Fahimeh's Letters

By Alireza Kamari

Iranians are used to see a young woman walking in front of others and chanted slogans in the martyrs’¬ funeral processions. However, unlike the other times, she wore a white wedding chador. Later, people realized that the ceremony was for her husband and her name was Fahimeh Babaeianpour, a high school teacher .¬Fahimeh's Letters is the title of a book collected from her letters to her husband in Iran-Iraq war. She, who remembers God all the time, reminds her husband repeatedly of the religious practices. She herself studies¬, teaches, gives speech on the martyrs¬' anniversaries and the religious-cultural events. She is also engaged in the cultural activities in the mosques and helps with war logistics. Fahimeh is a teacher who is a good friend for her husband, reminding him of the real truth which can be easily seen in Gholamreza’s letters. This book, published in the early 1990s, has been one of the best-selling books in the area of the Holy Defense (Iran-Iraq war) literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781794835399

Book preview

Fahimeh's Letters

Fahimeh’s Letters

Fahimeh Babaeianpour

Alireza Kamari

icdi

Fahimeh’s Letters

This is a work of nonfiction. Names, charac- ters, places, and incidents are based upon a true story and were obtained by a face-to-face interview. In this book no pseudonyms have been used.

Author: Alireza Kamari © 1999

Published by arrangement with the Translator All rights reserved.

Copyright© 2019 by Islamic Civilization Discourse

Institute

Translation © 2019 by Tohid Asadi Editing © 2019 by Farhad Mokhlesi

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information contact:

Islamic Civilization Discourse Institute,

Translation Group

13 Rasht Street, Hafez Street, Tehran, I.R.Iran ICDI Publishing House website address is http://www.icdi.ir

Cover and Design: Mohammad Hasan Moradof

ISBN: 978-600-96322-4-4

Electronic edition: Decembor 2019

Originally published by Soore-e Mehr © 2003 ISBN-13: 978-1-79483-539-9

Contents

Prologue

The Letters

Letter Number One

Letter Number Two

Letter Number Three

Letter Number Four

Letter Number Five

Letter Number Six

Letter Number Seven

Letter Number Eight

Letter Number Nine

Letter Number Two

Letter Number Three

Letter Number Four

Letter Number Five

Letter Number Six

Letter Number Seven

Letter Number Eight

Letter Number One

Letter Number Two

Letter Number Three

Letter Number Five

Letter Number Six

Letter Number Seven

Letter Number Nine

Letter Number Ten

Letter Number Eleven

Letter Number Twelve

Letter Number Thirteen

Letter Number Fourteen

Letter Number Sixteen

Letter Number Eighteen

A part of Fahimeh’s will which was written at the age of nineteen

It is the laps of the women from which men ascend [to the Divine Perfection].

(Imam Khomeini)

O, God!

Two types of drops are precious before you: The drops of tear and the drops of blood; O, God! Please help us shed our tears for you!

And sacrifice our blood for the sake of you, O all-compassionate God!

In memory of Martyr Gholamreza, Who shed tears and was martyred.

Fahimeh

Publisher’s Preface

To help complete the image of women during Iran’s eight-year holy defense against a glob-   al invasion, we have certainly not taken steps which are great enough, and there is still a long way ahead.

Whatever has been depicted thus far has been but vague shadows of the powerful presence of women in the war. This is while the visible and invisible army of women shouldered half of a load of this Sacred Defense.

Fahimeh Babaianpour was one of those vague shadows; a sun covered by the infertile clouds of advertisements who was ignored much like the rest of women, who had a Jihad-like role.

To this end, the present book, Fahimeh’s Let- ters, presents you with some rays of light from that sun.

We are deeply thankful to all those who con- tributed to this book in some way or another, most particularly to Mr. Ali Ozmaeian as well as the Babaianpour and Sadegh-Zadeh families.

The Resistance Literature and Arts Office

Prologue

●…The blossoming of buds, the blooming of sprouts and the freshness of meadows no lon- ger have the neglectful vitality of times of idle- ness in them. Those nonchalant days have been now overshadowed by lightheartedness and a gladsome grief burning in solitude. The cheers of painless times are gone, and now the color- ful spring beckons the wise ones who learn from others to realize the secrets of the signs. Behind that amazing uproar, the shedding blue eyes of the sky douse the bereaved anemones of plains of love in patience and health, and the clouds are but the whitish pieces of silk which cover the tears of the mourning heavy-hearted. Thunders are whining cries of the sky. However, the zeph- yr is not a trusted confidant of the sanctum of the beloved; it is a sigh, a desolate cry of con- solation that whispers the pain of separation

from the migrated beloveds in the ear of your heart. The dew is the farewell tear of grass in the morning; and the sad songs of the springs, the torn necks of the mountains, the foamy mouths of the waterfalls, and the threnodies of the run- ning rivers flowing onto the ground are all rath- er different now. There lies but a secret in the demanding prayers of the trees and in the hands raised up toward the boundless sky in the hope of reaching companions ascending to the suppli- cation threshold of the God of love. It’s been a while since gardens have abandoned their affin- ity, with no excuse, left all pleasure of the com- panionship of flowers, warbling the mourning songs for the secluded companions. For quite some time now, everything fits a different mean- ing and color together with a numinous belief in your mind beyond the habitual eyes in the blooming season, and the alleys of your hearts are ornamented with engravings, looking at which you would whisper:

