by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
On September 22nd there was a terrible terrorist attack in the Iranian city of Ahvaz which killed 25 innocent people and wounded 70 other people. This was universally reported in the West as having occurred at a “military parade”, when it was actually a parade to commemorate the 1980 start of the Western-backed, Western-funded, Western-armed invasion which used Iraq to try to destroy the democratic 1979 Iranian Revolution.
But none of those accurate adjectives can be said in the West…no, no, no – it was just a no-reason-needed military parade, as if Iran was a warmongering nation prepping its fanatical people for imperialist adventures. (Iran has not invaded a country in well-over 200 years.)
The timing of the attack was obviously (though not primarily) a way to divert the world’s attention from the deadliest conflict of the last quarter of the 20th century. Instead of talking about what disaster and death was heaped on Iran from 1980-1988, it was Iranian “militarism” which was discussed and not anyone else’s.
But ho-hum, more misreporting on Iran. In other news: the sun rose this morning. This is just life for all socialist-inspired democratic revolutions – Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China, etc., have all had their sufferings ignored, their mistakes amplified and their successes denied. To even raise this point makes one an unthinking “apologist”, an Islamofascist, a totalitarian commie, blah blah blah.
The tragic event, and the subsequent false histories of the Western media, makes this an appropriate time to bring up what has become the most important literary reference for Iranians regarding the war – a book called Da. “Da” means mother in Kurdish, and not in Farsi. The book was written by a woman whose Iraqi Kurdish family had emigrated to Iran when she was a child.
How could the definitive account on the Iranian view of the Iran-Iraq War have been written by an Iraqi Kurd, and a female to boot?!
You would think Iranians hate Iraqis; you are certain that Iran hates women; and you assume that Iran has a war against the Kurds, just like Iraq, Turkey and Syria. If you assume everyone follows the dictates of capitalism’s identity politics, you likely would predict that this book is a litany of accusations and compiled hatreds towards Iran.
If you assume all these things it’s because you fail to realize that Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was inspired by socialism, which demands a citizen and a government loudly banish racism from the public sphere. Much like this stoned surfer-dude American idiot who wrote an article titled Whoa. The Soviet Union Got Racial Equality Right Before America?, you are way, way, WAY off. (And when did America get racial equality “right”?)
For a comparison: Can anyone imagine that France’s definitive account on the Algerian War for Independence would come from a non-White? Their most famous work on Algeria is The Stranger by Albert Camus, who was an isolated-from-Algerians pied noir whose refusal to condemn French oppression was selfishly defined by the fact that he cared more for his mother’s comfort than a million dead Algerians. Heaven forbid that Madame Camus would have to relocate back to France, even if that meant ending a war and a 132-year occupation.… Camus’ view of morality is 100% rooted in Western capitalism individualism, after all, which is the reason its popularity still endures today.
But Iran had no problem making Da a huge best-seller despite the author’s Iraqi Kurdish roots; and, somehow, Iranian men took time out of their daily oppression of women to find out their thoughts and feelings on past experiences. The 700-page account of the war was read by everyone, including President Rohani.
The book is a memoir of Seyyedeh (indicating lineage from Prophet Mohammad) Zahra Hoseyni, a teenager who was living with her extremely poor but tight-knit family on the border city of Khorramshahr. The city was the first to be sneak-attacked by the Iraqis, and the massacres and devastation wrought there would be reflected by a Farsi pun on the city’s name: “City of Blood”.
A memoir of the last, worst traditional war in our modern times
The book is not an easy read, as Hoseyni recounts one tragedy after another.
In short, for those attacked by Iraq the war was one day from hell after another, with each one worse than the next. Hunger, thirst, physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, the nightmares of screaming planes, repeatedly watching people go insane with the pain of mourning, every weary pause only giving rise to recent tragic memories, the constant filth and lack of clean water a bombarded people must deal with, actual nightmares when sleep does come, the perpetual sound of war which then makes silent pauses totally strange, and the constant, constant guilt of being alive combined with the knowledge that death from a shell could come at any moment.
So much of the book is something like a horror hallucination of the first few weeks of an unexpected, undeserved war, combined with a recounting of the vast citizen efforts to fight back.
Each according to their abilities, of course: Hoseyni is an young lioness fighting for the cubs of the Iranian nation and Khorramshahr. She accepts responsibility after responsibility, and even refuses to back down to proud & protective Iranian men in her insistence on going to the front to help amid the bullets and bombs. She volunteers as a corpse-washer, which turned out to be a never-ending job, and which is certainly a job few would want. Her beloved father and brother die at the front, but still she endures and gives, gives, gives. Everyone is looking at her and seeing a person with an iron sense of justice, duty and faith.
