Put a stop to it
15 years after the Iran-Iraq war, I have drunk the
sweet elixir of forgiveness
October 8, 2003
The Iranian
He drank the sweet elixir of martyrdom 22 years ago, and he died.
He tied a
grenade around his waist 22 years ago, and he died. He was thirteen
years
old when he slid his childlike body under the enemy tank, and he
died.
In 1986, a stamp was issued in his name, but he is dead. He looks
down upon
us from posters and murals all across our country's cities, but
he is dead.
Right or wrong, he didn't sit on the sidelines and take a worthless
position
of neutrality. Right or wrong, he was asked to grow up and enter
manhood a
decade or more earlier than any boy should have to. Right or
wrong, he was
one of many who lied about his age in order to enlist in the
war effort.
Right or wrong, he fought for our country aside hundreds of thousands
of
others. Many died along with our little boy, and they remain
nameless, right
or wrong...
Love him or hate him, Iran's leader at the time had something
of great
emotional value to say of this young soldier, of this little man, "The
value of his little heart is greater than could be described by
hundreds of
tongues and hundreds of pens..." He also should have added
a million
keystrokes on the computer.
I had heard the name Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh in many books
and war movies
when I was younger, but I never truly knew his story until I
read an article
about the twenty-first commemoration of his death on CNN.com.
Now, I know a
little. Now, I want to know more. Not only about Fahmideh, but
about the
ones whose deaths were not commemorated through the years.
From
what the
American history books tell me, nearly 1,000,000 of our soldiers
died. From
what I read in the news, we are still exchanging the bodies
of our war
prisoners with Iraq. From what I hear, there are men and women
and children
still in our hospitals today, dying little by little, of the
after-effects of Iraqi chemical warfare. Living a daily death.
A cycle of pain
that never
ends, heaviness of breathing, bodily pain, scars; longlasting
reminders of
the bombings and the tanks and the flying shrapnel.
So what does this have to do with us? Us, meaning those who were
merely
toddlers when all the horrors were taking place. It's ironic
that I might
have been taking my first steps at about the same time that men
who were
fighting for my country were losing their limbs and their lives.
What do I
do now, 15 years after the end of the fighting?
There are things best not remembered, but I am glad to have read
the article
I did about Fahmideh. I am glad that I my mind was refreshed
in the history
department. All around the case the go to war with Iraq today
is the Iran
issue. Americans like to quote it and analyze it and repeat it
over and
over and over. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranians.
Let's
give them a hand. They finally let it out. But where were they
twenty years
ago? Why did no one in power say a word and why did no one take
a stand?
I am Iranian. I used to feel that if there was an attack, it
would be
justified. It would be the perfect revenge for two decades ago.
But now I
know. I have drunk the sweet elixir of forgiveness. I have tasted
from the
cup of peace. I have found the answer to that question of: What
do we do?
We put a stop to it. Whatever is past is past. The future begins
with us and
the choices we make today. If today I stand for peace, if today,
my heart
cries out to Iraqis, maybe tomorrow they will
stand for me.
The world turns in strange ways. What was up, falls down, and
vice versa.
If only someone had taken a stand so long ago...
Think of all the little boys who would have grown to be great
men...
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