A post finds me courtesy of the algorithms.1

“Germany had declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.”

Kafka wrote this in his diary dated August 2nd, 1914. How terrifyingly casual. How familiar.

I wonder: if I had to write something similar in my diary today, what would it sound like?

“The U.S. dropped B-2s on nuclear sites in Iran. They didn’t have radishes in the supermarket.”

This dissonance, this glitch in the human software, how we fold breaking news into the laundry of daily life. It's not denial. It’s the only way to go on. Especially for those of us living far away, orbiting a homeland under fire while buying groceries, answering emails, and keeping track of whether the cherry tomatoes are on discount this week.

It’s absurd.

Two Worries, Both Irrational and Completely Justified

My mind is home to two parallel obsessions today.

One: the billions of dollars poured into nuclear programs. Thirty billion, at least. Money that could’ve built schools, paid teachers, funded therapy, subsidized birth control, bought textbooks, insulated homes, invented solar panels, printed poetry.

Money that could’ve given my generation even a modest slice of the good life.

Two: What’s Ab-doo-khiar (our Persian cold yogurt soup) without radishes?

That’s the contrast. That’s what today feels like. The emotional range of a person with untreated bipolar. From rage over national policy to culinary panic about summer soup.

And no, kohlrabi won’t do the trick.

The Cousins Who Cheer from Afar

Some voices, outside Iran, seem bizarrely excited about Iran’s so-called stand against the West.

They romanticize it. Call it brave. Adorable, even. They write manifestos about it from their laptops in Brooklyn. But from where I stand, it feels like watching your addict cousin smash a crystal bowl at your stingy grandfather’s house.

They speak with conviction, about what we must do, how we should resist, what we deserve. But these aren’t voices from the inside. They’re distant narrators, writing our story for us without permission.

In that way, they’re no different from those who think dropping bombs will somehow bring peace to the Middle East.

The Price of a Nuclear Dream

Today, I see a different mood online. Less rage. More regret.

People are running the numbers:

• Estimated $30 billion spent on the nuclear program

• Over $450 billion in lost oil revenue

• A national currency devalued by 95% in just over a decade

Numbers so big, they go numb.

It’s not just financial loss. It’s emotional bankruptcy. It’s youth dissolved into uranium. Futures redirected to warheads. A national dream rerouted into centrifuges hidden in the heart of rocky mountains.

It's like when you ask your father for a math notebook and he returns proudly with a fruit juicer. And yes, he’s excited. And yes, it’s expensive.

But no, you still can’t do your homework.

I’ve heard the name before. It's the kind of word that floats in news headlines but lands nowhere in memory. A name reduced to a dot on a geopolitical chessboard. But today I pause. What does it mean? Where is it? Why does it sound so different?

I search. I learn. Fordow- or Fordo - is a village near Qom, one of Iran’s holiest cities. The name comes from ferdows, which means “paradise.” Over time, the ‘e’ softened into an ‘o’. A phonetic shrug of history.

Unlike many military facilities in Iran, this one wasn’t named after a martyr or a slogan. It kept the name of the land. And the land, as always, came first.

Fordow, I learn, had one of the highest per capita losses during the Iran-Iraq war: over 120 residents killed, more than 300 injured.

They grow cherries there, single-seed, high-quality, sold in fruit markets across Iran. They herd livestock. They weave coarse fabrics and carpets. In older times, they would send ice to Qom in the summer. Their economy runs on dairy, honey, dried apricots, and endurance.

It’s strange how news can flatten a place to a single function: a nuclear site. But places aren’t defined by uranium. They’re made of cherry trees and coarse cloth and names that resist easy translation.

Belonging, a Conditional Feeling

News like this always triggers the same thought: maybe I should pack and go home.

But where is home? Don't I have a life here? Don't I like it here? But the bureaucratic pressure, the tightening of immigration laws, the news cycles - all of it accumulates. Somewhere in the back of my head, a subtle alarm goes off: prepare to move.

And I start to imagine. The packing. The selling. The letters I’ll have to write. Should I meet friends to say goodbye? Or disappear quietly and let the news trickle in via a group chat? Will they be hurt? Or will they be relieved?

