Adrina Pegah was a first-grade student, only six and a half years old, when she was killed together with her mother, Farideh Jahangiri.
Her father says:
“I am a teacher myself in this town, and at that moment I was serving at work. The news reached us, and within ten minutes I got myself to that school.
Before this, we had heard of Karbala in stories. But that day, we saw Karbala with our own eyes. Minab became the Karbala of Iran.
In those first moments, I saw the torn bodies of children, burned clothes, and burned and broken desks and benches inside the Minab school. When I arrived, the school had been turned to dust. This school had a staircase. In the mornings, when I would see my daughter off, because daughters are usually close to their fathers, I would send her to class with a kiss. But when I arrived that day, there was no school and no staircase left.”
Speaking of his wife’s martyrdom, he says:
“After seeing the condition of the school, from the intensity of grief and sorrow, I tore the clothes I was wearing. It was not in my control. I ran toward my wife’s workplace, which was near the school. She worked at the Agricultural office. I saw that the door to my wife’s room was locked. I realized she had gone to look for my daughter, and that my wife too was under the rubble.
After forty-eight hours, I found my wife’s pure body at the hospital with the help of photographs that had been taken of the martyrs. It took two days to complete her burial arrangements. Then they told me that my daughter had also been martyred at the hospital. I immediately held my daughter’s funeral as well.”
In another part of his words, addressing Trump and Netanyahu and their empty promises, he says:
“We all saw with our own eyes the freedom they promised. Their freedom was such that we were faced with the torn bodies of our seven-year-old daughters. My daughter was seven years old. I ask them: what freedom did you bring for my daughter? What was in my daughter’s school bag? There was no threat to humanity in my daughter’s bag. In my daughter’s bag there were a handful of pencils, a few notebooks, and some pens.
My last memory of my daughter is a text message from her. She was in first grade and had only recently learned to read and write. At night, she would always wait for me to come home so we could have dinner together. The night before her martyrdom, she sent me a message from her mother’s phone: ‘Daddy, I am Adrina. Have you had dinner? I love you, Daddy.’
That is the last message I have from my daughter, and I have kept it as a keepsake.
She was also a basketball player. Her basketball is in my arms every night. I hope that one day I can place this basketball into the basket of my longing. Every night, I hold my daughter’s basketball and sleep with it.”
The father of martyr Adrina Pegah says:
“As can be seen from her photo, my daughter was known as the blue-eyed girl of Shajareh School. She was a very creative girl, a girl beyond her age. She was only seven, but her actions and thoughts were beyond her years.”