Amir Mohammad Ghasemi was in third grade. His sister, Helma, was in fourth grade. They were from Gerash, in Fars Province.
At 11:17 that morning, Amir Mohammad’s teacher, Mrs. Shahriari, called their father and told him the school was closing and that he should come for the children. He was in Bandar Abbas (100km away) . He called the school driver and asked him to pick them up. The driver was already about one kilometer from the school when the attack happened.
When their father heard that the school in Minab had been hit, he rushed toward it. In those moments, he says, nothing mattered except reaching his children. Not his own life, not danger, not the road. Only one thought remained: to get there and save them.
But when he arrived, the part of the school where his children had been was destroyed. He says he was no longer looking for his children alive. He was looking for their bodies.
Helma had almost left the school with the father of a classmate, but she remembered what her own father had told her: not to leave with anyone except the school driver. She returned inside the school.
She never came home again.
Near evening, their father found Amir Mohammad under the rubble near the Chapel. A piece of concrete had trapped part of his body, and shrapnel had struck his leg. Later that night, he found Helma in the mortuary where bodies had been taken. She was almost intact, with only the back of her left hand burned. Their father says both children had raised their hands in a defensive position during the first strike.
Amir Mohammad and Helma were two children who obeyed, waited, trusted, and stayed where they had been told to stay. War turned that obedience into grief.