Taking over bakery act of remembrance
Jamal Zahedi shuffled the bag of traditional Persian bread he'd just bought from one arm to the other as he exited Amir Bakery in North Vancouver, then walked over to his van to head home, his goal achieved.
“They make special bread we like,” Zahedi said.
“I came here from Coquitlam to pick it up.”
He has been coming to the Lonsdale Avenue bakery since it opened three years ago and was as devastated as all in Metro Vancouver's expat Iranian community, which lost 14 people after Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was mistaken for a missile and shot down by Iranian forces after it took off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on Jan. 8, 2020.
The Boeing 737 had been headed for Kyiv when it burst into flames and crashed in a field close to the runway. All 176 people aboard died, including Ayeshe Pourghaderi, who started and ran Amir Bakery, her daughter Fatemah Pasavand, and six others from the North Shore.
“They were very nice people, they worked very hard,” Zahedi said. “They were such a happy family, the daughter just got her driver's licence, they'd bought a new home.
“This tragedy is not forgettable.” A staff of up to six arrive at 4 a.m. to begin baking the day's goods — hundreds of bags of barbari, sheermal, pizza shells, and sweet halvah. By the time the bakery opens its doors at 6:30 a.m. there's a lineup, Shahnaz Oleh said.
To keep her dear friend Ayeshe's dream alive, Oleh took over from a heartbroken Amir Pasavand, who could not face going into the bakery again after his wife and daughter were killed.
“Every single day I think of them,” Oleh said. “The pain doesn't go away.”
It's one thing to lose those close to you to old age or illness. How do you deal with a loving friend being shot out of the sky?
“People die every day, but this happening is not normal,” Oleh said outside Amir Bakery. “Can you imagine what was going through their minds?”
“Every night in the middle of the night, I think of the flight going down, I think of what happened to them. Not just this family, all of them.
“I try (to quit thinking of it), but I can't.”
Ayeshe did everything at the bakery. It's been a huge hurdle just dealing with passwords known only to her and the bank, taxman, suppliers and landlord.
The work is long and Oleh is also raising a young family with her husband Rasoul. Thinking about the mother and daughter gives her energy to go on.
“Ayeshe always smiled, she never complained in her whole life. She was the best friend of her daughter. They were always together.”