‘I don’t know…Well, we didn’t know until the lists came out...the published lists.
He was taken in 1981. My older brother had fled the country. So they came for him, for the younger brother…our youngest. He was a student at the University of Mousl.
My mother visited him when they would let her, for a year or so. He would grope at the dirty bars that separated them, and say, “I’m fine. It’s only a matter of time. They have nothing against me. They’ll let me go, eventually.” And they did let him go…The next time she visited, they told her he was no longer there.’
Eventually, his spirit was 'let go'…with many others, I think. They swam in the mass graves, surfaced at the pits of where the bodies had been strewn, spat back at their killers and subsided into peace down in the beds of the pits…collectively.
‘They don’t know what it means to be Shiite. They think it’s a sin. We are no more sinners than they are…Who is to say what God’s tolerance will know?…Ours is a way of mercy...a mercy that we have never grasped from this world...
I just cannot imagine…what his soul was sputtering, when they dragged them there…in hundreds and thousands. They must have held onto each other for strength…or maybe they cried in unity...clasped their sweating palms together and lifted their heads towards the sky. There’s comfort in going together. You’re not alone.’
She closes her large eyes for a moment. And the pain seeps through the tightly sealed lashes.
‘Then we were all thrown at the border. They didn’t want us, and the Iranians thought we were insurgents. As the trucks unloaded us, their burden, I observed my small years roll onto the desert floor. The heat came through our feet and our skin. I remember my father with tears in his eyes, helping my mother to the shade of a date palm. We, who had lived in palaces, were going to live in slums. It was our fate and we accepted it. God kept his merciful eyes upon us…always. And through the years we waited. We heard nothing.
Then they published those lists yesterday…and my mother’s lashes since have not fluttered…In her eyes, she is still waiting for my brother to come home.’
He was taken in 1981. My older brother had fled the country. So they came for him, for the younger brother…our youngest. He was a student at the University of Mousl.
My mother visited him when they would let her, for a year or so. He would grope at the dirty bars that separated them, and say, “I’m fine. It’s only a matter of time. They have nothing against me. They’ll let me go, eventually.” And they did let him go…The next time she visited, they told her he was no longer there.’
Eventually, his spirit was 'let go'…with many others, I think. They swam in the mass graves, surfaced at the pits of where the bodies had been strewn, spat back at their killers and subsided into peace down in the beds of the pits…collectively.
‘They don’t know what it means to be Shiite. They think it’s a sin. We are no more sinners than they are…Who is to say what God’s tolerance will know?…Ours is a way of mercy...a mercy that we have never grasped from this world...
I just cannot imagine…what his soul was sputtering, when they dragged them there…in hundreds and thousands. They must have held onto each other for strength…or maybe they cried in unity...clasped their sweating palms together and lifted their heads towards the sky. There’s comfort in going together. You’re not alone.’
She closes her large eyes for a moment. And the pain seeps through the tightly sealed lashes.
‘Then we were all thrown at the border. They didn’t want us, and the Iranians thought we were insurgents. As the trucks unloaded us, their burden, I observed my small years roll onto the desert floor. The heat came through our feet and our skin. I remember my father with tears in his eyes, helping my mother to the shade of a date palm. We, who had lived in palaces, were going to live in slums. It was our fate and we accepted it. God kept his merciful eyes upon us…always. And through the years we waited. We heard nothing.
Then they published those lists yesterday…and my mother’s lashes since have not fluttered…In her eyes, she is still waiting for my brother to come home.’