Stories Beyond Numbers: A beloved first-grade school teacher who was killed alongside her family

By Humaira Ahad

Before anyone in Iran’s northwestern Zanjan Province could make an announcement, two teachers were already sobbing on the phone.

Samaneh Nasiri, principal of Esmat Seyrfian School, and her colleague, Ms. Tohidloo, began mourning together on the night of March 27, unable to contain their emotions.

No one had told them anything yet. “Something in our hearts told us that it had happened,” Nasiri said in an account she later gave to a Persian-language news outlet.

The next morning, their fears were confirmed. Roqiyeh Shiri, a first-grade teacher, had been killed hours earlier when a US-Israeli terrorist attack struck her family’s home in Zanjan’s Koocheh Meshki area.

Her husband and her nine-year-old daughter, Fatemeh, were also killed in the attack. Shiri became the first teacher from Zanjan Province to be martyred in the third imposed war.

Box of sweets

Two days before the incident, Nasiri had gone to Shiri’s home – a visit she says she had never made to a colleague in her fourteen years as the school’s principal.

That week, a benefactor had sent Nowruz gift cards and boxes of zoolbia bamieh, traditional Iranian sweets soaked in sugar syrup, for the school staff. But Shiri would not come to collect hers.

At first, she sent word that her gift card should instead go to a student whose family was struggling. Because the US and Israel had imposed a war on Iran and the child could not be called to the school, Nasiri transferred the money directly to the family.

Then Nasiri asked Shiri to at least come and collect her box of sweets. Again, Shiri refused. “You take care of that too,” she said.

So Nasiri drove the box to Shiri’s home herself. She handed it to her at the door, and after a few minutes of conversation, went home.

It later emerged that Shiri had not kept the sweets either. That same night, she took the box out again and gave it to a roadside social service stall.

Only two days later, she was martyred alongside her family in a US-Israeli airstrike on a civilian neighborhood in Zanjan.

‘We only want Ms Shiri for our children’s class’

Shiri had taught at the school for three years, always in first grade, and each year asked to remain there.

Before that, she and Nasiri had known each other mostly by reputation, exchanging greetings through a mutual friend who eventually recommended Shiri for the position. Nasiri then asked that the appointment be arranged so that Shiri would be placed specifically at her school.

 “There was never any question about her teaching, her ability, her sense of responsibility,” Nasiri said. “I always had complete peace of mind knowing that everything would be done in the best possible way. I learned so much from her.”

Each autumn, before the class lists were even posted, parents would come to the school asking for her by name. Her reputation had travelled through the surrounding Nanvayan neighborhood.

She arrived before the school day began and checked in on her students even during the holidays. By Nasiri’s account, she was also a steady presence at school ceremonies and programs, a teacher whose cooperation and reliability the staff could always count on.

And she joked constantly. “Whenever we had a meeting,” Nasiri recalled, “I'd tell her, ‘Ms. Shiri, let me start first, then you can make your jokes.’”

Two students, in particular, are remembered for the lengths Shiri went to for them.

One girl’s family fell on hard times not long before the US-imposed war and had to move to a village. The girl cried and refused to leave the school, telling her family and classmates, “I’m not going to the village… I love my teacher.” Shiri fought to keep her enrolled.

Another student’s parents were both deaf, leaving no one at home to listen as she sounded out letters, a crucial part of learning to read in first grade.

Knowing the child had no one else to lean on, Shiri brought in members of the extended family instead: aunts, grandmothers, anyone willing to sit with her and listen.

“She put her whole heart and soul into making sure that child didn’t fall behind,” Nasiri said.

Wish she had spoken of

Fatemeh studied at Esmat Seyrfian too. She enrolled in second grade and was in fourth grade by the time of the US-Israeli war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“She was growing up here among us,” Nasiri said. “Then, suddenly, she took flight from our midst and ascended to heaven alongside her mother.”

Nasiri says Shiri had spoken of this kind of death before the US-Israeli aggression reached her home.

“Ms. Shiri was someone who longed for martyrdom,” Nasiri said. “It was an honour for her. A heartfelt wish.”

Shiri’s death was part of a wider toll on Iran’s education community during the third imposed war, which was launched in late February amid diplomatic talks.

According to Iranian officials, at least 277 students and 67 education-sector staff were martyred in the US-Israeli aggression against Iran during the nearly 40-day war.

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