I try to locate where I belong, but my GPS fails. “Where the heart is” sounds like a quote on a pillow. I used to think I was a citizen of the world. But my passport disagrees.

The strange thing about belonging is that we see others more than we see ourselves.

I only catch glimpses of my face in the mirror, or in shop windows. I don’t go about my day thinking I look “Middle Eastern.” I go to the Turkish supermarket, pick up a bunch of herbs, and think about lunch. But the world sees me differently.

So when the feeling of leaving creeps in, it’s not a decision. It’s a muscle memory. The body remembers uncertainty. And mine has had enough practice.

Don’t Be Too Emotional. It Might Cost You Your Job

I watch a video of an Iranian woman living abroad. She offers advice to Iranians, especially with corporate jobs in other countries.

She says, “Don’t talk about how you feel. Your colleagues may seem sympathetic, but if you break down, they’ll remember it. They’ll question your reliability. It could cost you your job.”

Something about it makes me sad. Not the advice itself, but the fact that we even have to say it out loud. That vulnerability even in grief, even in war is a liability.

Imagine living through a war, even from afar, and your biggest concern is: Will HR think I’m unstable if I say I cried this morning?

This is the war behind the war.

Khordad doesn’t rest

In the Persian calendar, we’re still in the month of Khordad. The month I was born.

It always surprises me how much has happened in this one month across the decades.

• In 1963, massive protests erupted against the Shah.

• In 1982, Iran recaptured Khorramshahr, one of the bloodiest battles of the Iran-Iraq war.

• In 1989, the first Supreme Leader died.

• In 1997, reformist Khatami was elected.

• In 2009, Khordad marked the disputed elections that led to the Green Movement.

• And in 2022, the Metropol building collapsed, killing many and igniting more protests.

• And now this.

Khordad doesn’t rest.

It's the month when things break open. Sometimes for better, mostly not. But always visibly. Maybe that’s why I can’t sit still. I was born in the season of unrest.

Since 1995, Berlin has celebrated it as the Day of Music, where amateurs and professionals perform free of charge across the city.

Of course, I plan to go. Theoretically, you just wander through your neighborhood and hear music around every corner; some of it moves you, some doesn’t. Some are forgettable, some stay with you.

But this is Berlin. Everything is organized. There’s a dedicated website with over 900 official performances, categorized by genre, district, venue, and time.

It’s hot. We pick a location nearby and walk toward it under the searing sun. The heat melts my brain. A friend joins us. Soon we realize the music in this spot isn’t for us. Our tastes don’t match, and the humidity makes it hard to breathe. Someone suggests heading home and listening to music there.

“We can each pick songs in turns,” one of my companions proposes.

“Mine are mostly sad,” I warn them.

I have a playlist that only makes sense to me. Each song carries a story, a heartbreak, a curiosity, a depression, a dream.

“That’s okay,” they say.

We’ve all been to those gatherings where someone insists on being the DJ. He yanks the aux cord from your hand, kicks you off Bluetooth, and acts like it’s his duty to save everyone with his exquisite taste.

But not today. Today is democratic. No vetoes, no dominance, no skipping songs mid-way. We go one by one, wait for each track to finish, and sometimes get up and dance.

Track One: “Recuerdo” by Yasmin Levy

A remake of an Iranian classic by Hayedeh. I tell my companions:

“Every culture has one of these voices. Mercedes Sosa in Argentina. Sezen Aksu in Turkey. Pavarotti in Italy. Ours is Hayedeh.”

I explain how her lyrics are part of our national identity. Generations know them by heart.

The fact that an Israeli singer is covering a song by an Iranian icon feels significant, especially now. Music builds the bridges power keeps trying to burn.

Then we play the original: “Soghati” (Souvenir) by Hayedeh. I translate the opening:

“The greatest souvenir is the dust on your shirt.
When I see you and smell you, I reincarnate.”

“It’s a needy love,” someone remarks.

No protest from me. Persian poetry often aches with longing. That clingy, sickly love is less about romance and more about centuries of absence: political exiles, wars, displacements. Neediness is the language of people separated too long.

Track Two: “Pump” by The Sugarcubes

From the band that gave us Björk. The lyrics are wild:

“Eat me, love
Leave nothing behind...
Drink me in large gulps”

I turn to the same friend and laugh, “Talk about crazy love, huh? Same wavelength.”

