The Little Hand She Held Again
Zeynab Takhti, Researcher at the Islamic Women’s Studies Group, Institute for Islamic Studies
The first moments of visiting someone who has just suffered a devastating loss have always been the hardest for me. Those are the moments when your heartbeat stumbles, and a part of you secretly wishes you could delay the visit just a little longer.I had never met a mother who had lost her child—let alone a mother whose child had been murdered.How does anyone stand before a mother whose little girl—so young she had only recently lost a baby tooth—is now gone, leaving behind nothing but a single small hand?I was standing behind a loudspeaker at a late‑night gathering at a crossroads when the speaker said: For six days, that mother searched, coming and going, unable to find even the smallest trace of her child.He said the mother turned to Lady Fatimah (peace be upon her), begging her to be a mother to her in this unbearable grief and to help her find a sign from her daughter. Then she went to the morgue, telling those around her that she would find her child before nightfall.He told us that the young woman—so young that no one felt comfortable calling her “the mother of a martyr”—walked among the torn bodies, smelling them one by one, saying, “No… this isn’t my daughter. I know her scent.”
They opened a shroud containing 34 small hands.I heard this myself on that dark night, lit only by the tricolor flags of Iran fluttering above Hormozgan’s sky. The speaker said all 34 tiny hands were placed before the mother. She held and smelled each one, whispering, “No… this doesn’t smell like my daughter.”Until she reached one particular hand. The moment she saw it, she knew it was hers.“Look—her finger is bruised. My sweet girl… one morning before school, her hand got caught in the door and she cried so much.”I can’t recall what the speaker said after that, but in my mind I saw what that mother must have remembered: the hand that used to cover her eyes from behind to play, the hand that gripped hers tightly while crossing the street, the hand with which they kneaded *Toomoshi* dough together and ate it in the yard on quiet afternoons, the hand she held while taking her to religious processions.And I am left astonished at how small our “armless flag‑bearers” have become. I am certain that the true host of that gathering was drawing a connection to our deepest sorrow, whispering: “May God have mercy on my uncle Abbas.”*Toomoshi is a traditional local bread from Hormozgan.*
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