Translated Content:
60 days after the 12-day war, the smell of blood still lingers in Narmak Sixth Square, where the home of the family of martyr Sadati Aramaki was turned into a mound of dirt. Amid the rubble of broken toys and pieces of children’s clothes, only an unscathed flag of Imam Hussein (AS) remained.
According to the report of Front 24, quoted by Tasnim, “There is no house, a mound of dirt…” The text message from the martyr’s daughter keeps replaying in my mind as I walk to her father’s house. After 60 days, we are visiting the site of one of the documents of Israeli crimes. I have no idea how I will see it after these days. Narmak Sixth Square in Tehran is our destination, we get off, we don’t even need to look for a house! Fatemeh was right, only a few mounds of dirt remain of a three-story building with a courtyard.
* Return to Narmak Sixth Square; 60 days after the Israeli crime
The building opposite the house where we were going first caught our attention. The entire building had been evacuated and the effects of the blast wave were clearly visible, showing the scale of the incident. Scaffolding had been erected in front of the house and blue plastic had been stretched all the way around. We pushed it aside and spent a few minutes with the cameraman in mourning. There are so many details that you have to keep turning your head and looking... This was once the home of the Moghimi family, but today it has become the massacre site of the family of Mustafa Sadati-Aramaki. The same nuclear scientist who was martyred on the evening of the second night of the war with his wife, martyred Fahimeh Moghimi, his three children, Reyhaneh Sadat, 15, Fatemeh Sadat, 10, Seyed Ali, 4, and his wife's mother and father, martyred Robaba Azizi, and the Sacred Defense veteran, martyred Hamid Moghimi.
*It Smells Like Homeland Here/Green, White, and Red
Three buildings adjacent to this house have been destroyed in such a way that the residents have completely evacuated. But on the wall of one of those houses, there is a design of the Iranian flag with green, white, and red butterflies, which shows that the days gone by have passed, because the paint buckets can still be seen next to this work of art. After that day, I realized that this taste is the work of Seyyed Mohammadza Miri, a painter and graphic artist, who seems to have breathed new life into the concept of homeland amidst those ruins.
A banner hangs on the wall of one of the destroyed houses; a photo of Mehrnoush Haji Soltani, a flight attendant for Mahan Airlines, and her parents who were martyred on the night of the attack on June 14. Mehrnoush's smile in that photo still smelled of life...
I step on the ruins and move forward. The first thing I see is the school records of martyred Sara Jawdat, a 21-year-old photography student who was also martyred there along with her father.
Around me I see broken tools, the Quran and the prayer book that, despite the terrible explosion, have remained largely intact.
A dusty doll, the clogs of folded shoes that their owners will never wear again, and pieces of clothing that are stuck under the rubble and whose owners are now sleeping under the ground.
*It still smells of blood here
I move forward, but it is weak under my feet, all the furniture, bricks and concrete are tied together in such a way that sometimes my eyes go black, here I still smell blood. It is really difficult to distinguish many of the items except for a few broken sofas and a few mattresses.
With the cameraman, we decide to go around the house and enter the neighboring house so that we can have a wider frame from the upper floors. The entire house is almost destroyed, but the walls are still there and on the dust of the night of the attack they have written: “Death to Israel.” I remember the words of the aunt of the four-year-old martyr Seyyed Ali Sadati-Aramaki, who said: “He went to the 22nd Bahman march last year with a childish plastic gun to destroy Israel and did it with his own blood…”
*The clock here has stopped at midnight on June 14
The clock here has stopped at midnight on Saturday, June 14, forever, with all its memories and everything it has left for the survivors of this crime. A piece of the birthday party string is shining in the sun amidst the stones and clods, meaning how many celebrations had it been installed on the wall for? Next to it, I see a torn black tent, I pull it out from under the rubble. The further I go with my story, the more it looks like a shrine.
* The only thing left intact among the rubble/ “Peace be upon Hussein” at the Sadati-Aramaki family massacre
I move away from the neighboring building and go to the highest mound of dirt, the house of the martyr Moghimi. I stand there and look around carefully for a few minutes, then suddenly, under some of the rubble, at the bottom of that mound of dirt, I see something that looks like the black cloth of Imam Hussein (AS). The sun is in my eyes, so I go down with difficulty to make sure. I call the cameraman and say, “I think I see a flag of Imam Hussein (AS) under the rubble.” He is surprised at first, and I almost feel the same way. Because after the night of the destruction of so many houses, it is almost impossible to see something like this intact under the rubble.
I stand on the slope, pull out the cloth with my hands, and I am sure that I have seen it correctly. When I open the cloth, the resentment that has been gnawing at my throat since the beginning of my presence in this massacre comes out. The blackness of this inscription shines in the sun like a jewel. The folded back is covered in dirt, but the inside of the flag is so intact that I can say with confidence that the only intact object in that ruin was the flag of Imam Hussein…
I fold it again and take it down with me, I couldn’t leave it there among those ruins anymore. It was as if it called me, maybe that’s why I went there that day, I don’t know…
On the way down, I see children’s clothes, maybe they are for little Sayyid Ali with that curly hair that his Aunt Fatimah was talking about. The children's cartoon CDs are still here, the toys, which are not many, are scattered throughout the ruins; just like the bodies of the martyrs of the Sadati-Aramaki family, like the light shroud of Seyyed Ali, like the bodies of Reyhaneh Sadat and Fatima Sadat and their mother Fahimeh, of whom nothing but a few pieces was found after two weeks of searching...
*Like us... We who will rise again from the ashes
Now I am leaving a house with a flag of Imam Hussein and hundreds of photos and videos where all the children of martyr Moghimi used to gather with their children in their grandfather's house. A house where, according to Fatemeh Moghimi, one of the survivors of this family, Seyyed Ali's last birthday was celebrated there on Eid al-Adha, and that was their last gathering in their father's loving home...
I cannot find any words to describe the depth of what I saw in that house. Perhaps instead of this report, one can better feel the depth of this pain by sitting at the shrine of Karbala.
What I saw there was the pain that my people endured during those 12 days and the perseverance that, despite all their suffering, remained and is still there. 60 days after the crime of 14th Khordad, the smell of blood still lingers in the sixth square of Narmak; where the three-story house of the family of “Martyr Mustafa Sadati Aramaki” and his loved ones was turned into a mound of dirt.
Amid the rubble of broken toys, school reports, and pieces of children’s clothes, only one unscathed flag of Imam Hussein (AS) remained; its shiny blackness under the sun, a symbol of perseverance that shouted from the heart of the ruins: We are alive. Like the same tricolor flag that was hung from the roof of the neighbor's house that I saw when I left, like my homeland, my people, like Karimi's "Sing O Iran" on the night of Ashura, like us, we who will rise again from the ashes...
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