Track Three: “Victim of Love” by Charles Bradley

The Bad Guys always think music is dangerous.

They say it dulls your mind, inflames passions, distracts from worship, and leads to immorality.

But I’ve lived in a country where being a female musician from a working-class family meant you had no future. That experience gives me a different entry point into Charles Bradley’s soul.

“Nowhere to hide.”

His voice shakes something loose in me. I know that place he’s singing from.

Track Four: “Crystalline” by Björk

We discuss her genius use of ethnic rhythms layered with breakbeats. No one can resist dancing. We leave the table. We move. We let go.

Track Five: “Olympic” by Ganger

A Danish song about a stepdad stealing a TV from a summerhouse and watching the Olympics with his friends, Red Kurt and Fat Bo.

“A new thing when you’ve got nothing
Is, as poor people say...
More important than dignity.
More important than honesty.
More important than love.”

Oh music!

Track Six: “Daybreaker” by Bon Homme

This one is loneliness set to music.

“We’re going in circles.
We both know where this will lead.
But everyone’s lonely.
And we don’t know who else to call.”

Sounds like war. Sounds like life.

Track Seven: “Месяц (Month)” by Palina

I fall in love with this track before I even understand the lyrics.

Released after the contested 2020 Belarusian elections, its tone is haunting and hopeful. One line translates to:

“This month will be long; around are only evil, nasty wolves.”

And yet it ends:

“It’s a sad country.
But that’s where my window is.”

Windows. Normally, you open them to get some fresh air, but now you open them fearfully to see the fireworks of the war.

Eventually, the session ends. My companions leave. I don’t want them to.

I want to keep digging through our souls with sound. So I stay. And I let music corrupt me. I let it dull my mind, rattle my body, pull strange desires and griefs from their hiding places.

One minute I’m dancing to “Yalla Ya Shabab,” a playful early-2000s collaboration between Lebanese singer Ragheb Alama and Iranian pop star Andy.

The next, I’m crying to “Friday” by Farhad:

“Blood is dripping from the dark cloud’s face,
On Fridays, blood falls in rain’s place.
My breath won’t come, the day won’t end.
Wish I could shut my eyes but I can’t pretend.”

Same mood as Palina’s “Month.” But instead of an unending month, it’s an unending Friday.

It’s one of those rare moments when I wish the crying wouldn’t stop.

I want them to keep coming. Not as a breakdown. As something my body knows how to do better than my mind.

I wish I could cry for hours without worrying that I’m making someone uncomfortable. Without apologizing. Without softening it to protect the beautiful people around me who came and danced and laughed and listened.

I wish I could turn life into a giant cigarette and smoke it endlessly: slow, deep drags, no coughing, no shame. Lungs of steel. A body built for enduring beauty and pain at once.

The internet is still gone.1

For almost 48 hours now, the silence has been humming in the background of everything I do. I wake up and check my phone out of habit. Still nothing. No updates. No news. No unread messages.

I try to picture what my family is doing during this state-imposed summer vacation. They’ve been pushed out of Tehran like dust swept off a desk; no plan, no timeline, just the vague goal of being somewhere else.

So I imagine them around a breakfast table. Are they talking about what’s next? Are they deciding whether to go for a walk or stay inside? Who’s cooking today? Will they remember to make Shirazi salad?

Is anybody telling a joke? Are they laughing? And in these images, they don't look like normal human beings; they look like perfect stereotypical people that you can only see in dreams.

With no internet to scroll, no Telegram alerts to tap into, are they accidentally bonding?

I google “benefits of digital detox.” It gives me a list: reduced stress and anxiety, improved sleep, enhanced focus, stronger relationships, better health.

Could they be experiencing all of the above? Or are they just bored out of their minds? I don't know.

May the Grapes Ripen

I come across a friend’s post: a poem in Farsi.

It’s a short poem, almost a prayer. A wish for grapes to ripen so we can make wine.

But it isn’t really about wine. It’s about what wine can do. What it can undo. Through the image of fruit turning sweet in the sun, the poem imagines a world swaying gently out of its misery.

