By Kerri MacDonald
Fatemeh Behboudi grew up surrounded by grief. She was born in Tehran during the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq. As the bodies of missing soldiers were discovered years after the war, her family attended mass funerals in their honor. Later, she covered these rites as a photographer.
Throughout the crowds of families and mothers, there were always anger and sadness. But among a select few, there was also a glimmer hope. Ms. Behboudi, 28, was drawn to a group of tearful women she saw time and again — mothers who still hoped to find the sons who had never made it home.
She wondered, “How is it possible that this pain and this love is still fresh?”
Thousands of Iranian soldiers went missing between 1980 and 1988. Ms. Behboudi has photographed 20 Iranian mothers in nine cities whose sons, considered martyrs in Iran, never came home. Many of the women believe that they communicate with their sons in their dreams. A few of them have located their sons’ remains after such a vision. It is a phenomenon Ms. Behboudi had difficulty believing at first.
“I don’t have any answers for this, and it puts me in doubt about my philosophy and my existence,” she said. “And about what is the truth.”
