The Hidden Side of Captivity

The untold story of the wives of prisoners of war during the Holy Defense, on the 30th anniversary of their return home.

The women had seen their husbands’ return in their dreams. One had seen herself as a poppy flower floating on a gentle pond without getting wet. Her husband was on the other side of the water, dressed in a military jacket and pants that were not green or khaki. They were the color of blood, red like the petals of the poppy.

One had dreamed that her man had returned from the embankments, the front lines, the war. The neighborhood men were carrying him, and they set him down in the shallow pool in the courtyard.

Another saw her husband coming back with his legs trembling and his face bruised. He went and sat in the middle of an orchard and said, “I came to surround you with flowers, fruit trees, and greenery, and then go back again.”

And one, in silence and in dream, saw the neighborhood women sitting in the living room, and wiping their tears with black handkerchiefs, they tell her, “Go put on your black chador.” But suddenly the door opened and the house lit up by the return of the captured man. He had been released.

From the start of the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian women lived in dreams. Every night they dreamed of the man of their home returning from war and their world turning into a field of flowers. They didn’t want to dream of the men dying, being martyred, never coming back. The women controlled their dreams. Their dreams where what they wanted them to be.

Husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers of many women went to war between 1980 and 1988 and never returned, or returned wounded. And many others remained for years on the other side of the border, worn-down and ailing. Roughly 40,000 Iranians were held prisoners of war in the enemy’s house, and some 70,000 Iraqis were captive on Iranian soil. Many years passed for the ceasefire to be signed and for news of the United Nations’ Security Council Resolution 598 to spread. Many years under the heavy burden of waiting, many people crushed by the anticipation. Iranian prisoners of war on the other side of the border, in official and unofficial Iraqi camps, and the silent women on the streets, inside the tough and trying walls of their homes, sleeping on pillows wet with tears.

Living in dreams is difficult. Life in waiting is grueling.

 

Hamideh

For seven years, Hamideh poured her heart out to her pillow at night. From 1983 to 1990. Hamideh and Javad were married when they were eighteen and twenty-one years old. The war had started, but on their wedding night, the sound of the women cheering had filled the old alley in the heart of Mashhad. Javad had returned from a tour of duty, and with memories of mortars, bullets, and shrapnel, he had held his bride by the hand and taken her home. That night, Hamideh didn’t imagine that those happy days would be so short-lived. She didn’t think that when her young body was only just growing accustomed to the little guest inside it, her husband would leave and not return for seven years. Hamideh had dreamed, and her dream having hardly arrived, went away. 

“I was eighteen when my husband left. He was twenty-one and studying dentistry. He was captured on February 28, 1984. I was pregnant with my first child. He was captured twelve days after I gave birth. When he left, he was due to come back in fifteen days. All those days in the hospital, my eyes were were glued to the door. Every time I saw an army jacket, I felt faint. I would often pull the blanket over my head so I wouldn’t see my roommate with her husband sitting at her side. I wouldn’t eat, and I’d faint. What was an eighteen-year-old woman with a newborn to do, with no money, no husband, no nothing?”

“It was difficult. The day my labor pains started, I refused go to the hospital. I kept saying, ‘Javad is coming any minute now.’ On the third day, I got up, crying and beating myself. It was during the Kheibar Operation that Iraq used chemical weapons for the first time. I knew what ‘martyr’ meant and who would be considered ‘missing in action,’ but I had no understanding of ‘prisoner of war.’ There was no news of Javad. He had left with twelve others from the university. They were volunteers. They went to help the wounded. They were surrounded and seized. He was captured on February 28 and my son was born on March 8.  Javad was taken as prisoner of war and we didn’t know.”

The Kheibar Operation was a joint offensive by the Iranian Armed Forces from February 14 to March 19, 1984, in the Hur al-Azim area. It resulted in 15,000 Iraqi soldiers and 30,000 Iranian soldiers dead and wounded. And, of course, the occupation of Iraq’s Majnoon Island by Iran. It was later revealed that 2,000 Iranian soldiers were captured by the Iraqi forces. Javad was among them.

Hamideh’s life of destitution began. Days when she was penniless and out on the streets, but too reticent to go to her family. At the time, most of the combatants’ wives were homemakers, with no income of their own.  The man of the house leaving and not returning was tantamount to desperation and need. Wives of men who had military or government jobs prior to the war would start receiving a pension a few months after their spouse’s captivity or martyrdom. But for women like Hamideh, utter poverty was all that was left. A life of hardship, carrying on with a sigh.

