The exact moment when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was reunited with her seven-year-old daughter Gabriella, in the early hours of Thursday morning, was not broadcast on national television. It was too intensely personal for such intrusive scrutiny.
What insights we could glean were documented informally by another daughter — 35-year-old Elika Ashoori, who was sharing the same extraordinary experience as the little girl, as she, too, waited to embrace a beloved parent after years of enforced separation.
Elika's father, civil engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, was on the same flight back to freedom as Nazanin, after enduring five years in the squalor of Tehran's notorious Evin jail, where she was also incarcerated; both of them on trumped-up charges of spying which they have always strenuously denied.
It was thanks to Elika's mobile phone footage that the world caught the words we'd been waiting so many years to hear, since Nazanin was first held captive in Iran in 2016.
Elika Ashoori, 35, with seven-year-old Gabriella Ratcliffe. The pair shared the same extraordinary experience of having waited to embrace a beloved parent after years of enforced separation
Elika's father, civil engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, was on the same flight back to freedom as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, after enduring five years in the squalor of Tehran's notorious Evin jail, where she was also incarcerated; both of them on trumped-up charges of spying which they have always strenuously denied. (Above, on the plane home from Iran)
'That's them now. That's my mummy!' Gabriella exclaimed, almost disbelieving, as she glimpsed Nazanin through a window of the RAF airbase at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, beginning her descent of the plane's steps with Anoosheh.
And as Gabriella rushed into her mother's arms — the intimate moment obscured from the camera as they stood behind a screen — we heard, amid the tears, the excited babble of a little girl's voice.
'You smell nice,' Gabriella told her mummy, dissipating the tension as only a child can, before Nazanin replied: 'Do I? But I haven't had a shower for 24 hours!'
If Elika knew how Gabriella was feeling, it wasn't just because of the extraordinary situation they have found themselves in. They may be divided in age by 28 years but during their parents' enforced absence they have become the firmest of friends, forming a unique bond.
'When Gabriella first hugged her mum, her whole world was eclipsed into that moment. Everyone else disappeared — which is exactly as it should have been,' says Elika.
Finally reunited: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, pictured holding her seven-year-old daughter Gabriella and with her husband Richard, and Anoosheh Ashoori with family members including his daughter Elika after landing in the UK
'I'm so very glad that void in her world where her mum should have been is now filled. And when they cuddled each other, no one would have dreamt of intruding on that sacred moment.
'Just as when I hugged my dad for the first time in five years, the world around me didn't exist. I was in a bubble. It was very emotional. We are not the type of family who cry, but it was an extraordinary situation.'
She recalls how she and her brother stood back so their parents could have the first moment together.
'We let them hug and they were both in tears. It was only the second time in my life that I'd seen my dad cry. The last time was 25 years ago when our family dog died. Then seconds later I was hugging him.'
She adds: 'It's amazing how quickly you switch back into the everyday world,' describing how they went on to discuss his flight — he'd enjoyed visiting the cockpit and showed them the David Attenborough magazine he'd been reading — 'which was such a Dad thing to do,' she says with a laugh.
As Gabriella rushed into her mother's arms — the intimate moment obscured from the camera as they stood behind a screen — we heard, amid the tears, the excited babble of a little girl's voice. 'You smell nice,' Gabriella told her mummy, dissipating the tension as only a child can, before Nazanin replied: 'Do I? But I haven't had a shower for 24 hours!'
'We kept the conversation light. We know the conditions in prison were awful. There were rats and cockroaches; there was always light and noise.
'There were 15 people in Dad's cell, and to be coming home to a warm, comfortable bed must have been unbelievable for him. But there is a time for discussing those deeper things and it wasn't then.
'And while we were with Dad, Nazanin was hugging Gabriella, holding her so tight and speaking to her in Persian, but Gabriella was saying, 'I don't understand.'
'She sounds like a little girl who was brought up in London now, but when she first came back to England three years ago she could only speak Persian.'
Nazanin and Richard Ratcliffe's daughter has had a turbulent childhood, its horrors redeemed by the all-encompassing love of her parents and extended family. And now there is her friendship with Elika to sustain her, too.
Gabriella was 22 months old when Nazanin took her on holiday to Iran to visit her parents. She was arrested as she was about to board her flight back to the UK, arbitrarily charged, then imprisoned.
Elika says: 'When I hugged my dad for the first time in five years, the world around me didn't exist. I was in a bubble. It was very emotional. We are not the type of family who cry, but it was an extraordinary situation'
For the next three years Gabriella lived in Tehran with her grandparents to be close to her mother, so she could visit her in Evin prison.
Then, in the autumn of 2019, when she was due to start school, Gabriella returned to England to live with her dad.
Accountant Richard has been a tireless campaigner: lobbying politicians, leafleting, organising events and enduring weeks of hunger strikes to raise the profile of his wife's case.
Only Elika could understand Gabriella's singular deprivation. In 2017, her own father was
