Translated Content:
According to Mashreq, on the morning of July 27, 1955, Kamran held up the Quran. Fatima passed under the Quran, turned around, kissed the Quran, and took her pregnant wife to the Isfahan Maternity and Gynecology Hospital. The morning sun of the land of Zayandeh-Rud set. A wheat-colored girl was born. Kamran held the Quran in front of Fatima: “Choose one of the two names, Anahita and Niloufar.” Fatima looked at the newborn’s long, bright forehead. She took the paper out from under the Quran. Niloufar, Niloufar Qalehvand. Fatima attached the “And One” tag to the baby’s knitwear. She whispered the verse of the Throne.
Niloufar, Goddess of Water
Niloufar is a flower that rises from ponds and clear, flowing waters; the goddess of water, her roots are in the soil, her stems are in the water, her leaves are in the wind, and her petals shine like the sun. Niloufar, the daughter of Kamran and Fatemeh, grew up next to the stories of One Thousand and One Nights and the famous Amir Arsalan and Bijan and Manijeh. Between her father’s reading of the Shahnameh, between the days when her mother braided her hair; the daughter would whisper Golabtun. She would tell her the story of Zal and Rudabeh.
The shadow of security and the path of heroism
In the shadow of security in a land called Iran, Niloufar settled with her family in Tehran; the newly founded neighborhood. Niloufar’s goal was exercise and a healthy life. In the morning, when the sunlight from Mount Damavand cast a shadow over Tehran, she would wake up; she would spend an entire hour running, walking, and doing physical activity; she would wear sports clothes. She tucked her hair under her hat, picked up her bag, and headed to the youth sports club. Standing on one leg, practicing balance, practicing running around the gym full of mirrors, reducing stress and relaxation were the results of her activity. Muscles that easily lasted in endurance competitions. She advanced her mental concentration step by step; she drew heavy air into her lungs; one thousand and one, one thousand two, one thousand three ... and every day her seconds count increased. The concentration of consciousness had made her an athletic girl of the type of girls born in Iran.
The Pilates instructor who told his students: "Sports are not just about the body and the physical body, the soul must be brought to consciousness." Like the flower of her namesake, Niloufar would set off to work and strive at sunrise and return at sunset; under the shade of her father's roof, her mother's always warm table, the pleasant and spicy smell of green cabbage, caressed her smooth and shiny skin, she sat down at the table.
Nighttime Conversation and National Concerns
“Mom, what happened, my name is Niloufar?” Fatima looked at the deep lines of Kamran’s face: “Oh my God, your father wrote two pieces of paper and put them in the middle of the Quran; no, tell me they were both Niloufar.” Kamran spread his warm smile on Fatima’s face: “They both have the same meaning; the goddess of water, the goddess of water; Niloufar and Anahita.” Niloufar sniffed the eighth spoonful of soft, steamed rice, chewed it slowly, and said to her mother: “Your hands are gold, mother.”
Kamran was watching the 9 p.m. news; it showed a girl from Gaza with her hair disheveled and a drop of blood dried near her eyebrow. Niloufar stared at the TV frame for a few moments, swallowed, ran a hand through her braided hair, and went to her room. Kamran listened to the news until the last moment, then turned to Fatima and said, “One day, the evil of this Israel will be destroyed.” Fatima folded the table, let out a shaky breath, and said, “A nation of scum and scum.”
Martyrdom in the New Foundation
Kamran turned on the TV as he usually does every night; the weather news anchor said, “Tomorrow, Friday, June 23, 1404, the weather in Tehran will be clear to partly cloudy with a maximum temperature of 36 degrees Celsius and rising at some hours.” Kamran said loudly, “Friday is a holiday, and Saturday is Eid al-Ghadir; let’s get together and go to the sea.” Niloufar ran out of her room with enthusiasm: “It’s me; wow, two days of walking and practicing on the beach are making me hungry, Dad.”
The night was half over; darkness had grown thick; the smell of Fatima’s mother’s green scallions was still wafting by the kitchen window. The sharp, piercing sound of Tehran’s drones tore through neighborhoods and the homes of the generals; the first wave of drone attacks tore through the walls of the newly founded town’s silence. The 16-story building collapsed at the moment the missile hit; the infant’s breath stopped; a little girl was trapped under the rubble on another floor, and civilian mothers and fathers were killed. The city’s surroundings turned blue and gray; Iran’s fear was palpable; no wind was blowing. The people of the neighborhood came to the rescue. Niloufar, along with her mother and father, were martyred in the bright shadow of life and death.
Niloufar’s Revenge and Immortality
The night of the attack reached the next sunset. The tired shadow of the wind crept into the sun. The silver dust of the missiles, from the land of Niloufar’s father’s birthplace in the blue sky, on the time of Isfahan, Tabriz, Kashan, and all of Iran, headed for the well of Will Israel. The sky of Jerusalem trembled; the Iron Dome did not last; the oleanders of Israel bloomed. Iranian soldiers have boasted: “Let a hundred sons roll in blood, let no daughter be lost.”
Israel had mistaken Iran for another place; the oldest genome in the world, the lily flower, which belonged to the ancient Iranian civilization, did not flourish; rather, it became an eternal seed for another thousand years, for the daughters of this land. In the words of Fereydoun Moshiri: You became the lily, I became the tears of the moon, you told me to make the heart of the sea, O friend of all, make the sea ours, O friend, my heart became the sea and I gave it to you
The crime was “living”
In Tehran, where hope sprouted like a stubborn plant from the heart of the asphalt, life was ongoing; at every sunrise, women, the unassuming architects of tomorrow, woke up with a thousand dreams. With hands that smelled of bread and love, they were busy weaving the web of daily life: a mother who put a bite in her child's bag, a teacher who taught the alphabet of sustainability, and a woman who tended a vase of geraniums behind the window. Their lives were the embodiment of the beauty of resistance and continuation.
Suddenly, the silence of the city was broken by the sound of death. Uninvited guests descended from the sky who neither understood the language of hope nor recognized the dignity of life. In the blink of an eye, the walls of the house, which were supposed to be a refuge, turned into rubble.
How oppressively, those half-baked smiles, those hands that were supposed to build a house tomorrow, were hidden under dust and dirt. They became innocent martyrs not on the battlefield, but in the safe haven of their dreams. Women whose only crime was "living."
Although the candlesticks were left without an owner, their empty space screams hope. Their memory, like the scent of rose petals, remains in the soul of this city; a sign of the oppression that befell the hopeful women of this land and a determination that will never leave our hearts. Amid the rubble, one can still see their delicate fingerprints on the remaining photo frames and objects. Each object is a story of an ordinary day that suddenly became eternal. The destroyed houses are no longer just buildings; they are silent museums of suffering that show how small hopes could not withstand the blind power of war but became immortal in the heart of history.