Like many other wives of captured soldiers, Hamideh had no income and no prospects. She had a high school diploma with a focus on social studies, but given her young age and being mother to an infant, no one would hire her. Sometime later, her husband’s family told her to go live with her parents. She and her parents moved to Sanandaj and returned to Mashhad in 1985. Almost two years had passed since Javad had been taken prisoner and Hamideh had only recently weaned her child off breast milk. Finally, one of her friends took her to take the KAD exam—a program implemented during the war years under the slogan of bringing together work and knowledge, which saved many women in the fighters’ families from poverty. Hamideh selected embroidery, but on the day of the test she was anxiety-ridden and unable to answer so many of the questions that she broke into tears and wrote a pleading note on the bottom of the exam sheet explaining that her husband was a prisoner of war, that she had a small child, and was penniless. And she prayed and begged the reviewer to let her pass the test. The prayers of Hamideh Jalali, with her sad and choked up voice that rends the heart, were answered. The exam reviewer did not turn her down, and she became a sewing and embroidery instructor.

“It was early April 1984 when my father-in-law called and said he had news of Javad. I felt blood return to my veins. I thought all my worries were over. But then he said the news had come from Baghdad. I thought he was martyred. I fainted. Later, I went outside, looked up at the sky, and asked, ‘God, what am I to do?’ When you have a child, you have such dreams, and now I saw that with no one there, what place could there be for dreams?”

A year later, news came from the prison camp in Mosul. Back then, how would most women have known where Mosul was? What Tikrit was like? What went on in Harun Al-Rasheed, Ramadi, and their prison camps? Hamideh didn’t know either. She thought they were prisons like all other prisons. Not knowing. In those years, women’s savior and what allowed them to draw a tight breath was not knowing. Unawareness deceives you. It settles in your core and resuscitates you. It is in the absence of knowledge that hope settles, takes root, and endures. It was only later that chronicles and truths arrived.

With the return of their men, one by one, Hamideh and other women learned about the Iraqi prison camps. When the scandal of the Ba’athist regime was revealed and it became known that during the eight years of war the Red Cross personnel had only been able to visit 15 of the 35 prison camps where Iranian soldiers were held. At the time, of the approximately 40,000 Iranian captives, the names of only 15,000 had been registered in official camps. There was no information on the others. Captivity in silence and in the dark.

“A total of 39,140 Iranians were transferred to Iran in 65 stages, from June 16, 1981, to March 17, 1991. Their categories are as follows: 18,563 were prisoners in camps and were registered by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and 20,577 were missing and unaccounted for persons who were only registered by the Red Cross at the time of their release.” This was said years later by Majid Shah Hosseini, then deputy head of the Iranian Prisoners of War and Missing Persons Commission and an active member of the Negotiating Committee for the Exchange of Prisoners. A confirmation of the unknown status of a large number of Iranian prisoners of war.

Javad was among the lucky ones. The Red Cross services had registered his name on the list of prisoners that was read on the Persian service of Radio Baghdad. One of Javad and Hamideh’s neighbors, who recorded programs aired on that station so that he could listen to music that was banned in Iran, had heard Javad’s voice: “I, Javad Farahani, was captured by the Iraqi brothers.”

“After a year of being considered missing, we found out he was a prisoner,” Hamideh says. “And his captivity continued for another six years. All those years, I lived with hope. I didn’t even once glance at another man. I didn’t cry in front of anyone. My crying was at night and in bed. Every six months, I received a letter from him, and I lived with that letter for six months until the next one came. I believe in upholding human dignity. That’s why the Martyrs Foundation had no role in our life. Once in a while, two women and a driver would come and ask, ‘Well, madam, what news of our prisoner of war?’ But no one ever asked me how I was.”

Hamideh recalls those days with profound heartache. Days under the bitter weight of anticipation and endless pain. Have you ever waited seven years for someone’s return, for them to be there and for you to see them? Waiting is the deadliest pain. Hamideh Jalali knows this well. That’s why she sat and listened to what many women in Mashhad and Tehran had to say, she went to the parliament and to government divisions, she retold the hidden stories, the unspoken secrets she had heard, and demanded justice for the women who suffered and waited in silence.  Women, for many of whom reunion and the end of separation was only the start a new story, another heartbreaking story. As it was for Hamideh.

