Asena Raeisi

Asena Raeisi was twelve years old and a sixth-grade student. Her family called her “Asenat.”

Her brother, Mohammad Hesam Raeisi, was ten years old and in the fourth grade.

Asena was gifted and studious. She read weighty books on psychology and history, and was preparing for the entrance exam to a school for gifted students. Her English teacher often said she had an extraordinary talent for languages, and she had once placed in an aptitude competition in Tehran, where she was given a valuable prize. She excelled at nearly everything, from schoolwork to sports, and had placed first in a goalkeeping trial at the Minab stadium, and was set to compete in the finals.

Her mother, Fatemeh Mohammadi-Rad, remembers her modesty:

“Whenever something came up in a group and I knew Asena had the answer — she had read so many books — I would ask her, ‘Why didn’t you speak up?’ She would say: ‘Scientists like Socrates and Aristotle always said, “I don’t know” — and I’m like them. I do know, but I shouldn’t claim in front of others that I know everything.’ She always said things like that. My daughter dreamed of becoming a dentist. It’s such a pity that she never had the chance.”

Asena had a gift for reciting Hafez and knew most of his ghazals by heart. Her delivery was so accomplished that whenever the school held a ceremony — welcoming a senior commander, or receiving the body of a fallen soldier — she was the one chosen to recite. At one such ceremony, General Tangsiri came to the school, and Asena, in the local Minabi dialect, recited a poem for Teachers’ Day in front of him. He gave her a gift card and a bouquet of flowers.

“Oh, how happy that made her,” her mother says.

Beyond Hafez, Asena had also memorized passages of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, and could recite verses of the Quran from memory. She often encouraged her brother to read as well, and along with him she attended taekwondo and wushu classes. The two were members of the Minab public library, and it once called to say that, among all its members, Asena and her brother had borrowed the most books.

At home, she was the capable one — she ironed her own clothes, and her brother’s too. On what would be their last morning, she was ready before he was and had already made her own lunch to take to school; her mother packed only Mohammad Hesam’s. When she saw he had not yet brushed his teeth, she told him, “Go brush your teeth.” As he put on his shoes, she added, “Comb your hair, and put on some perfume, too.” Then they put on their shoes, and did not come back.

Their mother, Fatemeh, was home that morning with her husband and their youngest son, Arsam, when an explosion tore through the neighborhood around 11:23 a.m., shattering the windows of their house, which stood close to the school. She began screaming that the school had been hit; her husband, not wanting to believe it, insisted they had struck somewhere across the street. She threw on her chador and ran toward the school without even stopping for shoes. Only part of the school’s office building was still standing, black smoke and fire pouring from its windows, and all around lay pieces of severed hands, feet, and other limbs. Around noon, the school was struck a second time, though this time there were few further casualties; afterward, families were moved away from the site while rescue teams and volunteers searched for the bodies.

The day turned to night, and the night passed with the children still not found. It was not until the following morning, a Sunday, that Asena and her brother were found in the city’s morgue — though no one told their mother right away, fearing she would faint again. “I kept hoping they were alive, or at least just injured,” she says, “until my husband came and told me their bodies had been found. Both of them were whole, but I did not look — I wanted to keep in my mind the faces from that morning, when they said goodbye to me.” Asena’s body, like her brother’s, was found intact — she was still wearing her prayer chador, as though she had been praying in the school’s prayer room when the missile struck.