It’s springtime, and the leaves are falling Our dears and beloved ones are departing Green leaves have turned red in the spring Our hearts are really grieved

Plains tell the stories of tulips Eyes are wetted with dew Springs of tears are dried up

So much as they welled up for the ascension of the earthly beings¹

This melancholy piece of writing depicts the characteristics of a flower which grew in bloom- ing times. Like a glimmering sign in the green clothing of spring, she manifested the glory of God. She was the guiding light in dark wonder- ment and a blessed companion who listened to many songs during her short earthly lifetime. Her reed-like voice was the song of separation from the canebrake of the eternity. She smelled like the fragrance of Paradise. Her words and whispers smelled of an imminent migration. She didn’t want herself enslaved by the earth. Love, tears, and prayers were her companions on her retreat. She did understand the secrets of the signs. Alas, the autumn of her life befell her too early. Amid the tangle of beliefs, she sprouted in the spring, and surprisingly enough, the au- tumn of her life was in the spring, too. When the storms of events of life were taking her to the

1. . Excerpted from Parviz Habib Beigi’s poems.

boundless eternity, as she had been aspiring to, she joined the solitude seekers in the realm of divine closeness to God.

●● It was around evening in the winter on the Lady of the Two Worlds’¹ (s.a) birthday and the Women’s Day, and I was going to host the ones I had neither seen nor known. The only thing I did know was that two people were on the way and that in less than no time, thanks to them, a new horizon would be opened to me.

My heart was unconsciously filled with an exciting and breathtaking feeling. Seconds were going by one after another, much like the mo- ments of a lifetime, and I was deeply attracted to an image of the days of justice and courage; memoirs of bravery and martyrdom.

Soon, the presence of the two guests made me stand up as a sign of respect. After exchang- ing greetings, they expressed their joy at taking part in the day’s celebration. They had come to speak about their beloved ones to a group of women on the occasion of this auspicious day.

1. . Fatimah Zahra (605 or 615 AD-632 AD), daughter of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Imam Ali's (a.s) wife and mother of Shia Imams. In Islamic texts she is compared with Holy Mary (s.a).

I was all ears listening to the warm and doleful voice of one of them letting it take me to the edg- es of pure beliefs. The tone of her voice put such a sensuous and exhilarating grief in my heart, and now and then in the middle of her words, I uttered scattered sentences as a sign of approval, as if I were their confidant. She was different from the very first day, she said. Her manners, the way she kept others’ company and her way of talking was way different from those of her friends’. Though she was among us, we failed in knowing her well enough. It was only after she was gone that we got to know who she had real- ly been; We have not been able to come to terms with her departure yet. She had a beautiful life; even small children cried their eyes out when they heard the news of her departure. Anyone who happened to meet her once would get at- tracted by her manners.

After a while, I came to my senses. I hadn’t been aware of the time’s passing. It seemed as if the time too had stopped to listen to the words. Then, they gave me a few pages of Fahimeh’s memoirs and having set a certain but indefinite date, bid me farewell, leaving me all alone in a state of astonishment and tears. They were Fa- himeh’s mother and her only sister.

A season has passed since that winter’s eve- ning before the trusted confidants of  secrets  sip this piece of writing much like a delicious drink. During this lapse of time, some parts of Fahimeh’s Letters have been published in ‘The Front and the War’ page in the Jomhouri Eslami (Islamic Republic) Daily, keeping such valuable monuments from being buried under the waves of oblivion. And now, at a very gloomy Friday evening, I am hurrying to the cradle of kindness and affection where Fahimeh had been born and flourished in. Today is the agreed day, and I am in the close vicinity of the place wherein Fahimeh had been living before traveling to the next world. What is exposed to the eyes of the reader in the following paragraphs are a few excerpts from Fahimeh’s biography as collected through research and by speaking to her parents and her other relatives.

●●● In March 1964, Fahimeh was born to a family wherein tradition and culture as well as thoughts and values were all based on Islam. This newborn baby was a blessing to her fami- ly from the very beginning, and from that point on, the little family walked into events that had

not occurred to them before, including trav- eling to holy places and making a pilgrimage¹ to Imam Reza’s² (a.s) holy shrine as well as the holy shrine of the commander of martyrs, Imam Hussain³ (a.s). Apparently, it was during those days that Fahimeh’s father dreamt of a pious old man rescuing his second child from