Go towards the light: COVID 19 in Iran

About a week ago my 80+ year old Grandpa was diagnosed with COVID19. Here's Grandma's poetic retelling of her lachrymose experience in the past week. she compared the situation to the book “blindness” by Jose Saramago. I wanted her story to be heard as soon as possible, so I translated everything she wrote:

"when I returned home after 48 hours of stress and sleep deprivation, I realized there is no choice but to be strong, for my husband and for my daughter who had traveled to stay at her father's bedside so I can rest. I realized there is nothing to do but rest and regain energy. for now past and future must be forgotten, for now I must sleep. But as soon as I shut my eyes a barrage of imagery from the past few days flooded my vision. I saw myself, scrawny like never before, traversing an endless white corridor. the corridor is endless and my husband sits on the wheelchair. I open my eyes.

I get out of bed. at first I contemplate taking sleeping pills, but I change my mind. I know I mustn't forget. I don't want to wake up hazy from all the horror that has happened in the past few days. this time I need to jut down everything I remember.

life was not easy before the corona virus, each day the news would cast a new shadow over our heads. but I kept busy with friendships and brief outings; all until there came news of an outbreak in our city. the same day my husband came down with a fever. first we tried painkillers and some rest, until one night he woke me up unable to breathe. we got through the night with some hot water and compassion, but it was evident that home remedies were no longer enough.

in the morning we started searching for doctors who could visit him at home. we found a young doctor who came with his even younger assistant and found my husband's blood oxygen levels to be low. He said we must admit him as soon as possible. we had a new problem: where to find a bed? I called each and every hospital, private and public, no space. my husband's condition was worsening and it was only through some family connections that I was able to take an ambulance to a hospital.

I carried my husband down the stairs, who could hardly breathe at this point. the paramedics did not help me, they stood a safe distance away and watched me help him up into the ambulance. one of them asked me then and there: "don't you have any sons?" I did not answer. I thought of the 30 years that we both spent working in this country , thought of how my former job as a nurse was often so important to me that I'd sacrifice my domestic life for it. I remembered being stationed in wartorn villages in Kurdistan and having to work for so long I had to send my children to relatives just so I could stay stationed and help those in dire need of medical attention. I was too exhausted to convey any of this to a man , who without any consideration for how we vulnerable few had no choice but to bend to each and every breeze felt about a stranger "feeling sorry for us" for not having sons.

we finally got to the hospital where I got my husband off the ambulance and wheeled him into the crowd. this "Crowd" that I'm speaking of was a swarm of sick and healthy who were fighting medical care without any consideration for the queue or even for our age. when I saw the lack of respect for my age, I too joined the swarm and fought for audience with the doctors. reception did not take long an i thought we were almost done, but we were only joining a new queue to get examined. the doctor did a quick examination and after handed me the tongue depressor to throw out. he immediately moved on the next patient and left me there confused. I asked where to go and e said I still needed to see a doctor, which after much asking aroundd lead me to a new corridor with dozens of coughing patients, masked and unmasked. a scene I had only seen in movies that are made to guilt trip the upper classes into appreciating the life that they have.

another door we had to wait behind. at this point I had lost all measure of time and space. all I could think of was the ever worsening condition of my husband. the guard asked me to go in to see the doctor, but as soon as I went in the nurse yelled at me. I am a nurse and have trained countless nurses for Iran’s healthcare system, which puts me in a position where I can confidently say these nurses lack compassion and professionalism.  either they never had compassion to begin with, or they have lost it somewhere along the way. I don’t know.

I got to the doctor who ordered a CAT Scan. again I was lead down corridors. How I got through all these obstacles with a wheelchair and a limp is for another time. after the CAT scan we were told we need to wait two hours for the result. at this point it was midnight. we had neither eaten all this while, or had taken a break to rest. I felt profound helplessness and lack of refuge. I found a little corner so we could both sit down.

