The 373rd Night of Memories – Part 7
Compiled by Iranian Oral History Website
Translated by Fazel Shirzad
2026-05-12
Note: The 373rd “Night of Memories” event was held on Thursday evening, October 23, 2025, in the Sooreh Hall of Hozeh Honari [Arts center], featuring wartime recollections shared by former POWs Nabiollah Ahmadlou, Mohammad Hadi, Mahmoud Shabani, Ali Moradi, Mohsen Jannat, Hadi Izzi, and Abbas Pirhadi. The event was hosted by Davood Salehi.
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In the final segment of the program, the host invited the seventh and last narrator, Mr. Abbas Pirdhadi, to recount his memories from the time he was dispatched and how he came to find himself in the besiegement. The narrator began his remarks as follows: “The last time I went to the front, I was 25 years old. It was the same year when Imam Khomeini (may Allah protect him) issued the order to dispatch the one-hundred-thousand-man Muhammad Rasulullah (peace be upon him) Corps. I had some difficulties in getting to go, but through a trick I managed to be dispatched. They had given us papers to fill out; I wrote my name at the top of the form, but left the lower part blank, so that they would not assign any special responsibility to me and I would go only as a simple force (to fight and return to my family sooner). At the ceremony held, after the speeches and the parade, we were organized and sent to the operational areas.”
He then explained about the night of the operation and said: “In Karbala 4, the operation was compromised and did not take place. We returned. But only 15 days later, Operation Karbala 5 began in the light of the moon. At first, the Iraqis were caught by surprise; our forces reached them while they were asleep, and the line was broken. We entered the island, but unfortunately the enemy launched a heavy counterattack. One of my close friends (who was also from my neighborhood) was martyred right at the beginning of the work).”
About the harsh conditions of the siege, he said: “When we entered the island, each person had only a meager ration and a canteen of water. They told us to dig in the bases of the palm trees and prepare a pit-type fighting position for yourselves. The ground was so hard that the bayonet would not go in at all. No matter how hard we tried, we could only manage to take out a small amount of soil. After a few hours, I looked up at the sky and saw a ‘dome of bullets’ above our heads, pouring down on us. From left, right, back, and front they were striking us. There was also a river there, and the Iraqis were firing from across the water. I told Mr. Mohammad Hadi that the situation is very bad. He said, ‘Yes, we are besieged.’ Our wireless communication had been cut off, and the forces behind also knew that we were under siege, but they could do nothing. Mr. Hadi asked me to go among the palms, check on the boys, and help them.”
The narrator continued by referring to how he was wounded and captured: “During the night, while moving between the boys, I suddenly felt that both my legs were burning badly. One of the friends (who was a medic) tied my legs tightly with brown bandages. The fighting intensified, and the Iraqis advanced. I had been left alone in a part of the date-palm grove when a young Iraqi officer found me. They grabbed my arms and, little by little, took us back. After interrogation and being beaten, they transferred us to Al-Rashid Prison (Iraq’s intelligence/‘Isthikhbarat’), which was like SAVAK.”
In describing the terrifying conditions of Al-Rashid Prison, he said: “There, cells of 6, 8, and 12 meters existed. At night, in each cell they held more than 40 to 45 people; so that each prisoner’s share for sitting and sleeping was, at most, 30 centimeters! You couldn’t sleep at all. They put me beside the wall because my legs were injured. Due to the extreme tightness of the space, I laid my back on the ground and held my legs up against the wall until morning, so at least a little space would open up.”
He then spoke about one of the most moving memories of his captivity and said: “In the corridor, they had brought a prisoner who had been wounded in Operation Karbala 4. His name was Habib Golbazi. A bullet had hit exactly in the middle of his two legs. He had a severe infection, and the stench of his wounds filled the air. He couldn’t move, and the boys would move him, with a blanket, to attend to his needs. By the end, even moving him was no longer possible. After about a month of enduring this agonizing pain, one night, near dawn, I heard him shout loudly three times: ‘O Hussein, O Hussein, O Hussein,’ and he attained martyrdom. One of the clerical friends, in the same corner of the cell, led prayers for him.”
The narrator, with a throat full of emotion, unveiled the miracle that occurred at that moment and said: “When they opened the cell door to take the body of Martyr Golbazi inside that very blanket, to carry him out and hand him over to the Iraqis, the exit route passed exactly by the side of my face. I thought to myself: I should hold my breath so that the smell of infection won’t bother me. But precisely at that very moment, it was as if someone lightly struck me from behind, and without intending to, I drew a deep breath. A scent of perfume reached my senses (something heavenly and pure), which I had not smelled in all these more than 60 years of my life. The blanket no longer gave off any stench. That perfume smell was so clear that even the Iraqi guards, with astonishment, asked: ‘What is this smell? You’ve taken your clothes off, so where did you get this perfume from?!’”
At the end, he referred to the strange morale of the freedmen/prisoners and added: “These unseen help were not only that. Our prisoners were tortured under cables and wooden beatings; with their crushed bodies they would be sent back to the camp. But when they would sit together, they would say and laugh (like they had come to a wedding!). Even the Iraqi guards would say: ‘We are astonished by you! You suffer all this pain, yet you’re still happy.’ Or, for example, if someone’s foot was injured and there was a danger that it might be cut off, the boys themselves would pull the foot and maneuver it into place; and by God’s permission, the bones would heal day by day without any infection.”
In the final segment of the program, the host asked the narrator: “Why haven’t the other narrators (such as Mr. Khaldi) told this strange story about Martyr Golbazi until now?”
The narrator responded: “I used to write these memories only for myself before, and I did not have any desire to share them publicly. But when His Eminence the Supreme Leader said that these memories do not belong only to you and that you must present them for history, the lock on our silence was opened, and we decided to disclose these truths.”
The End
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