Lost Roofs

The houses of Khorram Shahr as remembered by their residents

• Written by Nasim Marashi
• Translated by Poupeh Missaghi
• Photo: Payam Ghomshezadeh, houses of Kout District, Khorram Shahr | 2018
• First published in Persian in Nadastan Magazine, 2018

Houses become eternal in the minds of their residents; eternal and beautiful; their shortcomings forgotten, their virtues accentuated. The ruined wall is not remembered. Instead, the small yard looms so large in the mind that one can run from its one end to the other. The homemade dishes become the most delicious and the gatherings the happiest. The joyous days spent in the houses that merely survive in memory are never to be repeated. Houses remain eternal in the minds of their residents. Especially if they have been lost to some bitter incident. Like a beloved whose death has been hard and who becomes even more loved.

The residents of Khorram Shahr opened their eyes one day and realized that they had lost all their lives. They left home to run an errand and were never able to return. They stayed home and watched as mortar bombs made holes in their walls. They thought the war would end in a month or so and they would come back. They thought they would come back in a year or two after the war ended. The war ended, but Khorram Shahr was never rebuilt. The houses of Khorram Shahr remain alive, with all their details, in the memories of the city’s residents. It never got back to life after the Iran-Iraq war, but the eternal stories of its houses engraved in the memories of its residents rebuild a strong city that no enemy can ever destroy with any bullets, tanks, or bulldozers.

Parvin, 50 years old

Sepehr Street on Sa’di Avenue had rows of houses on both sides. Ours was in the middle of the street. When we opened the door, we would first enter a hallway. The living room had a door in the hallway and another one onto the yard. We would take guests to the room from the door in the hallway, but when it was just us and we were already outside in the yard, we would use the one in the yard. In the living room, we had a set of beige furniture. The room had two windows that opened onto the street. They were to the right of the room. We had put my sister’s wedding pictures on the windows’ ledges. All the way to the left, we had put the TV.

To the right of the hallway was the entrance to the yard. At the end of the hallway, right in front of the entrance door, was another room. This room, too, had another door that opened to the yard, but this one was smaller than the living room. We had put our refrigerator and my mom’s closet in there. The kitchen was at the corner of the yard. To the left of the hallway, there was a staircase that led to the rooftop. We also had another room up there. The bathroom was up there too. The room upstairs was huge. There was a bed on either side for my sister and me. We had put our stuff in the closet there and in suitcases under the beds. At first, my father had rented this house, but eventually we bought it for 100,000 Tomans. At the time, my other sisters were college students in other cities, and my brother studied in England.

When the war broke out, I was about to begin middle school. It was the first time I had to wear the Islamic manteau. Before that, we didn’t have to do so. Inside the house, we could hear clinking sounds. And in the sky, we were seeing things that we couldn’t recognize. The neighbors would come over and say we had to escape. But my sister and I wanted to stay. I wanted to wear my uniform and go to school. My sister wanted to help me out. In the end, my brother came back from England and forced us to leave. He had bought a Citroën Dyane. We left only on the condition that we would leave for Ahwaz and come back soon. So, we didn’t take anything with us. No money, no gold, no clothing. We just got in the car and left. We were told we would leave but come back the moment things got quiet.

We never returned to Khorram Shahr. We were told not to. Only once, many years later when I had just gotten married, we went to visit. It was the 1370s (1990s). There was nothing there. Anybody we asked didn’t know where our house was. The Iraqis had leveled the whole area with bulldozers. We had a neighbor whose son, Dariush, had opened a store in Abadan. We decided to go ask him. We asked around to find his store. He said that of all his family, only he and his wife lived there, and they had gotten themselves a new house. His childhood house had been leveled. He came to Khorram Shahr with us, but he could only show us the whereabouts of our house. He pointed to a flat empty stretch of land and said, “Our houses were from here onward.”

Reza, 78 years old

Our house was on Ordibehesht Street. Number 1, Vahid Street, Ordibehesht Street. It was two hundred square meters. The main door opened right into the house. We had a large room, a living room, and a kitchen. The yard was behind the building. In the back of the yard, we had built a room for Amir and Pouyan, my sons. When the war broke out, they were around eight or nine years old. The house of my wife Fakhri’s parents was on the other side of Ordibehesht Street. Our yards shared a wall in the back. They also had a beautiful little pool. Their house was like ours: the entrance door opened into the house, which then led to the yard. We had made a door in the wall between the two yards. Whenever the kids wanted to go to their grandmother’s, they would go through that door and come back. Whenever I went to Kuwait or elsewhere abroad, my wife and the kids would stay on the other side.

