Arash and Atena Golazin were brother and sister at Shajareh Tayyebeh School. Arash was in second grade. Atena was in fifth grade.
Before the missile struck, the teachers had told the children to leave the classrooms and wait outside until their parents came to take them home. Atena and Arash also went into the schoolyard. Then, for a moment, Arash left Atena and the missile struck.
Arash never came back.
Atena survived, but she remained stunned, carrying a grief too heavy for a child. She was the eldest daughter in a family of five that became a family of four. When she spoke in the interview, she frowned and twisted her lips, as if trying to hide the tears rising inside her.
When she remembered Arash, speaking became difficult. Her only wish in this world was to see her brother once more and hold him. She missed their little arguments, his mischief, and the toys he used to scatter around the house. “I always had to clean them up,” she said. “I used to get angry at him for that. But I wish he were here so I could get angry at him again. I wish I could see my brother one more time and hug him.”
Atena dreams of becoming an actress. When she was asked whether she would act if someone one day made a film about the children of the Minab school, she answered: “Yes, definitely. I would love to.”
She remembers the day of the attack clearly. Their teacher came to the class around 10:45 and said the school was being closed. The teacher went out to call the parents. A sixth-grade student came into the classroom and said there was a war. Atena and her friends went outside. In the hall, Arash came up beside her.
She asked him, “Brother, has Mom come for us?”
He said no. Atena told him to wait so she could get her bag and they could go together. But Arash said he wanted to go ahead and that she could come slowly.
She let go of his hand.
Then the second missile struck.
Atena tried to help a friend who had fallen in the classroom. A bookcase fell on them. She lifted it and realized her leg was hurting. She made her way down through the ruins. She wanted to go back for Arash, but they did not allow her to go farther. She called her mother and said she was going home, but Arash was still at school.
For two days, Arash was missing. Atena kept thinking he might have hidden somewhere or gone into the street, because Arash had always been playful and mischievous. On Monday afternoon, their father came home and told them Arash had been martyred.
Arash was seven and a half years old. He loved robotics and wanted to become an inventor. He had told his mother that he would build two robots: one to help her with the housework so she would not get tired, and another to take him into space.
His mother remembers him as the noisy, lively child of the home. “Since he left,” she said, “the house has become silent.” She also remembered that ten nights before the attack, Arash had told her he was afraid America might fire missiles. She had told him America would not even find Minab on the map. She did not know then that her child would leave this world by a missile.
After the attack, all that was returned to the family was a half-burned book and one torn sock, light gray, with a red Angry Birds picture. His school bag was never found.
His father, Bahram Golazin, later stood beside Arash’s grave and said they could not identify their child except by his sock and his foot. He had dressed Arash himself that morning and knew what to look for. Arash had been born with a mark on his right foot: two of his small toenails were partly joined together. His mother used to kiss that foot and tell him, “You are special.” His father said this sign was what God had given them so they could find him if he were ever lost.
In the morgue, they found Arash by that sign.
The only part of him that had not been damaged was his right foot.
His father wept and said: “I hope no father or mother ever has to stand under the coffin of their child. Now Arash is sleeping beneath his teacher’s feet. I hope Mrs. Shahriari will mother him there.”
Atena still wishes for a magic power: to turn time back and keep alive those she loved.
She could not bring Arash back from the school.
So now she carries him in memory: the little brother who wanted to invent robots, who dreamed of space, who went back inside because he was afraid, and never returned.