Childhood is full of memories, some sweet, some bitter, but it often represents a time of simplicity. One of the greatest blessings in life is to have a happy childhood. That’s rare, though—hence the word “blessing.” Mine? It was… unique, intertwined with war and oppression, yet colored with pure moments of childhood adventures and loving family members. It’s impossible to think about my childhood without remembering the sound of red alerts. I grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War, also known as the eight-year imposed war. At the time, I was a six-year-old girl who had not yet started school. My family and I lived in Tehran, but all our relatives lived in a village in southern Khorasan. In those days, red alerts had become a normal part of our lives due to the constant threat of aerial bombardment.
“Quick, everyone!” my father would say whenever the red alert sounded, and we’d all run to the basement.
The basement was our shelter, a small, dark room with only a lamp hanging from the ceiling. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure if it was really that safe, but it would do. My mother always kept a bag filled with dried fruits, bread, and snacks along with two or three blankets. I filled my backpack with my dolls, a notebook, and my colored pencils. Whenever I became tired, I’d put my head on my mother’s lap and she’d caress my hair until I fell asleep. We’d stay there until the alert was over.
Sometimes, when alerts grew more frequent, my father would say, “Pack your things. We’re going to the village. We’ll stay there for a while.”
And I’d scream out of happiness, jumping. I was happy because I knew I was going to a place I loved the most. For me, war meant travelling, seeing my grandparents, and running in the open plains happily. But for my parents, the war had different meanings: fear, constant anxiety, and restless nights. I was little, and I didn’t know why my mother cried when we packed our things.
“When will we arrive?” I’d ask my parents repeatedly from the back seat of the bus.
“We’re almost there. Be patient,” was always their answer.
I always sat by the window to see the deserts, villages, and towns on the way. Sometimes, I saw sheep and camels looking at the bus as if they wanted to ask, “Where are you going?” I’d press my face against the glass and stick my tongue out at them, only to see no reaction in response.
The moment we arrived at my grandparents’ house, all my worries would disappear. I liked the village. I had the greatest time going out and playing, especially in nature. My grandparents had a large house with many rooms. My uncles, elder brother, and I would team up and play soccer or dodgeball every evening.
“Zahra is on our team,” my uncle shouted one evening.
“Good,” my brother said. “She can’t play at all.”
To my brother’s dismay, we won that game.
There were fig and pomegranate trees in the yard, and sometimes our ball got stuck among their dense branches. After playing, when we became tired, we lay right beneath the trees, closing our eyes, light dancing on our eyelids. At the time, I didn’t know those days would become the best days of my life.
In the village, the air was crisp and refreshing, and the sky was always so clear. Three times a week, usually on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, we all went for grapes, wheat, saffron, and barberry harvest. My grandparents worked hard tending their garden and field, and we tried to help them as much as we could.
“Look how many grapes I picked!” I’d announce proudly.
My grandfather always praised me, no matter how little was in my basket. “Good job, little farmer.”
When he moved the grapes to the big baskets, he did it slowly as if they were diamonds. I tried to do it the way he did, but sometimes they fell from my hand to the ground.
My grandfather would then laugh. “No problem. Let it be there for birds.”
During breaks, my uncles would gather dry twigs and branches, build a fire, and prepare tea.
“Tea is ready!” my grandmother would call, and everyone would eagerly gather around.
After hours of work under the sun, nothing sounded better than a steaming cup of tea. The tea my grandmother made was different. Its colour was darker than the one we had in Tehran, it also tasted different. Maybe it was because of water from the aqueduct, or maybe because it was being made over wood and fire.
After lunch, we’d play hide-and-seek, tag, or tug-of-war before returning home. We were exhausted but happy.
One night we had chicken. I went to the cookhouse and waited for my grandmother to give me a piece of cooked chicken. She always gave me a small piece of whatever she was cooking: fries, chicken, roasted walnuts.
“It hasn’t cooked yet,” she said, “wait.”
But I couldn’t, so I snuck a bite of hot, half-cooked chicken and ended up with a blister in my mouth. I enjoyed it though; it is still the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten.
After dinner, my youngest uncle and I eagerly broke the wishbone, each making a wish and breaking it in half. I often won, and my uncle would give me a bag of chips, an ice cream cone, or a colorful lollipop as the prize.
At night, we slept on the roof. Even in the summer, the weather was cold and we always needed a blanket. Despite the chilly temperatures, lying on the ground and gazing at the sky was a pleasant experience.
“Look! That’s the brightest one,” I whispered one evening.
My aunt smiled. “Do you know why stars twinkle?”
I shook my head. I often counted the stars until I drifted off to sleep, but I had no idea why they twinkle.
“Because the moving air between us and them bends their light,” she explained.
Years later, I learned that starlight travels through Earth’s atmosphere. As the air moves, it bends the light just a little, making the stars seem to shimmer and sparkle. Sometimes, my aunt would tell us stories of mystery and adventure.
“Tell another one!” I’d beg.
“Just one more,” she’d say, laughing.
Although we didn’t have television, mobile phones, or the internet, we never got bored. We enjoyed something far more valuable: each other’s company.
My grandparents kept a small herd of cows in the stall. There was also a beautiful, naughty, little brown calf called Lili. I loved her, cherished her, and talked to her a lot as if Lili was listening to me carefully.
“Good morning, Lili,” I’d say, petting her. “Did you miss me?”
Lili would respond with a gentle moo, wagging her tail.
“See? She’s answering me!”
“Of course she understands everything you say. Cattle are intelligent and social animals,” my uncle once said.
