On 28 February this year, a missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the city of Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran. Like most folk these days I think about what the world we live in has become, and mostly I try to keep my counsel to myself with respect to personal beliefs and political opinions. For today though, I am penning this piece as a mother and retired teacher, with a need to write with stark honesty.
It took some time to tease out the truths and the lies of exactly what had happened (and nobody ever really knows the truth anymore), but what is indisputable is that a ‘double tap’ strike hit the building and over 170 little girls and their teachers were either burned beyond recognition or completely incinerated to ash. As decent human beings we need to really think about that and not just say how terrible it is and how war has consequences, or worse, deny responsibility and apportion blame to somebody else.
Iran school attack is unimaginable
The children in the school in Minab woke up on a Saturday morning, stretched their young limbs to welcome in a day of learning and companionship, ate breakfast with siblings, brushed their teeth and hair, and finally slung backpacks over their small shoulders with a nonchalance that any little girl, anywhere, might be expected to do. I have seen those fragile human beings (in a different country and setting, of course) waving farewells to mothers at school entrances where I have taught; smiling, full of giggling life and innocent wonderment, oblivious to what the coming day might bring.
I have taught in many schools during my career as a teacher, including my first teaching post in Northern Ireland where the windows of the classrooms were secured with Sellotape and the risk of a bombing on the courthouse next door was consistently high. But I could never have imagined even one of the pupils being in imminent peril, because there are actually rules of engagement even in war, and killing children is generally not one of them.
The true face of a parent’s suffering
Mothers the world over have a perfectly legitimate right to believe that their offspring will reappear to them out of the clamour and busyness of a school day, in safety and in wholeness. To never again feel the love of a child’s arms about your waist, or the press of a warmed cheek into your belly, or the soft plumpness of their skin against your skin is unthinkable to most of us. Not to be able to bury your offspring because there is literally nothing physically left of them, is even more unfathomably painful to imagine. And it is this reluctance to truly view another’s suffering that I believe is our undoing, especially when those ‘others’ live and breathe in a world, not only miles away by distance, but culturally as well.
Decency, morality and compassion
The two photographs that accompany this article were taken a few years ago during visits to Iran while staying with my husband’s half of our family. The first was taken on the steps of the Master Behtooni Art Works Museum. The second, taken with my daughter, took place in the grounds of one of the palaces in Tehran. The wonder of these photographs should not be a wonder to any of us, because the mischievousness on those little faces, the self-consciousness or alternative bravado in their individual demeanours, and the excitement at having their pictures unexpectedly taken, are what we often see in our own children as they grow up.
I can’t claim that I know anything with great certainty these days, but I do believe that children all over the world have similar needs, wants, aspirations and disappointments, regardless of their culture, religion or ethnicity, and that they have a right to live in safety and with our unconditional protection. We, as human beings, need to believe that decency, morality and compassion will prevail, and hope that those sweet souls of Minab have found a final resting place free from the suffering of a world we have sadly now become.
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