Iranian Embassy in Delhi Hosts Poignant Exhibition of Drawings from Minab School Attack
In a deeply moving tribute, the Iranian embassy in New Delhi has unveiled an exhibition featuring the recovered drawings of children who lost their lives in a devastating missile strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, southern Iran. The attack, which occurred on February 28, claimed the lives of 156 individuals, predominantly young students, leaving a community in mourning and the world in shock.
A Glimpse into Innocence Lost
Among the displayed artifacts is a page where Roghayeg Salari, a girl believed to be around five years old, had written her name in Persian using multicolored letters. Faint erasure marks beneath hint at her creative process, while her photograph shows a young child in a white hijab. This simple act of writing her name may have been among her last before the tragedy unfolded.
Another drawing features two uneven hearts leaning into each other, with heartfelt messages in Persian: "I love my mother. When I go to school, I miss her" and "I love my father and he drops me to school." These words, scrawled by a child, now echo with profound sadness, symbolizing the broken bonds of family.
Recovery and Restoration Efforts
The exhibition, titled 'Minab Children Still Draw the Sun', showcases 28 scanned and restored sheets recovered from the school's debris by Red Crescent rescue teams. These drawings depict familiar, innocent scenes: a house under an open sky, birds, a school bus, a rainbow, and a candle. Each image is accompanied by a photograph of the child who created it, many resembling passport-sized pictures used for school forms.
One panel explains: "These are drawings that have been brought out from beneath the rubble of a school in Minab... Pages that were recovered through the efforts of the Red Crescent rescue teams, and have been restored only to the extent that they can be seen." It adds, "The world depicted in them is still simple, bright and trustworthy — but the world outside did not remain so."
Emotional Atmosphere and Global Outreach
The exhibition hall is filled with a somber ambiance, as a song plays on loop, depicting a father searching through rubble for his daughter, only to find her lifeless body. This narrative mirrors the intense grief felt by visitors. Photographs at the far end show rows of graves and coffins wrapped in the Iranian national flag, carried by grieving families.
Officials at the embassy stated that the exhibition will be open to the public from April 15 to 21, between 11 am and 4 pm. On a recent Wednesday, children of Iranian diplomats quietly walked through the hall with their drawing teacher, pausing at each frame to reflect on the artwork left behind by peers their own age.
The aim is to draw global attention to the children killed in the conflict, with embassy officials noting that similar exhibitions may be organized in other countries. In a symbolic gesture, images of the Minab victims were recently placed on the seats of an Iranian government flight to Islamabad. Iranian Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf shared these images, calling them his "companions on the flight."
Contested Strike and Human Impact
The Minab strike, described by Iranian authorities as a targeted attack on a school, remains internationally contested. However, inside the exhibition hall thousands of kilometers away, such debates feel distant. What resonates most are the drawings themselves — a brown fish with blue wings marked by a teacher's star, a fairy sitting on a wand, and other small, uneven sketches that now carry the weight of lost lives.
These artifacts serve as a powerful reminder of the human cost of conflict, urging the world to remember the innocent children whose dreams were cut short. As visitors leave, they are left with a poignant question: How can such simplicity and trust be so brutally shattered?
