‘I’m dying to see them:’ Toronto man who lost family in plane shot down by Iranian forces

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Lately, he’s also been stuck inside his home. Ontario’s latest round of pandemic restrictions has left him without access to his beloved pool at the local YMCA. The exercise helped him in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, he says.

“I was crying and swimming… it helped a lot,” Haghjoo says. “Then the pandemic came and shut everything down.”

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Two years later, the pool is closed again. He’s lost the only way he can really exercise with his bad back. And he lost the community there, he says.

“It’s tough,” he says.

READ MORE: Federal government setting up scholarship program to honour victims of plane shot down by Iran

Haghjoo, a computer programmer, left Iran in 1987 for Ireland. One day, while waiting for a meeting, he visited the Canadian Embassy.

He read a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and fell in love. After four years in Ireland, he, his wife and his four daughters left for Canada. They settled in Richmond Hill, Ont.

He landed in the middle of a recession and it was difficult to find work in his field, so he took a job at a car dealership.

In 1997, his wife, Shahnaz, died of a rare case of meningitis at 37, the same age his daughter was when she died.

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“I tried to be the best father and the best mother I could be,” he says.

By 2009, exhausted from his job at the car dealership, he left and became a real estate agent, which afforded him more flexible hours.

He hasn’t worked since the plane crash. He says he isn’t ready.

“I’m not rich, but I can pay my bills,” he says.

He’s depressed and anxious. He forgets what he was saying. He eats little.

But he has managed a few things in the past two years. He and Siamak Jadidi, Saharnaz’s husband, helped build an elementary school in Elsa’s name in a poor part of Iran, in Lorestan province.

READ MORE: ‘We are looking for the truth’: Ontario father of Iran plane tragedy victim seeks answers, 1 year later

“I believe when people are educated, they won’t get fooled by rulers and taken advantage of,” he says.”`Building a school and educating children, that’s what will win eventually. That is how I will get revenge.”

He also helps translate news articles to English for a website started by another family who lost loved ones in the tragedy. The site, Rissmaan.com, highlights human rights abuses in Iran.

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Haghjoo used to practise Islam but gave up religion. He visited his daughter and granddaughter’s graves twice after the plane crash but then stopped going. This past summer, however, he found himself drawn back to the cemetery and has since visited a handful of times.

“When I finish my visit, I cannot open my eyes because I’m crying so much,” he says, “but it does help, it does.”

Two years after the tragedy, Haghjoo says he tries to focus on his family — he has four daughters and eight grandchildren, he’ll never stop counting Saharnaz and Elsa among them, he says.

His partner of 15 years is also a tremendous help.

And he tries to focus on the good memories of his daughter and granddaughter.

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“Saharnaz was my little one, she was very small, very petite, she was like a small pepper that’s very hot, she was very active,” he says. His daughter worked as a program manager at the YWCA, helping new immigrant women adjust to the country.

“And Elsa, she was a helper just like her mom, she was going to be a fierce, strong woman.”

He smiles at those memories.

Then his face changes.

“Sometimes I feel my daughter hugging me,” Haghjoo says, his voice catching. “I can feel her squeezing me, hugging me. The good memories are also sometimes very painful.”

© 2022 The Canadian Press