I questioned many times until we got the results. I thought this is it, we have a bed, but the night was long. we had to go back to see the doctor for the results. while waiting someone kept screaming about how he was a war veteran. how the whole hospital reeked of infection. he went in out of line since they said he was “Shellshocked”

I don’t remember when it was our turn, but we went in and heard my husband’s lungs were compromised, that he needs to be admitted. we went to the ward we were referred to, which was a kerfuffle of its own. a mixture of patients, doctors and nurses, masked and unmasked, roaming around in chaos. they took my referral letter and said they didn’t have any empty beds. they told us to go home and come back the next day. I told them my foot was aching and I no longer could go home. they told me this was the sickness of the century, told me it wasn’t their fault that there was no place for my husband. they told me I can wait till the morning if I wanted. I told them my husband’s condition was critical, that he could no longer breathe. in the end they sent me to another ward where they could finally a bed for him, but he couldn’t be admitted yet.

I kept to myself, tried to ignore the patients who were vomiting, filling the air with a thick aroma. I sat facing my husband and tried to shut the world out. I don’t remember how long we waited until a doctor came and said it was time to admit him, but there were no wheelchairs left. I found an abandoned wheelchair and took him through another corridor. I carried him through the dim cold light of corridors, me, an 80 year old woman with a haphazardly tied scarf, carrying an old man with a shawl on his shoulders, an old man who shall soon be 82.  this image will always stay with me.

I felt like all those with near death experiences, who come to recounting tales of an endless corridor with a bright light source at the end. the light they sought and followed, the light that I was now following into dead ends. after searching for an indefinite amount of time we finally got to where we needed to be. I could no longer move, I was sweating profusely. I plead to a nurse, that I too am a nurse, even though I am retired. she nonchalantly pointed at a room where an old woman was coughing without a mask. we finally got a bed and some bedsheets, but there were no hospital issue pants, so we helped my husband onto the bed in his own clothes. the nurses were also exhausted and frustrated. there was no ventilation and the air was heavy and toxic. I asked for gloves but there were none. I was told to stay in the room and keep the door closed. There was no acknowledgment of my worries that staying with him inside the room without gloves guarantees my contagion. it was around noon when the door whipped open and my daughter took my place so I could go home. as soon as I saw her I slammed both hands on my head. we couldn’t even hug or kiss. I took a taxi and went home.

I re-read the recounting of this story, feel a weight removed from my body. I try to forget that endless corridor so I may sleep. now four days has passed. my husband is doing better. my daughter is still with her father. my brother in law also spent some time with my husband so my daughter can rest. now I’m at home in self-quarantine. I only speak to family on the phone, but there is nothing they can do. no one can do anything.  only my sister and her daughters try to supply me with medicine and enough food for survival. I don’t know if I’ll stay alive long enough to make up for what they’ve done for me or not. All I know is that if we don’t care for one another there is no chance of survival. I’m alive to see the day where our family unites once again in health.”

From Iraq to Iraq: Two generations of war and the Iranian psyche

“we have targeted 52 Iranian sites, some at very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture”

Trump’s more aggressive than ever. We’ve been listening to the News for about 20 hours straight, have slept less than 10 hours between the three of us. Dad won’t shut off the radio even when he is sleeping, Mom keeps playing Candy Crush. I tell Dad I wanna write about Iran; that I wanna write about repeating cycles; that I wanna speak of war, from Clinton to Bush to Trump. I try to convince him that it’s a simple comparison between our generations, that it needs not be political. Dad fultils his duty as a Persian Dad by responding with an Anecdote:

“when Iraq Struck Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, I was at work, installing a car alarm at the Mechanic shop. All I remember is hearing an otherworldly noise, and I ran back inside and faced the first person I saw: the construction worker repairing out chalk wall. I asked him “What happened?” and he answered with an anecdote:

    there once was a thief, sawing a door’s padlock in an alleyway.

    a passerby asked the thief: “What are you doing?”

    the thief said: “Playing Violin”

    the passerby said “But where is the music?”

    the thief said: “You’ll hear the music tomorrow”

Dad says the saw is on the padlock, that we’ll all hear the music soon.

***

Its 1980. Mom’s about to go to high school. Two nights before the new school-year, she falls asleep reading the biography of Gulya Koroleva.

It was one of the first books I read as an adolescent, so at the end of each summer, I’d always give that book another read. Reading about Gulya made me preoccupied with the idea of civil strife and I fell asleep thinking of war. I dreamt I’m sitting in the town square, blow drying my hair. I spot my mom from afar, she walks over to my friend’s house knocking and knocking. I continue blow drying my hair, asking my mom “What happened? What’s wrong” and She says “Haven’t you heard? We’re at war.”