The return of tired, tortured, and broken men, angry and emotionally troubled, and the resumption of life, brought new suffering. Starting from zero. Spending day and night with a man you once knew and the stranger who has returned. Mother of two. Of a child who doesn’t know his father, and of a father who can barely accept his own child.

This is the hidden story of these women. Women who for years dreamed of their men coming home, but when they did, their world did not turn into a field of flowers.

“When he returned, our first child who had never seen his father was starting first year of elementary school. A boy who was his mother’s love. A mother who knew nothing and didn’t know how to separate him from herself. I was twenty-five years old. For seven years I had waited for my love to return, and when he did, I was caught between love for the father and love for the son. And that was only one of a hundred other new problems. Eighty percent of the women who had a son and their husband was captured, faced difficulties like mine, but they remain in the circle of silence. I had hoped that he would return and I would find peace and quiet in his arms. But what was he like when he came back? Full of rage and angst. My son had neither a father nor a mother. All my young years were spent in school counseling offices. They said ‘Your son has developed difficulties, for him it’s as if he now has a stepfather.’ All my days were spent worrying and agonizing over what would become of him. The first sentence he spoke to his father was, ‘They say you’re my father.’ I was studying nursing at the time, but I switched to educational sciences so that I could reconcile my son with my husband. My son was a smart, intelligent boy, but the voids in his life damaged him a lot. He now has a master’s degree from Sharif University, but his spirit is not what it should be. Regrettably, after my husband’s return I had two more children. I hadn’t healed my pain and my son’s pain when I gave birth to two girls, one after the other. They turned out to be restless children, too. There are cases of boys who have now grown up and have children of their own, but they still don’t call their father, dad.”

The day Hamideh saw Javad at Mashhad airport, she realized he was not the person who had left seven years earlier. Everything had changed. “He was like a wall or a tree.” Javad was alive and breathing, but he showed no reaction to Hamideh. There was no emotion in his eyes.

“The first time we were alone, I went to the bedroom to give him a towel. He didn’t even look at me. Standing there, I felt a terrible sense of fear and dread. I had waited for him all those years, and now, this. Since childhood, I had always lived in fantasy, and during those seven years, in the fantasy of him coming back. His first reaction to society was to resume his studies. His doctor friends would come to visit him. He was studying dentistry before his captivity, but then he changed his field of study to ophthalmology. He started classes with the new student entrants of 1990. His old classmates were now his professors. Many of them teased him and said, ‘So you went and got yourself captured, and for what?’”

 

Mansoureh

A large number of the prisoners of war were martyrs. Their bodies no longer whole. After three years of captivity, Hashem Alikhani, too, had no healthy limb left when he returned. He left weighing 90 kilos and came back weighing 40 kilos. He said that in winter, they flooded icy water under them so often that now he constantly felt wet and cold. And he cursed at all winters, wars, mortars, anti-aircrafts, embankments, and blood and death and prison camps.

The prison camp destroyed Hashem. The Ba’athists drained him of strength in Mosul. When he returned, what Mansoureh saw was only a semblance of the man he had been. A human-like form absent a human body. “Is it you!?” she had asked, and she had fainted. During the trying days that followed, they had ample time for questions.

 “Why are you shorter?” Mansoureh had asked. And the answer she received was: “Madam, if you don’t water a tree, it dries up and shrinks. A tree stands tall when it is green and fertile.” Hashem was a withered tree in constant pain, who sat humbly in a corner and had no energy to talk. And in the end, his pain killed him.

Hashem was a military man. From the first day of war, being at the front had taken priority over staying at home. He had said, “People volunteer to go fight and they die. And I, bound by duty to defend my homeland, should stay home?” And Mansoureh had cried, lowered her head in shame and replied, “Yes.” They had been together for five years. Mansoureh Alikhani loved her husband and didn’t want to send him off to war. But the world does what it does and goes its own way. Mansoureh grew accustomed to seeing Hashem only once every forty-five days and having him home with her. A few days after the ceasefire agreement was signed, he was due to arrive on his usual leave, but he didn’t; and Mansoureh started calling the army offices. The more questions she asked, the fewer answers she received. On the other end of the line, she could hear the hushed voices of men whispering, hesitant to tell Mrs. Alikhani what had happened to Hashem.

