maraga
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Registered: 09-2003
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Hostage for a day
I wrote this because someone saved my life one day and I always wanted people to know what he did. This is For Massoud...from jolie...miss you
It had rained the night before leaving giant puddles and making mud out of the hard packed dirt that made up the alleys in Bandar Pahlavi. I picked my way through the puddles and squelching through the mud and complaining to myself about having to get Paul off to preschool. I was rushing was already late to catch the bus and knew in the back of my mind that I was going to miss it and didn’t really want to rouse my mother’s wrath about not going to school. I knew I wasn’t going to make it but tried to make myself go faster anyways. Can’t really rush in mud, doesn’t work, no traction. By the time I had made my way home covered in mud and got cleaned up I had missed the bus. We had no telephone for me to use to call my mother at work and tell her what had happened, not that it mattered had no idea how to call her anyways.
I had decided that with the whole day ahead of me I would go over to my best friend, Soriaya’s house and see what she was doing. She had very different school hours and days than I did and I never knew when she would be home or not and even if she weren’t maybe her older sisters would be home Sewalah and Sima. I never minded helping them out with chores or maybe Papa Yousefdoust was home and I could help him feed his pigeons. Anything other than sitting at home cold and damp wondering what Mom was going to say.
All Iranian homes have a ten foot concrete wall around them with tall solid metal gates, there was a buzzer or intercom to alert whoever was home of a visitor. The Yousefdoust’s gate was dark blue and I had always liked it the best in the alley because everyone else’s was some shade of brown including our own.
I rang the buzzer and waited for someone to pop their head out of the kitchen window to see who was calling. Then there were footsteps and Soriaya was asking who it was I called back that it was me. I could hear movement on the other side as she unlocked the gate and opened it. She only opened it a little ways before my arm was grabbed and I was pulled into the courtyard and the gate clanged shut behind me.
He was tall and blood was streaking down his face from a hole on the left side of his head where I could see a gleam of white whenever he removed the bloodied rag he kept pressing to it with his one hand while the other held the machine gun pointed at me. I opened my mouth to ask Soriaya what was going on but he thought I was going to scream and quickly pushed the end of the gun into my chest and said quiet or I shoot. Wasn’t a hard decision, I shut my mouth with a snap and followed the two of them to the backyard. Soriaya’s older brother Massoud was patching up the leg of another man half sitting on a table Papa used to play cards on. Massoud’s face was drawn and white and as we came around the corner he looked up and stared at me with his dark brown eyes and I saw the fear and worry in them before they went black and pitiless. I looked at the man half sitting half laying on the table saw the puddle of blood beneath it and the ripples as more blood dripped into it. Saw the small hole in the front of his calf oozing blood and saw the gaping hole in the back that dripped blood in a steady rhythm. Massoud was packing wads of cloths into the wound and trying to staunch the blood. The man though white and sweating profusely, never shook but was still every muscle tensed and tight. His hands gripped the table’s edge and the knuckles were white even through the blood and grime darkening them. He watched everything Massoud did with every sinew and tendon taut and strained in his neck as he looked down at his leg. There was no sound just harsh shallow breathing and the steady drip of blood into the puddle and then finally the man on the table spoke in a hoarse tense voice “You will have to sew it shut.” Massoud just nodded and stood up, he turned to Soriaya and asked her to get thread and a needle. She moved to go inside when the man with the gun said no he would go. Massoud argued that Soriaya would get it faster than he could and did he want his friend to bleed to death while he searched for needle and thread. The man with the gun pressed his lips together and nodded to Soriaya and warned her if she used the phone to call the Gendarme he would shoot me and Massoud, then he pressed the end into my side against my ribs and told her to hurry. Massoud began to argue to let Soriaya and I go once she returned with the needle and thread, that he would do what they asked if they would let us go. He spoke quickly and angrily to the man holding the gun and as he spoke I finally understood that he knew them, that their choice of house hadn’t been random. Soriaya was back quickly and the man with the gun agreed that we could go inside on the condition that we stand by the back window where he could see us.
We stood and watched Massoud sew the one man’s leg up, black thread glistening with blood as it moved through his flesh. As we watched Soriaya quietly told me what had happened.
There had been a huge demonstration at the town graveyard that morning, one that was against the Shah and for Khomeini. She looked at me and asked if I’d heard the gunfire and I shrugged and said there was always gunfire. She said that the demonstrators had brought guns and baseball bats and that it had turned into a riot. Other demonstrators who were anti Khomeini and pro Shah had heard about the demonstration and had decided to show up and have a go at the anti Shah demonstrators. Then the police were called and the riot turned into a bloodbath. The two men knew Massoud and when they were injured made their way down the mordab, the swamp/sewer that ran through the outskirts of the city, to where they knew Massoud lived, climbed the back wall and had demanded Massoud help them. Massoud had known about the demonstration and had told them not to go that it was too dangerous, but they had gone anyways. The man on the table had been shot in the leg by police and the other someone had hit him a few times with a baseball bat, which had gouged out a chunk of flesh from his head all the way down to the skull. They had just gotten there when I had arrived and she had been forced at gunpoint to the gate to find out who was calling and either get rid of them or bring them inside as another hostage, depending on who it was. Being 10 and a girl I was not much of a threat but made a really good hostage and was a foreigner to boot, so she was told to open the door and then he pulled me inside.
As she talked we watched Massoud sew up the leg and then sew up the gunman’s head. As he worked on them he argued angrily with them, his face white with rage. I watched him not knowing what he was saying but knew our fate laid with his arguments. Knew that these two men were anti Shah and pro Khomeini and my being a foreigner was not going to save me. Could see in their eyes hatred and rage when they looked at me. Saw them look at my breasts and knowing I looked much older than 10, understood what that look meant. Soriaya wasn’t really afraid, I realized that despite being 4 years older she didn’t understand the danger. I looked at her and wondered at her naivete and ignorance. I was watching Massoud wondering what he would bargain with for our freedom and grew afraid that it would be me that would be the price for their freedom. With the number of dark looks shot towards the window where we stood I became more and more sure that I was going to be the price they demanded for their safety. Watching Massoud’s face I realized that the reason she had nothing to fear, was that there was nothing to fear. They weren’t going to hurt Massoud or Soriaya, it was me Massoud was trying to free. I was blond, blue eyed, built like I was 16 and I was a foreigner, good for raping then selling or just selling or holding hostage for money from whatever country I was from. I was the one in danger not them it had all been threats and no action not even a slap or a backhand to show they meant business. I stood there looking down at Massoud and he looked up and he saw I understood what was really happening and winked and turned away back to sewing up the flesh over the exposed skull of the gunman. He had done it he had won my freedom, I never knew what he bargained for me never knew what he had promised them, he would never talk about it just hug me and kiss my cheek and call me his jolie, his beautiful.
Soriaya and I waited in the house until dark and the two men climbed back over the back wall and disappeared. I went home and never told my mother about the men and that I had been a hostage for a day. She wasn’t as angry as I thought she would be that I hadn’t gone to school that I had been late. She had gotten a phone call saying that I wasn’t at school and then she got another phone call telling her about the riot and so when she got home and saw me there she only did some shouting now hitting. You see my bus stop was in the town graveyard right where the riot had been and if I hadn’t been late and fallen in the mud I would’ve shown up right in the middle of the riot turned bloodbath.
I never told anyone about my day as hostage until I was much older and I never did find out how Massoud won my freedom, and I never will, he drowned when I was 12, he was only 22.
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12/17/2003, 10:49 pm
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