Where presidents and beggars drink together. Where weapons forget what they’re made for. Where love, not war, becomes contagious. Where the streets are drunk, the world a little tipsy, the borders dizzy enough to forget they exist.

Wouldn't that be great?

Kinds of Kindness

In between the terrible headlines and the catastrophic footage, something else is circulating:

A man, still in his car, recounts what happened at a local bakery. News broke that only 12 loaves of bread were left for all the customers waiting in line. So they decide to divide the bread, some taking less than they needed so others could have a share. No pushing, no shouting, no panic.

Another video.

A man returning from the supermarket explains how he usually calculates prices in his head before getting to the cashier.

“But the number he said was lower than what I had in mind,” he says, still sounding surprised. He told the shopkeeper there must be a mistake.

“No, sir,” the man behind the counter said. “I’m charging you only what I paid. No profit. Not in times like these.”

Then, there’s the one.

A man and his daughter, no older than five or six, walking along a line of cars baking under the Tehran sun, offering cold drinks to drivers waiting for gas.

And I remember the early days of COVID.

How quickly supermarket shelves emptied. How people hoarded and closed their doors. I remember the loneliness, the survival mode. And how different it feels now, watching people offer what little they have without being asked.

Improvising Contact

Today, during a casual exchange in a work context, I learned about something I’d never heard of before: contact improvisation jam.

Apparently, it’s a global practice among dancers. A kind of open session where people move together, share weight, respond to touch, and explore physical awareness through spontaneous, unscripted movement.

I admitted, honestly, that I’d never encountered this concept before. My colleague was surprised. “Really? It’s practiced almost everywhere,” they said.

“Maybe I didn’t know about it because I’m from a place where touch is forbidden,” I offered.

To hear that there’s a space where people gather without hierarchy, without agenda, just to move and respond to one another, sounded quietly radical.

I joked, half-serious: “I think we need dancers to save us from this absurd situation.”

Then I pictured it: the international court orders the Angry Men responsible for this war to attend weekly contact improv sessions.

Can You Lean on Your Friend?

I finally make it to the somatic session my friend offered me a few days ago.

We start with cherries, those small summer wonders, and ease into a conversation about trauma, the kind that gets quietly stored in the body. We talk about the strangeness of receiving bad news while standing upright, about how the body takes the blow even when the mind is trying to make sense of it.

Then we begin.

My stiff body and her strong healing hands start a dialog. We’re not rushing, but I still expect something: an outcome, a transformation, a moment of release that proves I’ve done this right. I slip into my oldest habit, the one that got me through school and life in general: be the top student. Do it well. Be good.

“We’re not following a goal here,” she reminds me gently. “This is not about achieving something. We’re just exploring.”

Right. Exploring. I let that sink in.

The practice begins from the top of the head to the soles of the feet, and we move slowly. She guides, I listen, and occasionally describe the sensations.

Then she asks me to sit and lean my body into hers. Not symbolically. Physically. Just lean. Without tension.

It sounds simple, but it’s not.

I try. I overthink it. My legs lock. My shoulders pull away. The right half of my back tightens, my head floats just above her shoulder without resting. I’m doing something, but it’s not leaning.

‘How do you lean, really?’

I don’t know. Not yet.

Last night, just before falling asleep, I thought about the message I got from a friend.1

She praised my writing, saying it touched something in her. And I just lay there, under my very ordinary blanket, feeling completely extraordinary.

And then I woke up this morning, and the feeling was still there. A physical warmth. Like praise had poured itself into my bloodstream overnight and was now swimming through my arms, legs, and belly. Not the caffeinated kind of excitement. A steadier kind. Recognition.

But recognition is dangerous.

Before I even brushed my teeth, another voice had crawled in:

Maybe I should stop writing.

Because it’s one thing to write in the dark, when no one’s looking. To untangle the yarn-ball of thoughts, to pin things down so they stop spinning. To name the feeling before it hardens. To build a narrative you can own.

It’s another thing entirely to write for praise. To chase that same high. To sit down not because you have something to say, but because you hope someone will clap again.

Maybe I should stop writing.

I say it again, louder this time, to the empty kitchen.

Suddenly, I feel empty of ideas. Like the well dried up as soon as I tried to bottle it. My notes from yesterday feel like worthless scribbles from someone else’s life. My thoughts have their arms crossed. “Try harder,” they say. “Or don’t.”