What I suggest makes this memoir so compelling and successful is that, in Hoseyni’s retelling, she remembers not only that every day was a living hell but that every moment within every day was a living hell. Hoseyni repeatedly talks about the constant abyss of mourning and horror opening up inside her at every moment; seemingly dozens of times a day she is assaulted by an event/tragedy/memory/feeling which could send a normal person to a hospital for weeks of recovery and therapy. It is unlikely that a memoir by a male would admit the incredibly sad emotions which any human would go through in Hoseyni’s situation.
And yet Hoseyni appeared to all as indomitable (even after she is wounded at the front). She simply said a prayer of “Ya Hossain” and rushed towards another difficult task nobody else wanted. She was the model defender of the nation – indeed, Iran’s war “Mother” is not even a “true” Iranian, in non-socialist logic — but the book reveals that she was able to live this ideal even though her feelings were the absolute opposite of proud glory.
Saying a prayer before a difficult task can go a very long way, but it’s this juxtaposition of a public persona of revolutionary steel combined with total inner crumbling which makes the book so compelling. How she could do what she did – when she could not even bring herself to eat, nor sleep, nor mourn day after day after day – is astounding and an inspiration to anyone sanctioned by injustice.
For those who are not just uninterested in religion but who also actively detest religion, I’m sorry to objectively report that a huge part of her strength came from her religious faith – she and her family were pious people who took their title of “Seyed” as a serious injunction to be moral examples. However, the family was also extremely politically aware and active – these were true revolutionaries; they were also so poor as to come from the “correct” class to qualify as a revolutionary, although such prejudices represent antiquated notions about who can or cannot be a socialist.
There is much to learn from the war memoirs from World War I, II, or the Holocaust, but Da is exceptional in that it is from our modern times. When she recounts her rage and disbelief at BBC Radio’s totally misguided coverage of the war, we in 2018 share her shock at “fake news”.
Da should be essential reading to any war hawk advocating invasion in any foreign country which has had a socialist-inspired revolution, because you will be facing a very unique type of people. Whether it be the USSR, China, Vietnam, Korea or Iran, these are societies which cannot be divided into tribes or identities, as they have achieved socialist cultural unity:
“I saw myself as a tree with deep roots, resisting being pulled from the ground. How could I allow myself to be uprooted? Although born in Basra, I felt no attachment to the place. I loved Iran…my love for Khorramshahr overwhelmed all reason and logic.”
The Western capitalist and anti-multicultural societies of continental Europe cannot imagine that an immigrant is capable of ever feeling this way, and thus many there want immigrants expelled or at least segregated.
But the old tricks of divide and conquer, Balkanisation or the political segregation of Lebanonization will not work in socialist-inspired nations. The author recounts how Saddam Hussein tried exactly that – telling Iranian Arabs to join their Arab brother – but only the most reactionary fell for such a stupid worldview.
Hoseyni talks about the MKO/MEK terrorist group (and I am only talking about them because Western nations and their propaganda outlets keep pushing them back into the spotlight): stealing corpses to inflate their body counts for propaganda purposes, attacking people who disagreed with them at public debates, working as spies for Iraq and giving them coordinates of places to bomb, attacking ardent revolutionaries and then literally rubbing salt or pepper in their wounds out of sadism. The idea that the MKO isn’t detested by 100% of Iranians, and that they have a zero percent chance of ever being rehabilitated – much less being democratically elected into power – is totally, totally absurd to Iranians. Again, why would anyone even talk about them anymore? Oh yes, because they are propped by the West, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
She also talks about what an exceptionally politically-open society Iran was in the early days of the Revolution, and few non-Iranians know that much of this remains true today. Parliament was open to anyone to come observe and even shout disruptions, Khomeini held public audiences for two hours twice a week and received anyone and everyone, elected representatives were easily accessible and lived the common, poor lives of a nation under war. All of this is in stark contrast to the leaders of seemingly every Arab nation not named “Algeria”, and it also shows the democratic bonafides, the more-than-majority support, of the Iranian Islamic Revolution: you can shudder at the word “Islamic” all you want, but the revolution was democratic in the truest sense of the word and no matter in what country that word is uttered.
