Relatives prepare for Ladan and Laleh funerals

Grieving relatives and family friends were preparing today to bury the conjoined Iranian sisters who died during surgery to separate them.

Workers put the finishing touches on the separate graves for Ladan and Laleh Bijani in their small home village of Lohrasb, 680 miles south-west of Tehran.

A government official proposed a “National Day of Love” on the December 31 birthday of the two women who captivated the nation with their determination, eloquence and charm. In their wills, they donated all personal belongings to blind children and orphans.

Rahim Ebadi, head of the National Youth Organisation, made the proposal in a letter to President Mohammad Khatami, the English-language Iran Daily reported.

The bodies of the 29-year-old twins arrived in Iran on Thursday from Singapore, where they underwent the 54-hour operation. They died within 90 minutes of each other after surgeons separated their heads but failed to control bleeding.

The deaths of the two women on Tuesday caused sadness around the world but particularly in Iran which had watched and admired the courage of the girls as they grew up.

People grieved openly on city streets, halting work and parking their cars to cry when radio and TV interrupted normal programming to announce the news. President Mohammad Khatami also paid tribute to the twins’ resolve and patience.

On Thursday, hundreds of mourners paid their respects at Tehran’s Grand Mosque in a reception normally reserved for slain soldiers and prominent figures.

In their home village, people placed photos of the twins and placards expressing condolences on lampposts and buildings. News of the twins’ wills today caused many to burst into tears.

The sisters left Iran seven months ago to prepare for the operation, adamant they wanted to be separated despite the risks. Before the operation, they joked and said they wanted to look each other in the face without the use of a mirror.

A neurosurgeon who assisted in the attempt to separate them said yesterday the operation should have been done in stages over a several weeks.

Performing the surgery as a marathon procedure felt like ”heading into a dark jungle to hunt a hungry tiger with no gun,” said Dr Benjamin Carson, director of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Centre in Baltimore, USA.