Students send prayers to Middle East

Unable to focus on the PowerPoint that could turn him into an official doctorate student at UF, Ehsan Fereyduni broke down crying.

The 33-year-old was scrolling through his Instagram account Wednesday morning when he came across a video of a child’s birthday party that was abruptly interrupted by a massive earthquake.

“There was a hole in the wall but you could see balloons inside the house still,” he said. “My heart became heavy. I couldn’t keep watching. I was thinking: Why this happened?”

The video was one of many social media posts illustrating the aftermath of an earthquake along the Iran-Iraq border Sunday. The disaster is the deadliest earthquake in 2017, killing nearly 500, according to CNN. At UF, about 20 students met on Turlington Plaza under a starless night sky Friday to show support for the victims.

People surrounded a cement block table covered with a black plastic mantelpiece and about 30 lit candles. They talked among themselves, trying to make sense of the catastrophe.

Fereyduni, a UF chemistry doctoral student, said the past week has been rough for him. He has been struggling to process the disaster that struck his native country, Iran, while still studying for an oral exam needed to continue pursuing his Ph.D.

After crying for about an hour Wednesday, he messaged the Iranian Student Association asking them to hold a memorial event, he said. The UF student organization agreed to file the space permit and use their funds for the vigil, said Hossein Mosavi, the group’s vice president.

“It’s our moral responsibility to show support to our community,” the 26-year-old UF civil engineering doctoral student said.  

Although Fereyduni was feeling a little insecure before taking it, he said he passed his test Thursday morning and felt relieved.

Unfortunately, the burden from the tragedy back home continued.

“If I pull my phone out and see Instagram right now, it is full of photos of the earthquake,” Fereyduni said during the vigil, reaching for his phone in the back pocket of his jeans to show the stream of new, disastrous pictures appearing every second.

Fereyduni said he knows the event won’t take away his pain completely, but he hopes it will serve as the first step toward recovery.

“Talking to people and praying helps,” he said. “We can’t be there, but at least we can send prayers and positive things for the people who were affected by it.”

Damon Ghetmiri, a 22-year-old UF mechanical engineering senior, lights a candle during a vigil for those who died in Iran and Iraq. There was a 7.3 magnitude Sunday, which killed at least 450 people.