Western culture is full of ‘war porn’, but Iran is not titillated by such things
“The fall of Khorramshahr and the things I had experienced in the past weeks had made me more aware of how people suffered.”
Such are the types of wisdoms Hoseyni tosses off, but there is no doubt that they are not false cliches for her, nor for millions of other Iranians.
It reminds me of a major problem with America and the West: they are so war-crazy, and yet everything they know about it – to anyone under 85 – is totally fictitious, video-game-like nonsense.
The American view of war is truly one constant cliche, where glory appears to be a feeling to run after but which Hoseyni proves it is actually the result of living through unwanted horrors and tragedies.
It’s true that the younger generation of Iranians has little memory of the sacrifices, bombardments and war rationing, but the way Iran and the US remember their war martyrs is so very different. Can you name one famous American solider who died in Iraq or Afghanistan? All I can think of is Pat Tillman, and that’s only because he was also an American football player (and who was killed by friendly fire). However, Iran is full of portraits and memorials to dead soldiers and even dead teenagers…one cannot even make a comparison of the psychological/emotional/human gravity of war in the minds of the average Iranian versus the average American.
My point is that, for all their fighting, ever since Vietnam Americans have essentially been hero-worshipping an empty solider’s uniform. Unless we are talking about rural Americans from their lower class, most Americans really have no personal/psychological connection to actual war, unlike Iranians.
Such people, like the 4-F Trump, grow enraged at taking anyone knee during the National Anthem to protest the undeniable mass incarceration/mass murder/mass oppression of an ethnic minority, but there is no truly human element present – their honouring is phony and faceless.
Say what you will about Iran, but you cannot say that.
Furthermore, Iranian martyrdom – where death is assured – is far, far different from the power-trip fantasies and motivations of the American solider and the American chickenhawk playing Call of Duty video games.
For Iran war is not a glory, but a horror, and whatever sacrifices the nation must make due to the Western Cold war…at least it is better than the Hot War. Befuddled Western “analysts” of Iran cannot imagine this type of logic playing such a large part in Iranian policymaking because they have zero experiences and comprehension of any war which is not just on a two-dimensional screen.
Iran fights in places like Syria, Iraq an Afghanistan because their allies, cousins and cultural-cousins are being attacked, and also because justice itself is being attacked; America fights wars because it seems like fun, because they have such neat toys to play with, and they fight without gallantry and without esteem from the locals they claim to be “fighting with”. America massacres and plunders; Iran’s forces are far closer to Mao’s Long March injunction that soldiers should not take even a pin from locals they were trying to liberate from fascism.
Thirty years after the end of Iran’s “War of Sacred Defense” Iran’s “military parades” are attacked, but the world still doesn’t really comprehend exactly what the West is attacking in Iran. Da is an unsparing account of a civilian Islamic socialist revolutionary in wartime – reading this memoir would certainly help Westerners understand what they remain up against as they keep trying to implode Iran’s socialist-inspired democracy.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
You wrote about this book before, Mr Mazaheri, when it first became available in a English translation. I found one place in UK that claimed to have it, so ordered a copy. What was delivered to me was the Farsi edition which I returned, pointing out the error, that I did not read Farsi and requesting what was advertised and what I had ordered, the English translation. I was then told that this was not available to me, full stop, although it seems to be freely available to Farsi readers.
Time for another trawl through the bookshops, maybe.
Thanks for the reminder.
Some non-google searching turned up what appears to be the publishers of the English translation. The title appears to have been translated to “One Woman’s War, Da(mother)” although in their text blurb they appear to also use “One Woman’s War (Da)”. This link should point to the book (please mods remove this if I have somehow gotten this wrong). It has the ISBN numbers to help search for it, as well as an “Add to Cart” button.
One Woman’s War: Da [Mother]. The Memoirs of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseyni.
Translated from the Persian by Paul Sprachman
http://www.mazdapublishers.com/book/one-womans-war
I had no problems locating it on the net, since it exists, but getting my hands on a copy was another matter altogether in the UK.
Listed on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/One-Womans-War-Memoirs-Seyyedeh
Ramin, thank you for writing about this book. And thank you for all of your writing. You are wise, and write well. You have taught me many things about the great nation of Iran and it’s people. For this I am grateful to you. I was a young man who the war was going on. Your article has really touched me. Makes me incredibly sad. Could you please tell me where I may get the book if you are able to? I live in the US so English I would need. Thank you again for all of your hard work. You are reaching us, we are hearing you.
