Alireza Zeinali: A Father in the Living Room with His Two Daughters

Alireza was killed in the middle of the night in their own home—by Israeli missiles.
It took more than 24 hours, maybe longer, to pull the bodies of Alireza and his daughters from the rubble. Around noon the day after the bombing, they found Ayma. At sunset, Alireza’s body was pulled from the rubble. The next afternoon, little Hilda’s body was also found.

Alireza was kind and intelligent. He had excellent grades throughout his school years and was even an honors student at Isfahan University of Technology. He later earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering.

Alireza’s brother says this in an interview: “It’s painful for me to talk about it. I found out more than an hour after the attack. We are originally from Tafresh, and when I arrived at their home in Tehran, it was 7 a.m. What I saw was complete devastation. The house was completely destroyed. My brother and his two daughters were in the living room, while his wife was in another part of the house. When I arrived, they were still digging through the rubble.”

On the night of the attack, Alireza’s brother had called him and asked him to come to Tafresh for safety. “But he never imagined such a threat.” Alireza was scheduled to leave for Varamin that morning with his wife and two daughters. But his brother said, “When I imagine the moment they pulled my brother and his little girls out of that mountain of concrete and dust, life becomes hell for me. I can’t believe it… I can’t…”

Alireza was a father who didn’t know he was telling his daughters their last bedtime story that night. Looking at the photos of him holding his daughters, we see a youth and a long-held hope suddenly lost in the Israeli attack on this family. But Alireza’s wife, the sole survivor of the family, said at a ceremony commemorating them, “I can only find peace when this country is safe for its people and children.”