Everything in the village was organic. The milk came directly from the cows. The vegetables and fruit were grown without chemicals. Even the eggs tasted different from those sold in the city. Their shells were brown, and their yolks were darker. Without my grandmother knowing, I’d take two eggs, put them in my pocket to give them to the cows; sometimes they’d break and make my pocket dirty, but it was worth it. There was also a herd of sheep which I liked the most. Whenever my grandmother prepared dough for baking bread, I secretly took some small pieces and gave them to the hungry sheep.
“Here you go!”
Then, my grandmother’s voice would come: “Zahra! Where did the dough go?”
I always looked away and pretended I knew nothing. I also gave the sheep breadcrumbs, snacks, scrambled eggs, and fruit. The lambs were so cute and small that I could hug them for hours. Whenever they heard my voice, they ran towards me as fast as they could, and then they were in my arms. I amused them with salty snacks; they loved salt and devoured the snacks eagerly.
“I think they love me,” I proudly told my grandmother one day.
“Of course they do,” my grandmother answered, caressing my hair.
Some hens and a rooster were living there as well. The hens laid eggs; my grandmother and I collected them for omelettes, kookoo, or a traditional dish called eshkane. Eshkane is a mouth-watering dish made of chopped and fried onions, two or three spoonfuls of flour, tomato paste, and scrambled eggs added at the end. There are different types of it but this is my favorite.
One day, my grandmother asked me to bring three eggs from the hens’ nest.
“Be careful,” she said. “And don’t break them.”
“I won’t!” I answered confidently and headed out.
I went there and collected three beautiful ovoid eggs. When I turned to leave, I froze. I saw a cow standing in the narrow corridor outside. Although she was not there for me, I was afraid of her. I thought she’d kick me with her strong legs or run after me to hit me with her hard, sharp horns. I was small and slender, so I climbed into the hens’ nest and remained there. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then twenty. Nearly half an hour later, I heard my grandmother’s voice.
“Zahra, where are you?”
“I’m here!” I shouted.
“Where?”
“In the hens’ nest!”
When my grandmother finally found me, she burst into laughter. She told that story for years, every time laughing with all her heart.
I found the livestock sweet, kind, helpful, and good listeners; however, I was afraid of some of them like cows and donkeys. Not all animals around the village were harmless. There were also jackals, wolves, hyenas, snakes, and scorpions. The jackals would often come into the backyards and kill the hens, but they wouldn’t eat them or take them. They’d simply leave the dead bodies and go.
Sometimes, while lying on the roof at night, I listened to the howls. One night, the howls sounded closer than usual.
“What was that?” I asked nervously.
“A jackal,” my aunt replied.
I pulled my blanket over my head and lay as still and silent as I could until I fell asleep.
“A jackal came again last night, we found three chickens dead,” a neighbor told my grandmother the next morning.
Wolves were less common in the village and preferred to lurk in the mountains and steep hills, especially when a large herd of sheep was out grazing. But jackals were bolder and would even enter yards or climb onto roofs. If a door were left open, they’d dare to come inside and steal things. The area’s hot, dry climate also meant highly venomous snakes and scorpions. My aunt was once bitten by a black scorpion, and my grandmother had even seen large snakes in the kitchen and in the yard when they were climbing up the wall. My grandmother was always careful when handling objects, as she didn’t want to be surprised by a snake. She always told me to check my shoes carefully before putting them on, I still find myself doing that subconsciously.
One day, my father’s aunt brought a little bird for me. It couldn’t fly because somebody had clipped its wings.
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” I exclaimed.
“Take good care of it,” she said.
“I will.”
I made a home for it with a medium-sized basket, gave it cooked rice, and brought water for it to drink. I liked it and left it in an empty room upstairs to be free and then put it in the basket again. One day, I couldn’t find the bird, I looked everywhere for it, but it was nowhere to be found. As a child, I cried and desperately wanted the little bird back. After three days, to my surprise, I found the bird alive but covered with gasoline. I carefully washed it and removed the gasoline from its feathers. I was overjoyed to have the bird back and made sure to take good care of it, bringing it with me wherever I went.
“I’ll never lose you again,” I promised.
Days passed, and one day, my uncles and I went upstairs to watch a cartoon called The Twins of Destiny. I loved that cartoon and didn’t want to miss a single episode. I built a small wall with pillows and put my little bird behind it so as not to lose it again.
“Wait here, I’ll come back soon,” I said.
After forty-five minutes, when the cartoon ended, I remembered the bird. However, when I saw the scene, I screamed. My younger uncle had been sitting on the bird without realizing it was there. He jumped up immediately, but the bird had already been crushed.
“No!” I cried.
“I’m sorry,” my uncle said softly. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know.”
I picked up the bird, went to the roof, dug a hole, buried the bird, and covered it with soil. Every day, I went to the roof and splashed water on its grave or placed flowers there.
“My dear,” my grandfather called me one afternoon, “the roof is made of straw and mud, and too much water can damage it.”
I nodded sadly. “All right, Grandpa.”
The following day, I put a small stone on its grave and sang a song for it instead of pouring water. I made that song myself:
Little sparrow, small and weak,
You couldn’t fly, you couldn’t speak,
Little sparrow, I found you once, I held you tight, I fed you love
Little sparrow, I was too small to keep you from falling
Little sparrow, now you’re gone, you flew so high, somewhere in the sky
I still see you my little sparrow
My little friend who flew away.
“What a beautiful song,” my grandfather said one day, and I realized he saw everything, which made me laugh shyly.
Today I am forty-three years old, but those memories, the laughter, the harvests, the animals, the star-filled nights, and even the tears have stayed with me throughout my life. Sometimes, when life becomes complicated or too difficult to bear, I find myself walking down memory lane, returning once again to that small village where a little girl spent the happiest days of her childhood beneath a sky full of stars. The village still exists, but the people have either died or have gone somewhere else. And that’s why we tell stories. We tell them for those who left us, but their memories are still alive in our hearts and minds.