“They gave me the run-around. I would say, ‘You scoundrels! Tell me if he has been killed or captured or whatever … Just tell me!’ And they kept telling me not to worry, that he’ll be back in a few days. I begged so many times that they finally said he had been captured by the Iraqis after the ceasefire. And Iraq had declared that it would only exchange soldier for soldier and officer for officer. My husband was an officer. They told me he would come back, that I had to wait. My eyes remained glued to the door, and he didn’t come, and he didn’t write. And because he was captured after the ceasefire agreement, the Red Cross had no information about him either.”

The wives of the prisoners of war understood captivity all too well. Each were a prisoner of their body, of their home, and of people’s chatter. In a trembling, choked up voice, Mansoureh explains that while her husband was in captivity, she and her three children lived in the village of Qasemabad in Mashhad. In a house surrounded by wastelands so frightening that Mansoureh could not sleep at night, constantly affraid: What if wolves attack? What if a thief climbs over the wall? How can I defend myself and my children? The radio kept her company. She sat and listened, hoping that when they announced the names of the prisoners being released, her husband’s name would be among them. Meanwhile, Mansoureh was short of money. Six months after her husband’s capture, the army determined a monthly stipend for her family. The sum of 700 tumans, which was hardly enough. Now, Mansoureh sits quietly and recalls the days when she would search for Hashem’s old boots and army fatigues in the storage room to sell to laborers. The little money she received for them was enough to buy two cartons of milk and some tea and sugar.  “Once in a while I’d go to the hairdresser, but the comments people made killed me.”

Mansoureh tolerated it all, hoping for the day she would be reunited with her husband. Hoping for his return and the end of waiting. She had told the neighborhood women, “Even if he comes back nothing but a piece of flesh, I will slave for him. I just want him to come back.” Two years later, Hashem returned. But it wasn’t the return Mansoureh expected. As day after day passed, she realized that the world works in opposite. Reunion with her beloved was not a sweet syrup, but a bitter poison.

“Before his captivity, even if I were to ask for a bird in the sky, he would provide it for me, but when he returned, everything was different. At the slightest excuse he would lose his temper. He had become violent, with me and with the children. And he would just say, ‘I’ve got a red card.’ [Exemption from military service due to psychological disorder.] I told myself, it’s alright, let him get it all off his chest, and I kept quiet. When he was beating and kicking me, I’d say to myself, it’s alright, remember the days when you wanted him even he were nothing but a piece of flesh. And fifteen minutes later, he’d say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s my nerves.’ I tolerated his words and actions. I kept telling him to think of the children. How could they sit and study? I raised his children with one kind of hardship when he was away and with another kind when he returned.”

Twelve years after his release, Hashem Alikhani, died from years of pain and ailments that had left no part of him unharmed. But the Martyrs Foundation still does not consider him a martyr of war. Mansoureh was told she should go to Tehran to pursue the matter until it is resolved. And Mansoureh had neither the ability to go to that chaotic city, nor anyone to accompany and assist her.

On the day Hashem died, people asked her, “Were you receiving a stipend to care for this veteran?” The answer was no. It still is. Unlike the wives of other veterans, the wives of the released prisoners of war still do not receive any financial aid to nurse their ailing husbands. Nargess Jalili, advisor on women and family affairs to the director of the Martyrs Foundation, confirms this and informs Shahrvand newspaper that as of August 2020, nursing compensation will be added to the pensions of the former prisoners of war, because they, too, are among the casualties of war and their wives need this aid.

Jalili also explains that a proposal has recently been made to form an organization of freedmen’s wives to help develop a greater understanding of the issues they face. The wives of the former prisoners of war say that in all these years, no one has ever inquired about their problems and the difficulties they face, which have not been few or insignificant. Mansoureh and Hamideh are among those who criticize the lack of care and attention. Mansoureh says that the wives of the former prisoners have been sorely neglected, and adds, “If my husband had not been a career military man, I would not have received even this trickle of funds. I would have had to go beg on the street. Raising my daughters until they married was very difficult.” Hamideh, on the other hand, recalls the days when journalists and officials from the Martyrs Foundation would come to their home [to see her husband], but none of them ever talked to her separately, interviewed her, or asked her any questions.