When the bombing started, we slept under the dining table for several nights. We couldn’t believe what was happening. We thought the government would not let a war happen. This was just some noise and would soon end. When we were forced to leave, we didn’t take anything with us; no money, no belongings. We didn’t even wear socks. Even our wedding rings were left on the dressing table . We later heard that only half an hour after we left, the Iraqis reached Ahwaz-Khorram Shahr Road. Whoever had stayed behind had been taken as a war prisoner. We had been saved by only half an hour.

We got a house in Tehran and sent the kids to school. We listened to the news from far away, hearing how the city was falling, how we were losing all our lives day after day. A few months after Khorram Shahr was freed, I received permission to go back with the families of the martyrs of war. It was a completely different city, but I managed to find our home among the rubble. Nothing remained of our belongings. The house had been hit in several spots on the roof and was full of holes. Many of the houses had been flattened for war logistics, but ours was still standing. When I saw it standing, I decided to rebuild it. I left the kids back in Tehran and kept returning to rebuild our house. But when I started, I realized it had been destroyed from within. We had to bring a bulldozer and demolish it like the rest of the houses. We did, and I rebuilt it. But we never went back to that house. Khorram Shahr never came back to life.

Saeed, 55 years old

Our street was called Safa. It led to the Safa Bazaar of Khorram Shahr. It was a dead-end with only four or five houses. Ours was at the very end. The main door was an iron double one. I remember the color. It was blue. When we entered, there was a hallway; on the right was the kitchen and on the left, the staircase to the rooftop. The hallway led to the yard. The rooms were around the yard. We had three. The bigger one was the living room, and we had the TV in there. The other room also opened onto the yard. There was another room too, which opened onto the other two rooms and didn’t have direct access into the yard. The living room was mainly used for entertaining guests. It had a window gas air conditioner, and on very hot nights, we would all sleep there. We didn’t have a living room furniture set. It wasn’t that common back then. We used to sit around the room, on the carpet that covered the floor. We would sometimes put a cushion behind our backs or behind the backs of our guests.

The roof was made of thatch. In the summer, we would always sleep on the rooftop. In the afternoons, my late grandma, my sister, or I – if I didn’t get lazy – would go up and water the ground so that it would stay cool to sleep on later.

When the war broke out, I was sixteen. My father was traveling for work and had no way to get back to the city. Everyone was leaving, and the roads had become one way. My father managed to arrange from far away for a car. Our neighbor agreed to take us to Ahwaz in his Peykan in return for twenty liters of gas. There was a shortage of fuel at the time. We didn’t take anything with us. I had a bag ready and filled with my clothes, but I didn’t take it with me. I felt ashamed, thought that if someone saw us, they would think we were running away. Nobody thought the war would go on for so long. We all left the city only with the clothes we were wearing. We took nothing. Not even our birth certificates.

After Khorram Shahr was freed, I once returned to the city with my father. To enter the city, we had to get a permit. And we had to be accompanied. We told them we were locals and didn’t need a guide, but they wouldn’t hear it. They said they should accompany us to show us the safe areas. Many spots around the city were either heavily mined or had explosive traps. When we entered the city with our guide, we couldn’t believe our eyes. We did not recognize Khorram Shahr. It was ruined beyond imagination. If the guide hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t even have been able to tell where we were. Our house was in an area that was completely flattened. So was grandma’s house. We knew the rough whereabouts of the house, but not the exact location. We used to have a bitter orange tree in the yard, and I was certain that if I could find the remains of the tree, I could find our house too. But not even a leaf of it was left behind. We were completely lost in Khorram Shahr. We never went back.