What you say being true Ramin, which I don’t doubt, this would lead me to think that the spirit of Iran’s revolutionary socialist democracy may well have friends in high places. What Americans might call “within the Force.” How so? Tell me is it not so that the empire’s enthusiasm for depriving Iran of its oil markets is contributing substantially to the rise in the price of oil? Is that worth an article from you? Tell me that is not going to contribute to the breakdown of the very economy that is attacking Iran. Blind to our interdependence, attack Iran and in so doing destroy one’s own power base. Maybe it won’t be so hard for Iran to “finish what the empire starts” after all.
It will not be impossible for Iran to finish what the empire started, especially since the biggest threats to America come from the inside, not the outside. The collapse is already underway, for crying out loud. To paraphrase Lincoln: If America is defeated, it will be Americans who are the authors and finishers of that defeat. That group inside the Beltway is our greatest threat. They are a bunch of Judases who sold us out a very long time ago. May they live long enough to see their stupid plans completely fail. The really crazy thing is that they want to go to war against an enduring country with a rich ancient culture like Iran. Crazy and insane!
Maybe a tad OT to the discussion of the book (excellent, BTW) but it appears that the Russians at last are tiring of the Israel bombast about Iran and are telling them to go pound sand-long last much needed:
https://www.sott.net/article/398300-Russia-fed-up-with-Israeli-intransigence-and-hubris-says-Irans-presence-in-Syria-is-none-of-its-business
(BTW, how is that reliance on the F-35 working out for you?)
Actually, in their own quiet but forceful manner, the Russians have been telling the Israelis that for the last several years. Russia’s statements on Iran’s presence in Syria have, IIRC, always been along the lines of saying that Syria has invited Iran in to help that’s the end of the matter.
I did notice in the Russian MOD presentation on the IL-20 facts that they did say that one of the things they had done for Israel is to ask the Iranians to stay back from the Israeli border. But that’s more along the lines of just having a talk and saying perhaps its better for everyone who’s killing Al-Qaeda and ISIS if Iran would do that. Russia has never accepted the Israeli position that Iran can not be in Syria.
Its just now, after the military funerals for 15 loyal service-people, that Russia appears to be saying it a bit more firmly than before.
Dear Ramin,
“You would think Iranians hate Iraqis; you are certain that Iran hates women; and you assume that Iran has a war against the Kurds, just like Iraq, Turkey and Syria. If you assume everyone follows the dictates of capitalism’s identity politics, you likely would predict that this book is a litany of accusations and compiled hatreds towards Iran.”
We are on ‘The Saker’s site for heaven’s sake! Why are we on ‘The Saker site’? Because we know the answer to the riddle; “How do we know when a politician is lying.”
no.. noooo…
this article got it wrong mannnn….
pyd ypg sdf are terrorists, hence all kurds are terrorists…. Kurdish men, women children..bunch of terrorists..
Don’t think about the fact that their schools are forbidden and language is outlawed and no such think as Kordestan or Kurdiya … JUST judge kurds by the last 5 years in Syria alone and .. we determine that all kurds are terrorists… turks are doing a great in favor for Syria and their imaginary boundries..
Ask the fascist SYRIAN GIRL… she probably would get along with ATATURK the mason…
RIGHT ? KEYBOARD WARRIORS??
did I get it right…?
Sincerely,
from: a Kurdish Muslim in Northern Kurdiya/Kurdia/ Kurdistan/Kordistan
You’re a Syrian first. Better get used to that fact ’cause Syria aint gonna be partitioned for a greater Israel.
“And when did America get racial equality “right”?”
It did. I saw it. I was there. I was a part of it.
Of course, step one to be a part of it was to become a member of a counter-culture that largely rejected the mainstream, mass media, American culture and most of what everyone was taught by schools and family, But I was there. It happened. It was real.
Within that counter-culture, it didn’t matter what ‘race’ someone was. If someone wanted to pull up a log and sit and talk by the fire, the only introduction required was to give their name. So, sit down, say hello, and tell us that your name is John or Susan, or more likely something like Rainbow or Sunshine. But that was all that was needed. You didn’t need to tell everyone who your daddy was? It didn’t matter. No one would have cared. It was a group of people where almost everyone there had left their home and left their daddy and didn’t really agree much with what their daddy thought of the world.