I woke in terror. I couldn’t sleep from the prospect of War, so I sat up for hours in the darkness thinking of war. In my book, the Russians were bombed in the most important sites of their cities, so I let my imagination run wild. There was an oil refinery in Kermanshah at the time, so I naturally thought it’d be a great target for whomever may come! or the Radio station perhaps, or naturally the Airport. I remember thinking about how our house was exactly in the centre of all these important strategic sites in Kermanshah, and our house was the first to turn into rubble if War struck. I eventually fell asleep and did not mention anything about my dreams to anyone the next day.

the next day we were all getting ready for a new school year, so I took a bath and started to blow dry my hair at 1:45 pm. All of a sudden I heard an otherworldly noise, and almost simultaneously the phone rang. Dad answered the phone, it was my mom. She was screaming “Haven’t you heard? We’re at war.” my mouth was left agape, I don’t remember much of the rest of the day. All I remember is the Klaxons ringing, and a voice saying “Red Alert! Red Alert! We’re under threat from an Air attack! Take shelter!”

aat first there were no safe places.N no shelter. Aafter a few days of this we started receiving instructions. Mom would scream at us, grab me and my sister and drag us to safety until Klaxons rang again with “White Alert”

at first we went to school, but we had to take so many breaks from air attacks that they closed down schools. after a while it became a daily routine, sitting at home with my sister, waiting for a Red Alert to hide. After a few I grew accustomed to it. I remember once the Klaxon went off, but I didn’t move. Mom grabbed my little sister and ran into the hallway but I just kept eating my grapes and doing the crosswords. Mom was screaming at me “How can you eat at a time like this?” and I sat there calmly saying “If we’re gonna die let us die fulfilled.”

Mom and Dad saw that they needed to go to work at some point, but we couldn’t stay home alone, so after a week they sent us to the Gilan province in the north so we can distance ourselves from the border.

We went to Langerud overnight, and it opened a whole new chapter of my life. Langerud was a whole new world, people watched the news with the same indifference as anything else on television, But every time I heard the word “war” my heart sank. I lived in constant fear, checked the news about Kermanshah frequently to make sure my parents weren’t bombed. at school they called me and my sister “Wartorn”. A few times I tried to speak to some people about War, and I realized no one could grasp the truth of War, the threat of being under siege; it had no effect on their daily lives, it was just something they heard about on TV.

***

Mom’s words dwindle, and I sink into my own childhood. I remember 9/11 and the impending threat of total war. I remember George Bush constantly naming Iran as the next target. I remember playing on Grandpa’s carpet as he listened to political analysts from all walks of life breaking down “The Situation Between Iran and US”. By the age of 7 I had lived through so many “Situations Between Iran and US” that War became my number one fear. I always remember Mom saying “the body will always leave the lesser threat to battle something worse” and my body was responding. No more fear of darkness or Djinns; Just war ,whom at the time, wore a George Bush mask.

My Grandmother had a stack of carpets in her kitchen pantry, and whenever I felt most anxious, I’d creep between the layers and hide. In Darkness (A darkness which would have terrified me only a couple months prior), I found safety. maybe if no one saw me no one would attack. maybe if no one saw me I could exist without ever being targeted. maybe if no one saw me no one would bomb. “Bomb” was another word that kept popping up. After a while I grew tired. I remembered this boy in our class. His name was Erfan. He had gone to Mecca in the summer, and claimed he had learned witchcraft in the mountains. He charged 50 toman for a spell, and wrote us enchantments for getting higher grades; but I went to him with his first major commission. I gave him a whopping 500 toman and asked him to write me a “Curse”. I wanted a “Curse” to kill George Bush with. 

