Mahdiyeh Ahmadzadeh was a sixth-grade student. On the morning of her martyrdom, she woke up late and missed her morning prayer. At the first opportunity in school, she asked the teacher for permission to make up the prayer she had missed.
Mahdiyeh and Arina Arabkish had a secret code between them: 45.
Only after their martyrdom was the meaning of that code understood. The two girls had planned to save their money and provide food for 45 poor people in one of the villages of the region.
Mahdiyeh was killed together with her brother, Amin Ahmadzadeh.
Mahdiyeh’s body was found at 10:30 p.m., but Amin’s body had been destroyed so completely that he could not be found. His mother went to the school and said, “I can recognize my own child myself.” She insisted on going among the bodies.
Amin’s body was not found.
His mother said he had an agate ring on his hand. They took her to a bag filled with hands; about fifteen or sixteen hands without bodies.
The mother sat down and began to examine them.
God knows how this mother had such patience and such strength. She sat there and looked through the hands one by one. Then she found one and said, “This is him.”
She said she had cut his nails in a hurry the day before, and they were not neat. “Look, these nails are not neat.”
His hand had been caught in a door. “Look at this bruise under the nail.”
God alone knows what patience He has given to these mothers.
What remains from her story is not only the pain of a child taken from her family, but the image of a young girl whose heart was already thinking of prayer, friendship, and feeding the poor.