Zahra Behroozi was a third-grade student. We used a report by The Guardian to tell part of her story.
Marzieh, Zahra Behroozi’s mother, spoke of the moment when she first mistook the sound of the explosion for her young son playing. But when the second explosion came and the house shook violently, she felt that something unusual had happened. Only a few minutes earlier, she had received a short call from Mrs. Mohammadian, the teacher of her eight-year-old daughter, Zahra. The teacher had only said that the school was closing early and that the family should come to take her home.
Later, when Marzieh opened the door of the house, she was met by the sharp smell of smoke and the confusion of the street. People were saying, “The war has started.”
The Guardian report shows that in those minutes, families still did not know the depth of the catastrophe. Marzieh called the teachers one after another, then the principal, and even the school caretaker, but no one answered. She later said that when she reached the schoolyard, “I saw only rubble.” Each time a child was pulled out from under the stones and dust, she asked whether the child was alive.
Hossein, Zahra’s father, was among the first people to reach the scene. He told The Guardian that the boys’ section of the school was still partly standing, but the place where the girls had studied had been leveled to the ground. Amid the cries of men and the wailing of women, he moved rubble away near the staircase, thinking that perhaps his daughter had tried to escape from there.
But an hour later, the news came that Zahra’s body had been found.
In the morgue, Hossein identified his eight-year-old daughter. In the sentence on which The Guardian’s headline was built, he said: “Her head had been shattered.” He added that Zahra’s ribs were also broken, but the rest of her body, beneath a layer of dust, was still recognizable.
He told the morgue staff:
“This is my daughter, Zahra Behroozi. She was eight years old.”