Da (Mother) 106
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
I wished I’d been able to take her head in my hands and caress her. I knew full well how to calm her. I’d been giving her advice since I was a child and, having gotten the better of her intellectually, I was able to change her mind on certain things. Now, given the way she was carrying on, I was glad I had kept the news about Ali from her.Da (Mother) 105
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
I cried myself to sleep and, again, was visited by the same nasty nightmares. Scenes of bedlam plagued my thoughts, and a horrible din in my ears. Terrified, when I tried to pry my eyes open, I imagined there was a bright light shining in them. I kept my eyelids shut. I wanted to scream but my voice got stuck in my throat.Da (Mother) 104
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when I was awakened by loud noises and realized we had reached Mahshahr Hospital. The van stopped before an old brick building. People brought a stretcher and placed me on it. Then two well-built men lifted the stretcher and whisked me off to the operating room. They made Zeynab and Leila wait outside the door.Da (Mother) 103
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
The girls took me under my arms, and we struggled to get up the front steps. They held up my legs, and I managed to get me inside. This was very embarrassing, but the joy of being back and staying in the city eased the embarrassment. I couldn’t stand—not even for a second. My legs were still shaking. Terrible pain shot through me, reaching my head.Da (Mother) 102
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
She wanted to continue the conversation, but I didn’t have the patience for it. To be truthful, I wasn’t at all fond of her yammering. I told her several times, “Try to put up with it a little more; there are so many people here worse off than you and I. The doctors and nurses are all dead tired, and the wounded keep streaming in. All of them are on their backs, too.”Da (Mother) 101
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
Uncle Hoseyni had gone to Iran from Basra to raise a family when I was a year old. Sometimes he included pictures in the letters he sent to the grandparents. The stylish clothing he and his family wore seemed stunning to me. They weren’t dressed in the dishdashas we wore. Even at that early age I could tell that life in Iran was very different from life in Iraq.Da (Mother) 100
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
He passed me without waiting for an answer, and, as soon as he took one step away from the sandbags and reached the tracks, he blew up. I was on my knees, and the shock wave flung me to the ground and made my head ring. Now everything I saw and heard seemed like a dream. The sounds I were plain enough:Da (Mother) 99
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
The three of us prayed, sheltering behind the materiel stacked in the corner. The others also prayed and began to eat bread and tinned fish. They offered some of the tins to us as we sat by the boxes of medical supplies. We politely declined. The commander said, “Eat. You’ll need your strength because you’re coming with us to the front.”Da (Mother) 98
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
No one spoke along the way, but they signaled to one another to be careful so often it scared me to death. Worried my footsteps on the dry grass and leaves would make too much noise, I tiptoed as I moved with the column. At the head of each alley we reached, the soldiers would signal us to stop while scouts reconnoitered.Da (Mother) 97
The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni
Conditions had become so dangerous and the Iraqis had advanced so far there was no longer any need for me to beg to be taken to the front. Our front lines were falling one after another, and more and more of the central parts of the city were becoming battlegrounds. Because it was too hard to transport the wounded by car, aid workers who could ...5
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A Selection from the Memoirs of Haj Hossein Yekta
The scorching cold breeze of the midnight made its way under my wet clothes and I shivered. The artillery fire did not stop. Ali Donyadideh and Hassan Moghimi were in front. The rest were behind us. So ruthlessly that it was as if we were on our own soil. Before we had even settled in at the three-way intersection of the Faw-Basra-Umm al-Qasr road, an Iraqi jeep appeared in front of us.Boycotting within prison
Here I remember something that breaks the continuity, and I have to say it because I may forget it later. In Evin Prison, due to the special position that we and our brothers held and our belief in following the line of Marja’eiyat [sources of emulation] and the Imam, we had many differences with the Mujahedin.The credibility of the commanders
According to the Iranian Oral History website, the “Conclusion of the Fourth National Conference on the Oral History of the Sacred Defense and Resistance” was held on Saturday morning, March 24, 2025, in the presence of oral history activists, in the Qalam Hall of the ...Excerpt from the Memoirs of Mehdi Chamran
The Journey of the Members of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Lebanon to Iran"... At that time, Dr. Mostafa Chamran had not yet arrived in Iran; he was still in Lebanon. We were eagerly anticipating his arrival… One day, while I was walking through the corridors of the Prime Minister’s Office—since my duties during those days were predominantly based there— ...
