Translated Content:
It was the morning of Friday, June 23, when life turned black for the family of "Zahra" called Najmeh, like many people in Iran. It was the morning of Friday, June 23, when life turned black for the family of "Zahra" called Najmeh, like many people in Iran. A few hours earlier, everything in the Sarv Professors Tower in Saadatabad was normal for all the residents. Like the family of little "Barana Eshraghi" who had probably played in the yard on her pink bike that same Thursday, or for Zahra in our story, who was preparing for a party on Friday with her sister Maryam and her parents.
According to Shargh: It was the morning of Friday, June 23, when life turned black for the family of "Zahra" called Najmeh, like many people in Iran. A few hours earlier, everything in the Sarv Professors Tower in Saadatabad was normal for all the residents. Like the family of little Barana Eshraghi, who was probably playing in the yard on Thursday with her pink bicycle, or for Zahra, our story, who was preparing for a party on Friday with her sister Maryam and her parents. But the Israeli pinpoint missile, which was ready to hit just one person, took the lives of 24 residents of the Sarvo complex, and the bodies of women, men, and children were found scattered among the rubble and even the street. Maryam Shamsbakhsh is on the phone; the sister of martyr Zahra (Najmeh). In the first call, Maryam is in the hospital changing her hand cast.
In the second call, it is probably at a relative's house that we talk at length, from the moment the missile hit the middle of all of our lives, from the dream she had, and from Najmeh, the innocent girl who is the heroine of this story, 35 years old and a software engineering graduate from the University of Science and Culture, a religious girl with many friends and clear thoughts, calm and always smiling. Maryam describes her sister as follows: “Najmeh always laughed. She never got upset with anyone, she loved everyone and got along with everyone, and this was strange to all her friends. Najmeh was five years older than me, but we were very close, we traveled a lot, from visiting shrines to traveling to all the sights of Iran; we were also attached.”
Maryam talks about the day of the attack. On Thursday night, everyone was preparing for a party the next day, a party on the eve of Eid al-Ghadir. Maryam says that that night was very happy and bright. Then it was time to go to bed and a new story of Najmeh’s life, her family’s, and all of ours, begins: “I went to bed later. It was around 1:30 a.m. Before that, I went to get something from Najmeh’s room and I saw her lying on the bed and I came out and went to my bed.”
They were neighbors in the unit opposite the Shahid Tehranchi family for 14 years. The subject was “Mohammad Mehdi,” but he was only one of the victims. His wife, Mojgan Qaraviri, Barana and Ehsan Eshraqi, and Najmeh Shams were just a few of the 20 martyrs of this complex. Maryam says: “I fell asleep at about 1:30 and the next scene is under the rubble. The moment I was going under the rubble, I had a strange dream. I dreamed that my hand accidentally touched the closet and it fell on me and there was all this rubble that had fallen on my head. I was still asleep and awake when the sound of another explosion woke me up and the rubble fell on me again.” We both remain silent on the phone line for a few seconds. Maryam is probably thinking about her numbered breaths and I am thinking about the rubble on Najmeh: “My breaths were numbered, under the rubble I thought there was an earthquake. We lived on the sixth floor of a 13-story building and I imagined that the entire building had fallen on me. At one point, I felt so much pressure that I started screaming. The more I opened my mouth, the more dirt I got in my mouth. I thought no one was alive. Then a voice came from afar, saying: "Maryam, I'm coming." It was Baba's voice. Baba said, "Shout so I can find you."