I scroll for a bit. I open a doc. I close it. I snack. I come back. Nothing.

And yet here I am. Writing this. Which either proves the voice was wrong, or proves I can’t listen to good advice even when it’s my own.

A Fantasy Called a Nap

I’m tired today.

Not just soul-tired, but also physical exhaustion. My limbs ache like I’ve run a marathon, except I haven’t moved an inch.

I wish I could go back to bed, just for an hour. A soft, restorative nap where I melt into the sheets and wake up not confused or cranky, but brand new.

But my body won’t let me. It’s too alert. Too charged. Like it's waiting for a sudden loud noise.

So instead of resting, I write. Not because I’m inspired. Not because I have something urgent to say. But because there’s nothing else to do.

I write for hours. Not knowing if it helps. Not knowing if it matters. But it’s quiet, and the keyboard clicks feel like forward motion.

For today, that’s enough.

Human Maintenance

Some rituals don’t make it into essays.

They live quietly in the corners of our days, hidden in plain sight, necessary like water, like air, like flossing your teeth. You don’t brag about it. You don’t hide it either. You just do it.

Let’s call it Going Solo.

It’s funny how natural things become taboo when a woman does them for herself, by herself, without shame or performance. There’s something about female autonomy - even in its most ordinary, private forms - that still makes people twitch.

As I write this, I feel a flicker of shame, like a heat rash on the back of my neck. It’s not my own, really. It’s inherited. Generational. Coded deep in everything I was taught not to say. But the older I get, the more allergic I become to unnecessary silence.

Going Solo is good for you.

It calms the nerves. Loosens the anxious muscle. Brings your body back to you. And despite what the movies told us, it doesn’t need to involve silk sheets, scented candles, or Marvin Gaye singing:

'Baby, I'm hot like an oven.'

It can happen while listening to a political podcast. Which I do. And it works.

It’s not glamorous. It’s not shameful. It’s just human maintenance. Like trimming your nails. Like stretching in the morning. Like rinsing the thoughts out of your head so you can breathe again.

We’re made of nerves, needs, and weird little tricks for staying sane.

This is one of mine.

War Toys and Window Views

Some European leader thanks Israel for doing what he calls “the dirty work.”

Another promises action in the next two weeks. These are men talking like they're at a poker table, not over a map where people live.

I watch a video from inside a building during a bombing. The man filming is calling out instructions to others in the building. Tells them to evacuate. Then he calls a colleague. No answer. He keeps trying. Later on, we read that the young colleague turns out to be dead. A gorgeous young seasonal immigrant worker. Such a shame!

Another video has gone viral. It’s filmed from a high-rise window. We hear a group of women live-commentating on what they see. Different voices. Different generations. Probably gathered so none of them would be alone.

“Don’t they run out of these things? These AAWs?” the older woman asks curiously.

“I wouldn’t know,” says the youngest.

“They said they'd turn us into Swiss cheese tonight,” the middle-aged voice says jokingly.

Another voice jokes from the background: “I don't want to become a martyr’s wife.” Probably talking to a husband, trying not to think too much. These aren’t soldiers. These are women trying to survive a night.

And the older woman's question is mine: how many toys do these man-children have? How much is left until they see this war for what it is?

And the list goes on: Fardis. Malard. Bagher-Shahr. Eslam-Shahr. Isfahan. Babolsar. Kashan. Mehrshahr. Fath Airport.

A massive hit to the Arak Heavy Water Reactor Facility west of Tehran. The biggest one today.

The internet’s been down in Iran for more than 24 hours now. I feel the collective stress rising. People outside are scrambling to reach their families. Refreshing apps. Calling landlines. Guessing. Hoping.

Between Concern and Connection

I think about my non-Iranian friends.

Their effort to keep up with the news. The careful messages they send, trying to find the right words. You can almost hear the typing… deleting… retyping. It’s kind, and it's interesting to observe.

What’s the best way to show support when you have no skin in the game? When the disaster is not yours but someone you care about is in the middle of it?

I’ve been there too. When a friend told me she had cancer. When someone I knew was grieving. When someone announced a pregnancy I didn’t know how to respond to. These are all different scenarios, but they share something: you’re not in their shoes, and words can either be medicine or land like tiny bombs.