The wives of the freedmen were silent captives. For some, life changed even more gravely after their husbands returned. Mansoureh knows women who remarried years after their husbands were considered missing and unaccounted for, and they found themselves in a conundrum when they returned. Some went back to their first husband, some did not. Some had children with their second husband and now had to go to court to seek a divorce decree from their first husband. On the other hand, some of the men who returned were unable to continue a relationship with their wives and left them to marry someone else. This is another heartache many of these women suffer.

“They have forgotten us. They don’t even ask, what are your problems and difficulties? I wanted to get a loan to pay for my daughter’s dowry, I was rejected. And in the neighborhood, people would say, ‘Your husband is a released prisoner of war, he gives you money. Away from us they killed people, with us they killed us. I hope there will never be another war. War destroys women.”

 

Zahra, Mahboubeh, and Mahnaz

Zahra is Mohammad’s wife; from Isfahan. Muhammad was captured during the initial Operation Al Fajr—the three-day offensive maneuver of the Iranian Armed Forces in February 1983, which resulted in many men being taken prisoner of war.

Mahboubeh was Ali Akbar’s wife; from Mashhad. Ali Akbar, fifty years old, was captured during Operation Khyber. He spent 6 years and 7 months in the Mosul prison camp and returned broken and gaunt.

Mahnaz is Abbas’s wife; from Shahrerey. Abbas was 19 years old when he left for the front. He was captured during Operation Beit ol-Moqaddas 7 and returned to Iran after 23 months of captivity in the Tikrit, Harun al-Rashid, and Qala prison camps. Operation Beit ol-Moqaddas 7, which was carried out on the Shalamcheh-Kanal Mahi axis on June 13, 1988, under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was nicknamed Operation Thirst. Many of Abbas’s friends died of thirst and heatstroke.

Muhammad is still alive, Ali Akbar suffered many injuries and gave his life for the cause, and Abbas is a retired teacher with countless memories of the Iraqi prison camps. Zahra and Mohammad have three children, one of whom was conceived and born after his release and is physically disabled and mentally retarded. Doctors have determined the cause to be the chemical bombs used during the war. They said they have seen many children of the former prisoners of war born with disabilities. This, however, has never been proven by any research.

Nargess Karimi, veterans’ affairs advisor to the Deputy Minister for Women and Family Affairs, who has followed the situation of women veterans and the wives of the martyrs and former prisoners of war for many years, complains about this issue. She explains that to date, no comprehensive investigative research has been conducted in Iran on the physical and mental health of the former prisoners and their families. Of course, in 2017, the Deputy Minister for Women’s Affairs did ‌conduct a study of 30 veterans’ wives, the results of which have yet to be published.

Karimi explains that the wives of the former prisoners of war faced difficulties during and after their husbands’ captivity that in silence were forgotten, but these issues are now plaguing them. “There were [prisoners of war] who after their return abandoned their family and left. And there is no law that says if a man abandons his wife he should give half of his salary to his family. I also know veterans and former war prisoners who are in such dire straits themselves that they even owe money to the neighborhood fruit seller. Their wives are emotionally depressed and because most of them are housewives, they earn no income to bring home. The psychological issues of these women are specific to them. One of their characteristics is self-censorship. Their silence. Even at events, when former prisoners are asked questions, no one asks the wives, What did you live through when he was away? And these women put up a respectable front and like battered women say nothing or claim they accidentally hit their face against the bath faucet.”

Karimi recalls, “In 1983, I was in the Counseling and Educational Affairs Department at the Ministry of Education. Dr. Samaram, known as the father of social work in Iran, came to us and said that as of that day, special planning had to be put in place for the families of the prisoners of war so that when they return, they will face fewer problems. No one listened to him.”

According to Karimi, some women separated from the released prisoners because they could no longer get along, and many children were sacrificed. “Those were difficult years for these women. Of course, not all women suffered. Some freedmen wrote beautiful love letters to their wives, who in turn read them at our gatherings; they warmed out hearts and encouraged us. And many men returned and built a good life; although the effects of the torture they suffered are still there. One of the freed men related that the prisoners were rolled around on gravel and shards of glass that cut into their bodies.”

Karimi adds, “Self-sacrificing women, women veterans, … have untold secrets that must be told. These are part of our oral history. To promote peace, we must hear narratives of war. War is like a serpent, it devours people.”