He took the money and said the project was very hard, that I had to wait a week. he came back a week later with a crumpled piece of paper that said “Ant over ant” ten times. He said there was a caveat; that I had to recite the Curse where there one could not hear the sound of ants walking. He said that even a Mili Decibel of sound (I swear the 7 year old boy said Mili Decibel) could nullify the Curse. 

and I recited that Curse over and over and over again. it became my own private ritual. My house and my Grandma’s house were filled with ants, so I never even bothered trying it there. I spent months in closets, toilets, wardrobes and the larger drawers that could house a tiny boy like me. I was about to give up when the Iraqi Journalist threw his shoes at George Bush. I felt like If I could just build up some more momentum I can finally kill him!

and those years passed. lived through another dozen “Situations with the US”. In high school, we had a few flag burnings. I will never forget the ritual of flag burning, but for none of the reasons you might expect. when thinking of a flag burning, one tends to think of passion, hatred, patriotism, screams etc. our school was quite secular, which means the flag burning was initiated by a higher power and then passed down to disinterested agents.

our principal burned the American flag with the same indifference as his morning announcements. a couple hundred kids let out three empty chants of “Death to America” that hardly echoed. and off to class we went, with a black smudge marking where the flag was a few hours ago. and that's how years went by, with principals balding from forced “Death To Americas”. I remember thinking of small Iranian companies that manufactured American Flags just for burning, of people who carried boxes and boxes of them to government bureaus where they were shipped out to ever balding principals nationwide. 

we needed to pass a “military test” for finishing high school, and the main requirement for this test, was spending a day at a real military camp. We all wanted to go badly since we were told we get to fire a real AK-47 at the end! we crawled through dirt, got cursed at, did sit ups and push ups and and laboured to the main event, where we were each given an AK-47 and an ambiguously opaque magazine. we shot our bullets and the real troublemakers even smuggled a few untouched bullets or empty casings in their underwear as a souvenir. But just when we thought we were about to go home, we were told to gather for a speech. the speech was simple, the private wanted to ask if anyone knew the US military budget. He told us how US spent an annual 700 billion dollars on its military budget, and how it surpassed our military by a factor of 100. He said our only hope in war was “Faith in Allah”; an entire nation’s fate relying on “InShallahs” and “MaShallahs”

and during the 2009 elections (another “Situation between Iran and US”), Dad saw his younger self in me. He saw change on the horizon, as we all did. But that change, however beneficial in the long run, would surely make us another “Burnt Generation” (as our parents’ generation is often referred to). I left Iran for Malaysia and eventually Canada, where I’d settle in Toronto. 

my first week in Toronto I met some Iranians who had spent the last 20+ years of their lives in Canada, and their first questions for me were about the demonstrations after the elections, of how they longed to be there and participate, back then I found them despicable, thought they were privileged to be secure and were projecting their survivor’s guilt on me. I started to distance myself from Iranians, and spent years without a single Iranian friend. I began to hate my past, my culture, my ethnicity. 

I was quite lonely and confused in Canada, couldn’t really connect with anyone on a personal level. I was trying too hard to fit in, which made me stick out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t till I met one of my dearest friends that it all started to change. She was a poet through and through, expressed herself without censorship, and even though she had spent more time in Canada than me, she was still fiercely Iranian. She taught me to love my country through small rituals that I had forgotten. she taught me how to love myself above all. through her I started to read contemporary Iranian poets, and felt their struggle on a macro level. I fell back in love with the endless anecdotes of Iranian life; of people who halted entire conversations to recite parables. I started speaking my mother tongue more, started reconnecting through language.

before I realized I became whomever I had mocked. I wanted to be there on the streets with my people when the riots broke out, I wanted to be there with my family when sanctions reached an all time high. I wanted to be stuck in Tehran’s traffic, experiencing everything that I had fled.

All of a sudden I felt like how my mother felt when she relocated to the north, and simultaneously I felt like all the high school girls who mocked her as “wartorn”. I was new enough to Canada to feel a strong connection with my motherland, but had left for long enough to no longer be in touch with the true predicament. I was simultaneously wartorn and privileged, torn away from home and at home safe, I was whomever I had mocked, and whomever I wished to help at the same time. in Diaspora, I had been officially torn beyond recognition. I was torn by a war of ideologies, by an impending sense of doom, by an identity beyond reconciliation. 

I stand by the radio listening and wondering about who I am, thinking of all the family that'll soon become another "burnt generation", the black smudge of a nationwide flag burning, another chore at lunchtime, awaiting the music that we shall hear soon.