Here’s what I’ve learned, as both the receiver and the sender of these awkward, heartfelt, misfired messages:

If you don’t know what to say, say that. “I don’t know what to say” is much better than saying something untrue or too neat. If you’re not ready to talk about it, tell your friend you’re still figuring it out. That’s okay. That’s human.

What helps me most is when people share small, real things - something they saw, read, or felt - rather than sweeping statements. Don’t say “Stay strong.” Tell me you saw a woman on the train reading Rumi and thought of me. Tell me your mom asked if I was okay. That’s the stuff that lands.

And one more thing - mostly for the men, if I may: please don’t try to explain my country to me. I’ve lived it. I don’t need a history lesson you skimmed yesterday or a voice memo about military strategy. It’s not helpful. It’s not cute.

Just sit with me in the discomfort. That’s enough.

Early in the morning1, I get a message from a fellow early bird. She offers me what she calls “a shared somatic practice of making space in your body for grief, breath, and hope.”

It’s easy to dismiss self-care.

There’s always something more urgent; another news thread, another crisis, someone else to worry about. And even when there's time, the meaning of self-care feels slippery. Is it just indulgence? Isn’t it selfish?

When I was younger, wearing the long, heavy black dress of sadness was my pride.

I wore it like armor. Each sequin stitched with something I thought I had survived: the ridicule, the unwanted touch, the teacher’s cruelty. My friends and I had our theory: “We’re too smart to be helped by therapy.” That sounded noble then.

But years of stubborn physical pain, emotional relapses, and mental crashes told a different story.

“Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”
- Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

So I text her back:
“Yes. Let’s do it.”

I realized this might be more helpful than another thread about missiles.

Broken Homes, Broken Borders

When I see the tension between countries escalate, I can’t help but think about families.

Nations argue like relatives who never learned how to communicate without hurting each other. Each one convinced it’s right. Each one weaponizing memory.

I’ve seen it up close. In my extended family, the adults had their battles. Silent treatments, unspoken resentments, explosive fights behind closed doors. And we - the children - picked sides without realizing, then grew up with the debris. The grown-ups didn’t clean up the damage. They just passed it down.

It’s in that atmosphere that my grandmother used to offer her survival advice. “You have to be Zerang,” she told us girls.

It’s an adjective that doesn’t really translate. Zerang is cleverness, but also charm, calculation, a bit of mischief. A Zerang girl knows how to read the room, take up space without seeming too loud, attract help without asking for it, secure a future by marrying right. She’s bold but not too bold. Feminine but not soft. She doesn’t wait for fairness. She figures it out.

I never learned how to be Zerang. I didn’t know how to play the game.

Dancing in The Dark

The video shows a tunnel packed with cars, bumper to bumper, families stuck trying to get out of Tehran. It’s a mess. But somehow, a group of people decides it’s time to party. They turn up the music, climb out of their cars, and start dancing.

That’s Iranian humor in adversity. We joke before we cry. We make memes before we bury the dead. I don’t know how we do it, but we do. The jokes sometimes travel faster than the bad news. Maybe it’s our nervous system protecting itself. Maybe it’s defiance. Maybe it’s both.

At work, I get another kind of reminder. One of my colleagues asks, “So, you speak Arabic, right?” He’s friendly, not mean. Just… uninformed.

I’m from Iran. Less than 2% of the population speaks Arabic. I speak Farsi.

Another colleague overhears and jumps in, trying to help. “It’s like Nostrovia,” she says. “Same word, different meanings in different languages.” I don’t know if that example holds up, but I nod anyway.

This misunderstanding isn’t new. And it isn’t harmless. It comes from neglect, from the Western flattening of the Middle East into one blurry category. It comes from a history of war and tension, of neighboring nations refusing to see each other fully.

But mostly, I’m just tired of explaining it. I don’t want to give a cultural history lesson every time I introduce myself.

Still, living in a city like Berlin changes you. It teaches you that sharing space means sharing responsibility. Berlin is home to dozens of languages and lineages. The least I can do is stay open, stay curious. And maybe ask the same in return.

News Update

A video captured from inside a passing car shows the ruines of Foreign Ministry building in Niavaran.

