Haj-Khanum is too grief-stricken to speak. I sit beside her. I don’t know what words can express my condolences, so I simply say: “Insha’Allah, Lady Zainab (S) grants you patience.” A little girl comes and asks her grandmother for a tissue. Bahar Sadat takes the tissue, squats by the grave, and begins wiping the tombstones of her mother and father.

Haj-Khanum speaks with difficulty. Her son-in-law was a scientific prodigy. I want her to recount that night. In a few sentences, she summarizes: her daughter and son-in-law woke up for prayer in another room. When the missile struck, half the house was destroyed — the half where Seyed Esar and Mansoureh were praying, and where Seyed Mohammad Misagh and Bahar Sadat remained; the other half of the house remained intact. The grandmother says: when the missile hit their home, Seyed Mohammad Misagh called her and said, “The missile hit our house. Mom and Dad have fallen. Bahar and I are alone. Come get us.”

I came to console Haj-Khanum, but I could not bear it myself and wept uncontrollably. Hearing these scenes is already painful, let alone witnessing them — especially for two small, innocent children. A woman at the grave is distraught and crying. Bahar Sadat comes again for a tissue, saying: “I want to wipe Aunt Samaneh’s tears.”

I heard that when Seyed Esar and Mansoureh were praying, the missile struck their house. The blast threw Mansoureh outside, but she held onto something to prevent falling. After a few moments — I don’t know exactly how long — her grip gave way and she fell to the ground, while Seyed Mohammad Misagh witnessed everything.

The mark on the brother’s face became the clue

Today, the Nedbeh prayer hall at the Martyrs’ Cemetery is quieter than usual. One of the officials says: from now on, every body brought in is unidentifiable and must be identified via DNA testing. These words chill our hearts. Imagining charred bodies is painful enough — seeing them would be unbearable. I recall an Instagram post by Jafari, one of the Martyrs’ Foundation volunteers, that broke my heart. It was about a sister identifying her brother, who had been martyred in the brutal Israeli missile attack, his body burned.

She wrote: “How can they show a burned body to the mother and sister of a martyr? The mother is elderly. I will go.” Protocol allowed only one person inside. The body was quickly covered with cotton. The sister reached her brother, and a woman sprinkled flower petals to distract her. The sister screamed and identified the mole on his face — it was him. Even reading this is hard; imagining being that sister is almost impossible. The depth of this tragedy is such that even a Persian language expert would struggle to find words.

The father died upon hearing of his son’s death

We sit helplessly in a corner of the Nedbeh prayer hall when the call La ilaha illallah announces a martyr’s arrival. We move toward the coffin. Women wail and throw themselves over it. Farhad Fallahi, a former employee of Evin Prison, was the only son and beloved of his family. His father heard of Farhad’s martyrdom but did not know where his son’s body was. He could not bear it, died of grief, and two days later Farhad’s body was identified through DNA. Now, Farhad’s charred body rests in the Nedbeh hall, and his family is so distraught that we can only watch from a distance, burning with sorrow.

The body is taken toward Section 42, and we follow. Upon arrival, we see a little boy sitting by the grave, quietly shedding tears. His red eyes reveal the depth of his sorrow. The reciter chants as usual, and a middle-aged woman sitting by the grave sobs. A little girl, about six years old, sits beside her grandmother. As I approach, my eyes fall on the gravestone, and the story seems to unfold before me: Martyr Seyed Esar Tabatabai Qomsheh, Martyr Mansoureh Haji Salem.

Every day, hearing stories of the innocent martyrs of the brutal Israeli attacks, we think it cannot get any worse. Yet, the next day brings an even more tragic story. Yesterday, seven members of the Sadat Aramaki family were buried, and I thought no grief could surpass this. But now, seeing these two innocent children, I realize the agony of children witnessing their parents’ martyrdom firsthand is far heavier. How can such small hearts bear so profound a tragedy?