to the spot the driver showed us was under fire. The Ring Road was slightly elevated, nearly two meters in places above the surface of the land, and we had to climb down an embankment. The road ran through swampy land, which flooded when it rained.

Da (Mother) 86

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

It was, if I’m not mistaken, the sixteenth or seventeenth day of the war, around 1:00 p.m. I was at the clinic busy repairing and loading rifles when somebody said that they’d brought in wounded. I hastily grabbed a stretcher and went out. A wounded man lay on the floor of a fire truck. Shrapnel had hit him in the knee, and he was in agony. We called out to Mr. Najjar, who came and examined him.

Da (Mother) 85

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

We went over the bridge and from a place on Behruz Alley or Arya the truck entered a military compound and stopped in front of a building. It looked to me like one of the naval headquarters’ buildings. We got out of the car and entered the hallway. Metal plaques on the doors identified the offices: Logistics, Command…. The head of the group stopped ...

Da (Mother) 84

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

The soldiers laid the wounded man in the truck and put the boy at the other end. I sat on the edge of the truck with my legs dangling. We had yet to move when a mortar shell landed between the truck and the soldiers who had taken the pots. There was the sound of earth breaking open, and I saw and heard shrapnel going in every direction.

Da (Mother) 83

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

With the passage of time, the need for first-aid people at the front became clearer to me. In the beginning I had heard that some boys had died on account of needing some minor surgery. But one of the frontline soldiers told me a story, and then I knew I could no longer stand quietly by. He said, “One of the boys defending the city was hit in the stomach by shrapnel, causing his intestines to fall out.

Da (Mother) 82

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

I don’t remember what day it was, but it was around 11:00 a.m., and I was busy sweeping the mosque with the long-handled wicker brooms they had recently brought. They were always telling us the mosque was the house of God and to let it get dirty would be a sin. We took up the carpets in the prayer room and swept everywhere.

Da (Mother) 81

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Ever since I started working in the clinic, whenever there was nothing to do, I would go to the new place where meals were being prepared. They had transferred the kitchen at the Congregational Mosque to a bank compound. To get there I walked toward the Shatt. The glass building was located on the corner of an alley, on the left side of the road just before Ferdowsi Avenue.

Da (Mother) 80

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

The first place we went was the Mosaddeq Hospital. It was deserted. It had been hit once or twice during the heavy bombardment of the bridge and the municipality. When I entered, it seemed abandoned. I tried to find Abdollah, and they told me they were no longer admitting patients and were about to move the ones already there.

Da (Mother) 79

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Delivering messages was the major’s almost daily task. I had seen him around. He was a military man around thirty or so with fatigue written all over his wheatish face. There was a nobility and seriousness about him that invited people’s respect. Ordinarily he started each day with enthusiastic pep talks to the troops, calling on them to listen to Imam Khomeini and resist the enemy.

Da (Mother) 78

The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni

Sheikh Sharif Qonuti, the same priest who had given his cloak to Maryam Amjadi, was the only one who thought it was necessary for women to be in the city, as they were vital to getting things done behind the lines. The day after we left the mosque to set up the clinic, another message came demanding women evacuate.