Just before the camera reaches the wreckage, we see a sanitation worker in his signature orange suit, sprawled across the hood of a garbage truck, arms behind his head, one leg streched and the other bent.

This strange, almost comical defiance became the image of the day. It says more than the statements, the threads, the speculation. It say: “We’ve seen worse.” It says: “You can’t break what’s already broken.” It says: “We’re still here.”

Elsewhere, explosions rippled across the country:

The Khonjir missile complex hit again. A blast at Imam Hossein Military University in east Tehran.

Back-to-back strikes near Mehrabad Airport following an Israeli evacuation warning for District 18. A missile rain on Emam Hassan base in Kermanshah. And reports of blasts near Lavizan, Jordan Street, and the eastern mountains of Tehran.

The konkoor postponed. Nobitex crypto exchange hacked, $47 million gone. Iranian TV hacked, too, with a brief, clumsy call for people to rise.

But what people shared wasn’t just the damage. It was the sky.

A rocket launch, high above the region, left behind a blooming pattern of light; what scientists call a space jellyfish. A natural phenomenon. A result of fuel release from high-altitude missiles illuminating the atmosphere.

It felt insulting to see something so beautiful tied to something so violent. Like the war had the audacity to be poetic. Like it was reaching into the sky just to prove it could paint, too. I smile at the comments of some users comparing it to a big giant sperm.

And then came the propaganda, full force.

A new image on national TV: A soldier from Persepolis - one of the carved Persian Immortals - digitally rendered holding the flag of the regime. Next to him, a modern soldier. With a caption that says: For Iran, Liberty is Our Legacy.

They always go back to ancient Iran when they panic. Pulling on nostalgia like a loose thread. Trying to wrap themselves in 2,500 years of pride to distract from what’s burning now.

The absurdity writes itself.

While the real stories aren’t there. They’re in the orange uniform of a tired worker who’s done caring. They’re in the accidental art of war made visible in the sky.

And in the silence of people who’ve risen too many times to be moved by a slogan.

I fell asleep not knowing if they’d made it out. Now, I wake up scared to even look at my phone. What if something happened? What if they didn’t make it? I pause. I take a breath. Then let the internet reconnect me to what I hope is relief.

They made it. After hours of driving, they finally reached safety. I exhale. The tension in my chest softens but doesn’t go away. The thought of other families who couldn’t leave, who are still stuck, settles in its place.

Tehran and Disaster

Tehran wasn’t always this hard to love.

My hometown was already wounded long before this war. They cut into her with highways, tore down her green lungs, replaced rivers with concrete, covered parks with asphalt. The city became a project of erasure.

And now? Now she bleeds.

I think of Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin, an old airport turned into a massive public park. Locals fought to preserve it, to keep it untouched by greedy hands. Today, it’s a place where people grill, bike, fly kites, walk their dogs, and watch sunsets. That could’ve been Tehran, too.

If only she had been allowed to be herself.

Content and Censorship

The prime minister gave an interview to a Persian-language satellite television channel, speaking as if he were rescuing Iranians from their own country. As if this was ever about the people. His choice of words is precise. He speaks not just to Iranians, but for them.

I scroll and observe. The same man refuses to speak to any channel except Fox News. Propaganda always knows its audience.

Inside Iran, we don’t have a free press. We have Telegram. There’s a channel I follow. One man curating videos, voice messages, photos. He doesn’t editorialize. He only reflects. No one knows who or where he is. But since 2015, his channel has been a lifeline. It’s strange to trust a faceless name more than any official source. But here we are.

Dissociation as a Day Job

Most of today disappears into a blur of comedy shows.
An hour-long standup special. Another one after that. My favorite late-night talk show on YouTube.

The only breaks I take are to light another cigarette. I lose count. By evening, the sharp ache in my stomach reminds me of how long I've been sitting here, doing nothing but consuming. Nothing earned, nothing produced.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s a looping thought:
If I had more money, I could buy my family’s safety.
Instead, I’m playing a mobile game where I earn coins that mean nothing.

Social media feeds me a familiar joke: a cartoon of a sister waiting patiently while the other becomes rich enough to spoil her.
“God, help my sister succeed,” the caption reads,
“so she can buy me stuff.”