Baba finds Maryam and tells her to look for Najmeh and her mother. Maryam gets up, still thinking about the earthquake, and her swollen feet and bloody hands become unresponsive: "There were no more windows to see outside. There was no house at all. Through the collapsed walls, I saw the Opal building, shining brightly in front of me, and I thought to myself, how well they built Opal that this earthquake didn't even scratch its building. Then I turned my head and saw that the other buildings were intact. I said to my father, "Dad... was there an earthquake again?" The father tells Maryam that the daughter of Jang came home and that the Israeli “symbolic” missiles had hit the heart of the house: “When I came out of the room, we went to my parents’ room, who were on the way to my room, and we heard my mother’s voice from afar. My father pulled her out from under the rubble. Then we went to Najmeh’s room. The scene was horrifying. I mean, there was nothing. Najmeh’s room and the kitchen were next to each other, and now they had become one. We all started calling out to Najmeh. We were moving everything around to find her bed. I thought Najmeh was sleeping under the rubble.” Maryam is right; Najmeh was asleep.
Each floor of the 13-story building in Sarv Saadat Abad had four units, and two units were facing each other on each floor. The Shams family’s house and the Tehranchi family’s house were wall to wall, and the distance between the houses was only one wall. There was also only one wall between Najmeh’s room and the house of the Tehranchi martyrs. Maryam and her parents' rooms were behind the toilet and bathroom. Maryam says: "The toilet probably caught the blast wave, but there was no barrier to save Najmeh, and it threw Najmeh out of the house. The house was still on fire and the rescue forces had not arrived. We thought our house was completely destroyed and we didn't think the stairs were safe. I could hear people's voices outside. Our house also had emergency stairs, but I didn't know that these stairs were safe. I was shouting towards the voices that we are alive, come help us. My parents were also searching for their loved ones in the rubble that had been our house until a few hours ago. A long time passed and I heard someone's voice saying: "Shout, I will find you. I went towards the sound and they found us and I saw that the stairs were still safe. Because I was injured and my leg was hurting, they took me out of the building early. Qiyamat Alley was full of worried families. The sky was starting to clear when the fire department arrived. I was shouting, “My sister Najmeh is there.” They convinced my mother to come down around six o’clock, but my father was still upstairs.”
It was around this time that the news arrived. Here, Maryam’s voice calms down and she explains that next to the house was a garage and a very large plot of land where the residents of the garage had reported finding a body. The Astadi Sarv Tower was a two-story house. One side of it adjoined Shahid Garavandi Street and the other side continued to Farahzadi Street. Najmeh’s body was found on Garavandi Street and the family of Shahid Tehranchi was found on Farahzadi Street: “I didn’t know anything and I only heard that they had to stop the patrol. I was inside the ambulance and my aunt and uncle had also arrived. My cousin was sitting in front of me in the ambulance when her phone rang. She said her father said we had to go somewhere quickly. My aunt, my mother, and my cousin got into my cousin's car, and my father came and got in and said, "They just offered their condolences to me. Najmeh is no more." Najmeh is being taken to the Martyrs' Ascension and her uncle steps forward to confirm her identity. The young girl is wearing the white dress of the Eternal House and has the word "martyr" next to her beloved's name. Maryam says, "We are carrying several simultaneous sufferings with us; the suffering of losing our home and life. The suffering of being trapped under the rubble and the suffering of losing our beloved. All of this is too much for us to bear. These days, I tell my mother that nothing will ever be the same again. Our life without Najmeh will never be the same again." I ask Maryam where she lives now and she replies, "Almost nowhere. We have no place to live. We stayed at my aunt’s house for a while, then we went to the city, and now we’re back at my aunt’s house. But nothing will change for us.” Maryam says she saw Barana almost every day, and at least three children lost their lives in the Sarvo Professors’ Building. They had lived in this house for 14 years. The houses were built by the Ministry of Science and then sold to private owners: “Apart from our tower, the house next door was also completely evacuated, because it was at risk of gas pipe explosions and demolition.”
Maryam talks about Najmeh, a happy girl who no one in the group has any problems with, about the peace that she will never return to their house, and about the pain of being left under the rubble, about the tragedy of losing a girl like our Najmeh, who they can’t bear to be without. Before hanging up the phone, I tell Maryam that none of us will ever be the same again. Something is missing in us, and those were the beloved young bodies wrapped in flags, they were the heart of Iran. Like Barana, like Mohsen, and like Najmeh. Woe to Najmeh.