KERMANSHAH, Iran — Saman Rezayi lies on a hospital bed. His gaunt face is drawn into a frown and his left leg sticks out from under the blanket, wrapped in bandages. His leg is amputated below the knee. The 29-year-old shepherd stepped on a landmine in January while grazing his flock.
It began as an ordinary day, January 31, in Mla Dzgayi village in the Sarpol-e-Zahab area of Iran’s western Kermanshah province. Saman and a friend brought their sheep out to pasture. He woke up in a hospital, missing half his leg.
Two days after the incident, Saman told his story to Rudaw English.
“It was last Sunday around 3:00 pm, we had just eaten. With the shepherd who was with me, we took the sheep down the dales where the pasture was. I have been a shepherd in that area for many years, but we had never faced any danger,” said Saman.
“My friend was walking in front of the sheep, and I was walking slowly behind them. The sheep were grazing and I was walking behind them for about five minutes. Suddenly a loud boom shook me. I fell. My vision went dark and I don’t remember anything after that.”
Sarpol-e-Zahab is no stranger to tragedy. The city was hard hit by a massive 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck near the Iran-Iraq border in November 2017. On the Iranian side of the border, 620 people were killed and 12,000 injured.
This border region is also littered with landmines laid during the Iran-Iraq war that spanned the 1980s. Millions of munitions were planted and are still claiming casualties more than 30 years later.
Though Iran has asked for international help for the mammoth task of demining its land to minimise civilian casualties, it has annually abstained from signing on to the United Nations' Mine Ban Treaty of 1997, citing the need to combat the threat posed by “terrorist groups and drug traffickers” at its porous, western border with Iraq, especially with the Kurdistan Region.
“When I opened my eyes I was at the hospital,” Saman recounted. “I kept asking what happened to me. No one told me the truth. They just told me, “a mine has exploded under you. They will take you to surgery and there is no problem’.”
Saman was in a room in the men’s section on the first floor of Talaghani hospital. He shared the room with two other men. One of his brothers and a cousin were also in the room, watching over the injured man.
"I don't know how long the surgery took. I regained consciousness and saw my leg was bandaged. I could see half of it was gone, but my brother kept trying to hide it. I told him, ‘don’t lie to me, I know everything that happened.’ Then he told me everything, with tears in his eyes.”
There are five brothers and two sisters in the Rezayi family, all are married except for Saman and his brother, Burhan Razayi, 27, who live with their widowed mom. They are farmers who tend to animals.
On that fateful Sunday, Burhan had to take care of some chores, so Saman went out into the fields with the animals.
“In the afternoon, at around 3 pm, I received a phone call. It was Saman’s shepherd friend. His voice was shaking and he kept saying ‘please help us, a mine has exploded on Saman’,” said Burhan.
“I rushed there on my motorbike. I saw Saman losing blood, one of his legs gone. His friend had brought him to the road on his back and had fallen unconscious. A number of tractors also arrived from the village. I called Sarpol-e-Zahab’s emergency [services]. They kept making excuses, saying the road is rough and we will be there late. So I called the Red Crescent and we took Saman to the main road. The ambulance arrived two hours after the incident. We took Saman to Sarpol-e-Zahab’s hospital.”
The hospital didn’t have the resources to treat Saman, so he was transferred to Telghani hospital in Kermanshah city, like dozens of other landmine explosion victims.
“Sarpol hospital fastened his leg for a while so that he wouldn’t bleed out. This was while Saman was unconscious and I was so scared something would happen to him. I took him to Kermanshah hospital then and they did surgery on him that very same night. They amputated his leg below his knee,” said Burhan.
Saman is not the only landmine victim in the family. One of their uncles, Rahim Rezayi, died at the age of 40 in an explosion 20 years ago.
The Geneva-based Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor has identified a total 2,823 deaths and over 7,000 injuries from landmines and explosive remnants of war in Iran between 1988 and 2017. Across the border, Iraq is among the top ten most landmine-contaminated countries in the world, according to the monitor.
“Besides Saman, a lot of people in our area have been disabled due to landmines. This is really heartbreaking. Thirty years after war, some people like my brother lose a part of their bodies,” Burhan said.
Saman has been listening closely to his brother. “I lost my leg and time doesn’t turn back. I have lost all hope for life now because I know I have to spend the rest of my life with one leg and that’s very hard.”
“I still can’t believe that I have lost one of my legs. I feel like I am dreaming. How can I be disabled at this age?” he adds.
“My only request is I am asking those who are responsible not to be so apathetic towards this matter so that at least people like me won’t become victims. I won’t be happy in this life even if you give me the whole world. I can’t work, but this catastrophe can be prevented so that no one else falls victim.”
Translation by Khazan Jangiz