Mahnaz Hobi, wife of Abbas Enayatpour, is among the women who are satisfied with their life after their husband’s return, but this is not to say that she doesn’t shed tears when she reflects on the past. “They told me that during Operation Beit ol-Moqaddas many of our soldiers were seized, and that [my husband] was probably captured, too. Then, photos of the prisoners were published in Iraqi newspapers. His was among them, but I had no other information at all. I didn’t have children, so I kept myself busy with school. One day, I was very sad and went to the Shah Abdul Azim Shrine. While I was there, a freed prisoner of war came in and was taken around the shrine. I was crying, asking God to return my Abbas, too. Two weeks later, he came home. He had grown quiet and detached. There was pandemonium in our neighborhood in Shahrerey. Family, friends, teachers and students, all came. But he didn’t want people to welcome him with garlands of flowers. I couldn’t understand. It was a strange feeling. After his return, my husband always said, ‘Turn off the lights.’ So many people had died before his eyes that carrying on was difficult for him. His sleep never normalized. Now, [these men] have to answer for their sacrifices back then, too. This is hard. My husband constantly asks, ‘What should I have done that I didn’t do?’”

The situation was very different for Mahboubeh. She was quite young when she married Ali Akbar. They had 11 children and she was pregnant with her twelfth when she received news of her husband’s capture. After she gave birth, Mahboubeh had no milk to breastfeed her infant and the child died. Ali Akbar left in 1982 and was captured in 1983. By the time he returned, he had stories to tell about the day he died under torture and came back to life in the morgue. Iraqi soldiers working there noticed that the plastic bag he was in had grown misty and fogged up on the inside, and they sent him to the hospital.

Ali Akbar was released after almost seven years of captivity, and remained a broken man for the rest of his life. Mahboubeh single-handedly raised their eleven children. Now, stories of her lonely life were on everyone’s lips. Endless tales of poverty and solitude. “It was very hard. If we were hungry and visitors came to the house, we’d say we had already eaten. As they say,  we kept our cheeks rosy with slaps. When my child died, all the locals, parents of the martyrs, everyone cried. Even now, I get chocked up. There were also people who didn’t treat us well. My daughter and her two children were sent back home. Her in-laws found out that her father was missing and made her leave. They wanted to humiliate us, but God didn’t. Back then, my husband’s salary from the IRGC was 2,200 tomans a month. No matter how difficult it was, I pulled my kids through. When [my husband] came back, he saw us as Saddam supporters. He had delusions, hallucinations. He couldn’t help it. He had been tortured so much that he was full of rage. My children put up a respectable front and didn’t let anyone find out our circumstances. My husband would tell me, ‘Go get a divorce, I can’t be any sort of a man for you anymore.’ The first time I gave him a bath, I was horrified. His back was covered with scars from cigarette burns. In reality, he was a martyr that was still alive. He had been beaten so badly and so often that he had bulging eyes. And he died in 1999.”

Like many other wives of the released prisoners, Mahboubeh never saw a social worker or psychologists. Nargess Jalili, advisor on women and family affairs to the head of the Martyrs Foundation, says that the Foundation has 92 counseling centers in Iran, but its work is no longer the same as before. The home-visits have almost stopped. Instead, people have to go to the centers for counseling. This, according to Jalili, is because some families were no longer interested in in-person visits and wanted to sever ties with the counseling centers. Another reason is the lack of government funding.

In spring 2010, Massoud Zaribafan, then head of the Martyrs and Veterans Affairs Foundation, promised that a plan for monitoring the health of the former prisoners of war would be implemented. A year later, Etemad newspaper reported that responsibility for the implementation of the plan was given to Abolfazl Malekzadeh, the deputy director of health and treatment at the Martyrs Foundation. However, Malekzadeh announced his opposition to the plan by saying, “If the former prisoners suffering ailments are veterans, then they fall under the health monitoring program for veterans. No separate program will be implemented for them.” Thereafter, there was hardly any news of the program, and the former prisoners of war and their wives say that its absence has left a void in their lives.

Hamideh, Mansoureh, Zahra, Mahboubeh, and Mahnaz are five out of thousands of distressed women who in their  dreams no longer see fields of flowers and quiet ponds. Hamideh, Mansoureh, Zahra, Mahboubeh and Mahnaz still dream, and in all their dreams, a woman cries in pain.