Plane crash victims’ parents, sister speak with mourners at McMaster vigil
It was an emotional scene as the relatives of crash victims Iman Aghabali and Mehdi Eshaghian addressed the crowd of more than 300 via Skype from Iran
A wave of sobs rolled through the crowd as Iman Aghabali’s parents appeared on a projector screen, speaking from Iran, at a vigil for their son and other victims of the plane crash in Tehran.
“This is hell for them,” said professor Ali Emadi, who supervised both Aghabali, 28, and Mehdi Eshaghian, 24, the two McMaster engineering PhD students killed in the crash. “They have lost so much.”
Nearly 300 people attended the two-hour vigil at McMaster University’s student centre, listening to friends and professors recall stories and memories of the two students, described as friendly, funny, bright and “always smiling.”
The vigil also honoured Siavash Maghsoudlou Estarabadi, 43, a former post-doctoral fellow in the faculty of health sciences, who also died in the crash. A framed photo of him sat between those of Aghabali and Eshaghian amid candles at the front of the room.
After a moment of silence, organizers Skyped in Aghabali’s parents,
Zahra Ranjbar and Javad Aghabali, and then Eshaghian’s older sister, Maryam Eshaghian, from Iran. Each spoke in Farsi.
A translator said Aghabali’s parents thanked the McMaster community for everyone’s support.
Eshaghian’s sister thanked everyone for coming to the vigil. Someone moved the laptop in a circle so she could see the whole room. She held her hand to her face as she took in the scene, her cries echoing through the room.
Emadi spoke directly to his late students’ relatives, leaning toward the laptop screen once they were no longer on the projector, speaking in Farsi and holding his head, crying.
Aghabali’s friend, Vahid Mohsenzadeh, told the crowd he wished he could have stopped his friend from travelling home.
“Since I heard the news, I can’t focus. I keep walking in the house ... murmuring why did it have to happen?” he said, speaking through a translator. “Why did I have to lose my best friend in Canada?”
Aghabali was returning home to
Iran see his brother’s baby, he said.
“I feel his presence everywhere,” he said, adding he looks at faces in crowds, trying to find his friend. “It feels colder. It feels colder to be in a foreign country.”
Other international students spoke of how Aghabali and Eshaghian became their family.
Throughout the vigil, mourners broke down, bowing their heads and sobbing into tissues. Those standing leaned into each other, wrapping one another in hugs. One man’s hand shook as he tried to record the vigil on his phone. Another doubled over, crying.
Amid palpable grief were moments of levity.
Diego Fernando Valencia Garcia, a friend of both student victims, recalled Eshaghian’s jokes and his insistence that Valencia Garcia, who is Colombian, teach him to salsa. He told him no, he couldn’t, he was the worst salsa dancer in Colombia.
“I don’t care, you’re still better than me,” Eshaghian said in response.
Valencia Garcia recalled Aghabali’s penchant for learning new languages, but also remembered how he spoke Italian the whole time they were on a trip in Portugal. The crowd laughed.
“He wanted us to smile like we are doing now with his memory,” he said.
The vigil came just 24 hours after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a news conference in Ottawa to say Canadian and allied intelligence indicates the Ukrainian International Airlines plane was shot down by an Iranian “surface-to-air missile.” The incident may have been unintentional, Trudeau said.
The crash occurred late Tuesday (in the Eastern Time Zone), just after the Kyiv-bound passenger jet took off from Iran. Of the 176 killed, 138 were scheduled to take a connecting flight to Canada.
Nilou Biganian, an Iranian-Canadian
nursing student who was at the vigil but didn’t know the victims, said the missile news made her feel “broken.”
“If it is true, it’s sad to say your own country hurt you,” she said. “It hurts me.”
Others recalled their disbelief after learning of the crash.
Paria Samani, a friend of Aghabali’s and Eshaghian’s, speaking after the vigil, said friends were gathered at her place on Tuesday, refreshing the news for updates on the Iranian missile attacks on two U.S. military bases in Iraq, and chatting with Aghabali and Eshaghian on group chats.
Before going through security to their gate, Aghabali and Eshaghian had said they were worried the turmoil in Iran might prevent them from returning to Canada, that they’d be forced to join the military instead, Samani said.
“But what happened is they sent a selfie and said, ‘We passed the gate,’ ” she said. “They were so happy.”
It was the last photo they sent to the group chat.
Shortly after, someone alerted those gathered at Samani’s place that a plane had crashed. They watched a purported video of the crash that was circulating online. No one wanted to believe Aghabali and Eshaghian were on that plane.
It wasn’t until 3 a.m. when the flight list came out and they knew the worst was true.
Samani said she’s still in shock. She knew seven people on the plane.
“I lost a lot of friends,” she said. “A friend of mine, she got married a week ago. She was coming back here for school in Alberta ... I didn’t even have the chance to talk to her and say congratulations.”
Others who attended the vigil didn’t know any victims, but wanted to show their support.
“They’re still McMaster family,” said Gurmeet Sambhi. “It doesn’t even matter if you didn’t know them. They’re our community, they’re still our people.”