"They Entrusted Me With the Most Difficult Thing a Person Can Hold"

A personal testimony: the morning a mourner was allowed, for a few brief moments, to cradle the body of the little martyr Zahra at the farewell ceremony for the martyred Leader and his family

The following is a personal account, shared by a woman who gives her name as Zahra Pak-Ravesh, of what she experienced at the Imam Khomeini Musalla in Tehran, where the funeral of the martyred Leader and members of his family was held. It is presented here in her own voice.

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.

I could not sleep that whole night. I had come home from the Musalla, but I never closed my eyes. Some anxiety I could not explain had settled into my soul; my heart could find no rest, and I did not understand why.

Before dawn, I performed a full ablution with the intention of visiting the shrine. It was still dark. When the call to the morning prayer sounded, I prayed — and the moment I finished, an insistent voice rose up within me: You must go. You must be at the Musalla. The feeling pressed on my chest like a great stone; I could barely breathe. I set out.

The road was not as it usually is. The highways, the streets — everything looked changed. In the twilight, the sky and the earth seemed wrapped in a particular sorrow, as though the whole world were in mourning. The Leader’s portrait hung everywhere I looked, and the nearer I came, the heavier the anxiety in my heart grew. Something extraordinary, I felt certain, was going to happen that day. It was as if a force were drawing me forward.

When I reached the Musalla, I learned that the bodies of the martyrs would arrive at around half past six in the morning. My agitation only deepened. I sat in a corner of the courtyard while it was still dark, reciting the Qur’an, weeping, and waiting, my heart beating faster as the appointed hour drew closer.

“I could no longer control myself”

Gradually I noticed the movement of the soldiers and staff growing busier, and I understood that they were near. Then a procession appeared, and the cars bearing the martyrs arrived under guard. My heart seemed to stop. I rose to my feet and looked toward my Leader, and I greeted him. I could not believe it was happening — that I, of all people, was standing before the vehicle that carried his body.

In the hardest days of my life, my one comfort had been a kufiyah left to me in his memory. I never thought of myself as anyone special before Allah. But whenever I opened my heart to Imam Mahdi, I would tell him that I loved his vicar, and through him I would confide what weighed on me — and each time, in one way or another, I felt an answer return to me. There are things that cannot be spoken, secrets that remain only between a person and their Lord. From the day my Leader was martyred, I had held only one wish: to see his body just once, and to hold it close. Why, only he knows.

Among the mourners

When people surged toward the car, everyone seemed to scatter. I stood where I was and wept; my legs would not obey me. In all that crowd I was the only woman — perhaps others were elsewhere, but I saw no one. I felt out of place among the men, yet some force pulled me irresistibly forward. I feared only one thing: that I would not be permitted to reach the martyrs. Clutching my veil tightly, I pressed on, no longer noticing anything around me. The fear fell away, and only one desire remained — to see them, and to touch them.

I reached the door of the car. Men stood all around, every one of them weeping, every one of them speaking to their Leader. After about twenty minutes, one of the commanders gave his permission, and the doors were opened.

And I saw the bodies of the martyrs.

I could not believe my eyes — could not believe that I was truly standing there, that Allah had brought me to the very place I had so long dreamed of. The men’s weeping grew louder. I drew my veil across my face and cried. One by one, the coffins were lifted out upon the mourners’ hands. I touched them with my ring and pressed it to my face, as if receiving a blessing, and I performed the ziyarat and wept. Even that would have been enough to change me forever.

O Lord, I said, I thank You. You have shown me such mercy. You have granted my most cherished wish.

“For a few moments, I was allowed to be her mother”

The Leader’s coffin was still within the car, ready to be borne out upon hands, and beside it lay the coffin of little Zahra. I kissed the Leader’s coffin and clung to it for a moment. Then the man who had called me forward gently placed the coffin of the small martyr into my hands.

I do not know how to describe those moments. For a few of them, I was allowed to be a mother to her.

It cannot be put into words. It was as though the whole world lay in my arms. I felt that I was holding a light — a light of such weight that nothing on earth could compare to it. The lifeless body of the child rested in my hands. I turned toward where I was meant to go, and on the way I saw nothing and heard nothing around me. I only spoke to my Imam, and thanked him, for I had asked him for this meeting so many times.

The men parted to make way for me; I did not need to say a word. As I carried that small body, the sorrows of Lady Ruqayya and Lady Zaynab rose in my mind. Only one who understands can know what it means to hold the lifeless body of a little girl in your hands — what it means when your arms are so full of a child that you can no longer even set your veil straight upon your head, and when men silently open a path before you. Perhaps they, too, were remembering Lady Zaynab, and the moment she held Ruqayya.

“There are wounds that never heal”

Yesterday my hands held the little martyr Zahra. Her small body was covered with wounds. After yesterday, I am no longer the same Zahra I was.

I had thought that seeing her would bring me peace. It did not. My anxiety grew a thousandfold. Even now it sometimes seems that I still feel the weight of her little body in my arms; I clench my fists as though I were still holding that precious trust, and I feel its weight again. Every time I remember her, I weep without being able to stop.

There are wounds that never heal. They stay with a person for the rest of their life. And I wonder whether the feeling of such an embrace, too, remains in the heart forever.