In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
The exams were over and he was excited for the summer holidays. The exam results had not yet been announced, but he was sure that he had studied very well; that is why he was eager to see the results of his efforts as soon as possible. It was the end of the exams; he had to say goodbye to all his friends to go help his grandparents in the village.
In the spring and summer, the agricultural activities of the people in the north of the country were at their peak and everyone was busy with farming. That is why the children were more concerned with working in the fields than with having fun; which was a kind of entertainment for the children of the sixties. However, Mohammad was trying to spend his summer with better quality, along with work and entertainment. He liked to read several books during the summer and maybe learn something so that in the future, along with studying, he could help support the family. Mohammad had many dreams and sometimes shared them with his mother; The mother also saw the joy of her efforts in the eyes of her little son. Muhammad was slowly growing up and felt that he should become a great man.
The years of war had changed the entire face of the city. People had a different mood. On every street you went, you would see pictures and coffins of some handsome martyrs with candles lit in front of them and looking at you through the coffins. Many of the grieving mothers had seen their brave children, but everyone was proud to have such children in their city. Many people, hoping for the victory and defeat of Saddam and the Baathists, sent aid to the fronts, held congregational prayers and consoled the families of the martyrs. When a child was martyred, it was as if he was the child of the entire city and everyone felt his pain and was proud of it.
But in the midst of these events and problems caused by the war that had penetrated the fabric of people’s lives, the activities of hypocritical and armed groups also had a significant impact on society. The groups, which were deprived of healthy discourse and when they could not calm their inner complexes by eliminating officials and officials, took the lives of innocent people. In every alley, alleyway and street, they attacked innocent people without any reason or thought. They killed bakers and grocers, clergy and laymen, workers and teachers, and whoever they could. These groups of Satan’s soldiers were so secretive in killing innocent people that it was as if they had come straight from hell to earth for their evil intentions. Muhammad also heard about the war from afar and was informed about the events that were happening in society. In those days, there was a lot of talk about the activities of the hypocrites and “terror,” and most of the time, the adults would talk about such incidents. The children would listen quietly and hear from their elders about these issues. Mohammad had heard his father say several times that someone had been “assassinated,” but he did not know what it meant: “What does assassination mean? What does it mean when someone is assassinated, what happens to them, and where do they go?” These sentences were difficult for a ten-year-old to understand. They had only just understood the meaning of martyrdom when they saw the photo of the neighbor’s son who was a soldier and had gone to the front, and now his photo was in a vase full of lighted candles, and “terror” still had no meaning in their minds. For a ten-year-old, life was about playing; it meant bathing in a cold river in the summer heat, the joy and the sound of free birds coming into the city from the forests outside.
But Mohammad’s life story was to teach him the meaning of terror in a different way. Mohammad was to say his last goodbye to his classmates on the day of his report card in Khordad 1360 and prepare himself for three months away from them until they would see each other again in the fall. By fall, everyone would probably be a little older and taller. Each of them had an idea for the summer and would tell each other about it, and they wanted to start the hot summer vacation with a different feeling.
But the MKO’s terror machine, with its eyes closed, was looking for a victim, forgetting that a ten-year-old child had no understanding of politics and should not be a victim of their absurd ideology. Of course, a self-willed forgetfulness was possible with their black hearts. The dream of the children of this land was becoming a victim of the lust of a few blind-hearted people. They wanted innocent victims for their rotten and muddy thoughts, for their vampire leader; It didn’t matter to them that every child is a dear one to their parents who have brought them to this stage of life with great pain and effort. They had closed their eyes and the stench of their dirty minds had removed the taste of humanity from their hearts. They cowardly took away the fruit of their parents’ love from them. The hypocritical criminals, with a blind operation, caused the martyrdom of Mohammad Ardanji in the tenth year of his short life, and Mohammad, with deep suffering, at the age of ten, understood “terror” as “journey”; that is, passing through a world surrounded by the darkness of rotten thoughts and the ideology of a handful of hypocrites, who allowed themselves to attack the beautiful butterflies of this land with grenades. Mohammad at the age of ten, understood terror as a journey to heaven.
