One must feel Minab wholeheartedly. Here, the earth is warm, even in the dead of night. The soil of The South preserves warmth, like a mother embracing her child tightly, never letting go of her nestling. When morning arrives, the scent of salt arrives from the sea, the waft of ripened rutab from the palm groves, the aroma of fresh bread, baked in the Tanoor of earthen abodes. These redolences interweave and create something called “Minab”.  

The Minab river flows calmly beside the city, and stretches to the Persian Gulf. It has traversed this path for a thousand years. Placid and undaunted. The palm trees flank its shores, tall, indomitable, and with trunks like weathered masts, they have endured the wounds of desert storms, unbroken. These palm trees have something of the people of this land.

The hands of Minabians are mapped with calluses but are outstretched only for giving. Before asking a stranger’s name, they spread their Sofreh to share their food. These people have made peace with sun storms, drought, and the heat. 

But that morning, the searing heat was of a different kind. 

That day began as did others. 

The mothers of Minab had risen for Sahar. Had combed their children's hair, given them their school bags. One said, “Finish your breakfast!”. One sealed her child’s tender brow with a kiss. One uttered the words, “Go, dear child, you will be late, go”. A word that now burdens like a heavy rock on one’s heart.

The children had left, with their small school bags on their slender spans. With fairy soles treading fast to avoid tardiness. With the song of their laughter that echoed in the passageways of Minab. They had gone to Shajareh Tayyebeh School, and what a gorgeous name: The Pristine Tree, for the place where the youth would write their first, with spidery writings that would come from the heart. 

They had opened their books, the teacher teaching. Maybe a window was gazing at the blue sky of The South, the very sky who was never the foe. Maybe one child was gently whispering to a friend. Perhaps another was hastily finishing yesterday's homework. 

The innocent cherubs had no weapons, no enemies, did not even comprehend what it meant to have enemies. Their worlds were the passageways, their mothers’ voices, the sandy seaside they would run on with bare feet. That day even the heavens wept.

The pretenders of civilization committed this grievous misdeed. 

The ones arriving from the other side of the oceans with enormous words, freedom, democracy, human rights. Words that sparkle on their tongues, but bring blood when enacted. They preach human rights and kill innocent youth, with a press of a mere button. The ones who dispatch their civilization to a school whose pupils cannot even write the word civilization correctly.

They dispatch it to the same walls that once held the children's sketches: a home, a tree, the sun, and the sky with birds soaring therein. The same sky from which death came that day. 

What civilization is this? What freedom is this, that is written with the blood of children? Did the ones who press the button know who was below? Yes, they knew, and it would not differ. This is the meaning of “civilization”. This is behind the mirage of their words. But history inscribes. Allah has seen. And the innocent youth shall bear witness on judgment day.
After that day, Minab became mournful.

A mother leaned on the school wall and remained. She touched the stone, akin to one who reaches for something, knowing nothing shall be found. The wall was still warm from the sun. It still carried the scent of the children. The sound of their laughter was still there.

Another mother called her child's name. Once, ten times, a hundred times. Until sound broke and the word was void of meaning, and only a lament lingered that traversed the passageways of Minab and met no response.

A mother sat in silence on the same earth from which she arose to array her child. Her eyes were dry. Tears were depleted. Only pain remained, pure and heavy, like a millstone placed on the chest.

The fathers who had learned not to shed tears in front of their progeny, could not bear it that day. The hands that pulled ropes and threw fishing nets for years, were trembling. Men who were upright as the palm trees, had their backs bent. Not from feebleness, but from the weight of the heartache that no human can bear. 
And Minab cried.

The river flowed tardier, like its haste had gone. The palm trees had bowed their heads, which had stood skyward in sandstorms unbroken.

The sea brought its leaden waves to the shore, like a mournful person who simply comes and goes, comes and goes, and knows not what to say. 

As if Minab had ceased.

Oh, youth of Shajareh Tayyebeh, 
whither did you go?
Whither did you depart, for your absence is palpable! For your classroom chairs are empty, your bags still behind the door, for your colored pencils are still on the desk, unfinished, akin to the pictures you never got to draw. If only you would return. 

If only that morning could be reversed. How it would be to go back to the simple words spoken by your mothers: “go, dear child, you'll be late, go!”. These words will now resonate in your mothers’ dreams, and every time she wakes up, she will think if she had not said it, if she had not let you go, if you were late that day, if…. 
But it shall not be.

And this pain is not one that would heal. It is one we learn to live with, like a wound that has ceased to bleed, but its scar remains forever, on the skin, on the heart. 
Albeit, mother wakes up every day. 

Still heats the Tanoor, still bakes bread. Still makes tea. Her hands do the same as always, while her gaze is elsewhere. Her stare beholds what others do not see. The path you took and never returned. 

Sometimes she opens the door, just because. Stands. Looks down the passageway. As though she has not yet believed. As if you will come from the end of the passageway, with the same schoolbag, laughing, with the same voice as you called “mom, I'm hungry!”.

The passageway is empty.
Your father is not laughing the way he used to. At times, he sits by the river, where you sat together, the familiar place where he would teach you how to fish. He gazes at the water. Silent, it seems he is asking the river to take something on his behalf or bring a thing for him. I know not which. 
The river does not respond. It merely flows. Only goes.

Oh, little angels of the South, 
You have departed, but your footsteps linger. 
They linger on the soil of Minab, in the memory of the passageway, in the heart of the same meandering river, and now it seems to hold your names with it. In the shade of the same palm trees who bowed for you and never stood upright as they used to.

You are gone, but the sky is not the same. Whoever journeys through Minab and hold their head up, is overcome with dread. As if the sky can no longer be believed. It seems its blueness does not suffice. 
But YOU are there. 

With All-Powerful King, Your Nourisher, where there are no missiles, fears, and sorrow. Where you have utterly retrieved your childhood, with all the laughs you had not laughed, the games you are yet to play, the wishes you could not even name. 
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And how beautifully did say Allah that the martyr is alive.
And you are alive. More than everyone. More alive than the ones who committed this crime, and think THEY are alive. 
This tyranny is penned. 
This blood is beheld. 
This innocence, this sinlessness, this childhood that was forcibly severed, these are inscribed.

And on the day when all is weighed, you shall stand. With the same schoolbags, the same innocent eyes. With the same smile that your mothers saw and enshrined in their hearts for all their lives.

You shall stand and bear witness.
And on that day, no word, no excuse, and no pretense of civilization, freedom, and democracy shall suffice. And there shall be no retreat for the tyrants. 

Photo: Fragments of a missile displayed on a table in Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, Hormozgan province.