A War Story

I was born into a 8-year-long war between Iran and Iraq.

That war killed millions of people, devastated both countries and left deep wounds of trauma on our bodies and minds. When I was born, my parents were still living in Tehran. At that point, Iraq was bombing Tehran heavily as a way to demoralize the people (Oh, how tactics of war do not change). We would later move to the south of Iran in a city, which although bordered Iraq its strong navy base was a deterrent for the Iraqi forces. And because of this move I don’t have much conscious memories of the war. I’m a lucky one, many of my friends distinctly remember the fighter jets and the bombs.

And yet stories of the war years have made up parts of who I am today and I can also say with certainty that although my mind doesn’t remember, my body certainly does! And it manifests the trauma and the impact of the war in variety of ways.

My mom tells a story that to my ears are nothing short bravery.

At nights when the majority of the bombing was taking place, people were told to draw their curtains, cover their windows with dark plastic bags, and turn off the lights so the Iraqi bombers could not see them. They were told to take shelter and even sleep in their basements, if they had any.

My mom says that she had witnessed the effects of the war, particularly the nightly sirens on the children of other family members and friends. My parents wanted to spare me of that trauma. So they weaved together a different story of what the sirens and the flares represented.

And this was the story: We weren’t at war! We were simply enjoying nightly fireworks!

The sirens were a signal to people that the firework is about to commence therefore ‘everybody come to your yards to see the firework’. The flares, which were meant to identify Iraqi bombers in the night’s sky so that the Iranian military could shoot them down, were our fireworks in my parents’ story.

My mom says that every night when the sirens would begin, signalling to everyone that they must take shelter, my parents would bring me out in the yard to look at the ‘fireworks’. They both had, and still do, this unshakable belief that if death is meant to come for you, it doesn’t matter if you in a basement or not.

They did this so many times that when the sirens started, I would start clapping and laughing asking them to take me to the yard.

I asked my mom once if they were scared.

“Yes, we were very scared but tried not to show it”, she said with sadness and grief. “When the bombing stopped for the night, I was overcame with a sense of relieve that we were still alive. And that sense of relief would be immediately followed by so much sadness at the realization that ‘oh it was someone else’s mother, daughter, husband who just died’.” And then the survivor’s guilt…

I read a story of a 32 year old Ukrainian woman giving birth to her first child in the ‘bunker’ of hospital and telling him ‘Welcome. You are born in Kyiv. You are a new Ukrainian.’ In her I saw my mother, a bit younger and scared but staying strong for her daughter.

The young mom told the reporter that she is happy at least that her son won’t remember this war. I wanted to reach out to her from a future that is my past, hold her in my arm and tell her:

Oh, honey, your son’s body will remember the war, because your own body went and is going through a war. War changes our bodies. It will be up to us (the collective us) of what we do with our changed bodies. May the sunflowers of your land grow in rows and rows so that they may heal his and your collective wounds.’