But it was real. It happened. Mostly to be found, at least in public, at Grateful Dead shows and hippie gatherings out in the woods. In private if you knew the right house to visit or the right warehouse where people were squatting. But it did happen largely in America. And while anyone in the world was welcome without question (except undercovers), many of the people there were Americans. So, I have no doubt in saying that I know that America did get race relations right. America did develop a culture where race didn’t matter, where the content of your character mattered more than the color of your skin. America did achieve that. Of course, then the American police raided the joint. Over and over. When the counter-culture survived that, Ronnie and Nancy Reagan declared war on it and finally after years of attack by the Clintons and the Gores and the Bushes somewhere along the way it finally gave up and mostly died. There might be a few other glowing embers from those days left around, but if so they are very hard to find and most who still have that in their hearts keep their heads down these days.
But it did happen. It happened in America. I know for a fact that America did get race relations right, before the cops raided the joint.
Thanks for your comment. It’s interesting, I just sent an email to someone of that age group and time, which I share. And I said, “Sounds like we have some things in common…maybe cultural creatives from the 60’s American cultural revolution, whose embers are still glowing.”
I would just add, “embers barely glowing”. We sure scared the heck out of them, which is why they murdered Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Phil Ochs, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, not to mention the dozens of Black Panthers killed, like Fred Hampton, Huey Newton or those still in prison. Or Leonard Peltier…of AIM.
When will we see another movie like Little Big Man?
great article Ramin – I loved it – I will try to get this book -although I might not be able to read it – but I sure loved reading ABOUT it – from you.
A much read book.
But the reason……for the Western hostility against Iran? Cant we just conclude the reason is controle of Iran´s $42 Trillion oil/gas reserves.
Tomsen, in other words the hostility toward Iran is “Nothing personal, just business”?
Hostility is for the sheeple.
“invasion which used Iraq to try to destroy the democratic 1979 Iranian Revolution.
But none of those accurate adjectives can be said in the West…no, no, no – it was just a no-reason-needed military parade, as if Iran was a warmongering nation prepping its fanatical people for imperialist adventures. (Iran has not invaded a country in well-over 200 years.)”
Two things, first you missed Islamic from 1979 Iranian revolution. Jamhuri Islami Iran, or Islamic Iranian republic. Not Democratic Iranian Republic. I’m pointing this out not because I’m one of your Iranian emigres that hate the republic, but because you should be accurate as well. If you meant it was a democratic revolution, you should say that, an Islamic revolution that had mass appeal. Neither East not West, but Islam. Right?
Second, while I agree completely that Iraq invaded Iran, that Iranians sacrificed the most, we the most determined and tenacious Mujahideen, that Saddam was a mad monster, that the West backed him completely and that Iraq committed war crimes including using gas, there are two things I don’t agree with. The first is that Ayatollah Khomaini partly brought the war to Iran. He asked the Iraqis to overthrow the Bathist Saddam. When he purged the Iranian military, Saddam took the opportunity to attack the Persians, something he could not do when the Shah had Americas back. Moreover, Iran was a monarchy earlier, a weak one that did not invade any country for 200 years. The Islamic Republic wanted to export the revolution the moment it was formed, that would count as provocation or an asymmetric invasion. Further, Saddam when he burnt his fingers in Iran during his whirlwind war, sued for peace, but Ayatollah khumaini wanted to free Iraq of Saddam, so the war continued and cost Iran more and more lives.
I remember reading somewhere, that Kissinger said, once the Iraq Iran war broke out, we could not have asked for anything better or something to that effect. So even though Saddam took the opportunity to attack a weakened Iran, he was not initially backed by the West, the West just like him to the opportunity to bleed Iran dry.
Just a typo at the end: just like him took the opportunity to bleed Iran dry.
And I’ll order the book, thank you
Thank you Ramin Mazaheri for writing this.
While reading your article I sadly started thinking of the Palestinians. In some ways perhaps Iranians are fortunate as they were able to fight and gain liberation. Perhaps the Iranians are working for the freedom of all in the Middle East, regardless of their religion. The Palestinian have as yet just to endure.
Your article made it much more real what hell people go through to live their truth. You help me to appreciate how deep the suffering of people who follow their hearts and never give up. That there is an unending reservoir of faith and caring.
Thank you
Wanted to add, I was watching a video clip of an Iranian commander asking the Ayatollah (Khomaini)permission to deploy and use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons during the Iraq war. And the Ayatollah replied “no, it’s haram” he then added “we did not come into this world to destroy generations, don’t go into these unmanly means of war but fight with courage and seek other means of defence.”
Big difference between the Irani Shias and the animal Saddam and the blood thirsty white men backing him