Zahra, 68 years old

Our house was in Chehel-metri Street. A corner house in front of the city’s Great Mosque. The plot of land was four hundred square meters with a two hundred square meter foundation. The house had two huge bedrooms and a large kitchen. First, we entered a hallway, which led to a large living room. Then there was another hallway that led directly to a large yard, all over which I had planted flowers and vegetables. The bedrooms were big. One had its own bathroom. It was a very comfortable house. The kitchen window opened onto the Chehel-metri Street. My furniture was a mixture of beige and olive colors. It was made of walnut wood and velvet engraved upholstery, which we had ordered from Tehran. Our china cupboard as well as the dining and bedroom sets were ordered from Tehran too. I lived almost ten years in that house and had three little kids.

It was only a week since I had returned from a visit to Tehran. I had renovated the house, had it painted and done other similar work. I had bought some new stuff in Tehran and shipped everything to Khorram Shahr by train. I had also bought Termeh fabric and other things for my sister’s wedding. Everything was still in the train station storage when the war broke out. I never managed to go pick up the furniture from the station. I lost it all.

On the thirty-first of Shahrivar, we were at home when they brought us the news that Mohammad, the son of a family member, was martyred in front of their house. A mortar shell had hit him in the heart. We left to go to his funeral in the city of Shushtar, but when we wanted to return home, we realized there was no way back. I wanted to go back no matter what. We even went as far as Ahwaz, but the road to Khorram Shahr was blocked. As hard as we tried, we were not allowed to pass through. All our belongings, gold and jewelry, money, identity cards, clothes . . . everything remained in Khorram Shahr. My husband and his brothers, may they all rest in peace, loved jewelry. Wherever they traveled, they would bring back jewelry and gold. One of the brothers had a huge safe installed in a wall, which could not be moved. Whenever my sisters-in-law and I wanted to travel, we would put our jewelry and other precious stuff in there. Before I went to Tehran to shop for the house renovations, I left all the gold jewelry I had in that safe. When I returned, during that one week, I didn’t get a chance to go pick them up. They remained in that safe and were all gone. The house and its walls had been demolished, the safe most probably taken away.

After Khorram Shahr was freed, I really wanted to go back to the city, but it was dangerous. One day, I told my husband I had to go back and check on our life. I thought I could save a lot of my belongings. Or at least bring with me as mementos some things that had remained. My husband had a hard time with that idea. He thought I would be devastated, destroyed. But one day I made up my mind. With my younger brother and an employee of my husband, we went to Ahwaz to continue on to Khorram Shahr. The journey was very hard. There were many checkpoints, and we were constantly thwarted. I kept telling them my life, my house, was back there, but they said we could not enter the city. I went to the governor’s and the province offices and eventually succeeded in getting an entry permit.

Khorram Shahr was ruined. The walls of our house were full of shell holes, and the walls around our yard had completely collapsed, but the house itself was still standing. It had been turned into an Iraqi outpost. Both our and our neighbor Ataghi’s house had been turned into a military camp. The Iraqis had lived in them. My washing machine had been filled with soil and used for fortification. Some kind of trench had been dug in our dining room. The dining table was removed, its legs broken, and the top surface put over the hole. It seemed that they had hidden some stuff in there to come back and get later. I wanted to move the tabletop to see what was inside the hole, but I was told it was dangerous, that it could be mined.

In the end, I was able to take some stuff with me, but everything was full of shell holes and destroyed. I brought back with me some of my wedding porcelain dining set. I emptied the washing machine and brought it too. It was full of holes and could not be used, but I wanted it as a memento. I had a handwoven carpet, of which only half remained. I brought back that half. I had it washed and kept it for a while as a memento.

Being displaced was very hard for me. We had to live at other peoples’ houses. I felt my kids being devastated under the pressure. When I realized we could not go back to Khorram Shahr, I did all I could to go live in Tehran with my husband and kids. We both worked very hard to rebuild our life and raise our kids.

After the war ended, I went back to Khorram Shahr once again to see my house. An Arab family lived in it. I knocked on the door and asked if I could go inside. I told them that it was my house, and I had lived there for ten years. They welcomed me in with open arms. I went in and saw the house. It was still full of shell holes. I had a very large tablecloth that I had crocheted myself. I saw that they had thrown it over to cover their mattresses and bedspreads. I asked the woman of the house if I could take it with me. I told her how I had crocheted it myself, how it would be the only memento I would have from Khorram Shahr. She immediately folded it and handed it to me. I brought it back, washed it, and to this day, it still covers my dining table. It is a wonderful memento from the best home I’ve ever had.