Except I’m both sisters.
And neither of us has a plan.

The Soundtrack of 'Vatan’

Today, I listen to Iran Iran by Mohammad Nouri on loop.

It’s sentimental, full of longing, coated in romanticism. As kids, we were raised to believe that our homeland was our lover, and we owed her everything. We were told to die for her if needed.

My generation inherited this emotional blueprint. As a child, I took that seriously. But over time, the meaning faded. I saw who actually benefited from that love, and who paid the price. Young people in my father's generation were injured or killed in the chaos of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Their love was real; the state’s use of it, strategic.

Vatan and the state are not the same. The state is power and control. Vatan is memory, language, culture: what we share and carry, not what we’re told to die for.

Released and Forgotten

There was a video going around today: groups of men in blue-gray uniforms on the side of a road. At first, they were labeled as prisoners who had escaped. Later, it turned out they were addicts. People once confined to rehabs, now let out after the war began.

These facilities are far from healing centers, and more like places where families sent their kids to disappear. They call it a de-addiction camp. What it often is: neglect.

The Name That Was Given

We had a light dinner conversation about me changing my name.

My name is the most religious name you could imagine. When I hear it out loud, I imagine someone else. A woman in full hijab. Not me.

When I was born, my mom took me to her parents’ home. I had no name. My father, consulting the Sacred Book, chose it and registered it without her.

That was my first collision with patriarchy.

It’s been an ongoing war ever since.

Now, after applying to dozens of jobs and hearing nothing back, I wonder if I should change it. Dye my hair blonde again? Tried that. Didn’t work. My partner thinks changing my name could help. He’s seen it work for others.

It was just a joke. A comment over soup. Or was it?

I watch a video of Israeli citizens at a French airport.1

They are loud, chanting pro-Israel slogans. One woman drags a suitcase that looks like it costs more than the furniture in my family’s entire home. Her hair is perfect, her voice firm. There is no shame in being loud when money can buy you safety.

For the first time, I picture my family displaced. My mother trying to navigate a foreign supermarket. My father asking someone to repeat a word three times and still not getting it. I see them in the lives of my Ukrainian refugee friends, only with different heads. It’s a strange image. One that feels far-fetched. Still, it visits me.

I think about the silence in Western media, how reports only mention Israeli casualties. How the death of one child is heartbreak, and another is a number. It brings back that old, familiar feeling of being a second-class citizen of the world. But I stop myself. I don’t want to compare suffering. As Moira tells June in Season 6 of my favorite show, The Handmaid’s Tale:

“You were raped and so was I. You were beaten and so was I. You were tortured and so was I. The point is, none of that should have happened to either of us.”

And June responds:

“If we start comparing our suffering, then those fuckers win.”

My favorite post on social today was a quiet one. A simple list of names and photos, and a small description of what they did for those who lost their lives from both sides of the war. No slogans. No flags. Just humans, gone. That’s the kind of content that makes you see this catastrophe for what it is: not politics, not headlines. People.

Families Like Ours

A couple of nights ago, we started watching Families Like Ours, the new series by Thomas Vinterberg.

The premise is simple: Denmark will soon stop existing due to rising water levels.

There’s something quietly radical in Vinterberg’s choice of setting. He doesn’t point his camera at war zones or dictatorships. He chooses a place we associate with security, a high standard of living, and a high-income economy. And then he gently holds the mirror in front of us: even here, human fragility is real.

Even here, when collapse comes, it doesn’t knock.

Rescue me, I'm tired!

There’s a phrase that keeps echoing in the news: “This is for the Iranian people.”

A line tucked into propaganda videos, interviews, and official statements from the Israeli side. It’s offered like a gift, like something we should be grateful for. As if war could be wrapped in benevolence and handed over with a smile.

But anyone who’s lived through foreign “rescue” knows this: no one ever shows up just for you. They come for strategy, influence, power. Not for your well-being. Especially not if you’re from a place like mine.

When was the last time a nation was saved from the outside? Truly rescued? I try to remember. I can’t. Every example I think of ends in occupation, chaos, civil war, or the quiet devastation of becoming someone else’s project.

Still, I understand where the fantasy comes from.

It comes from exhaustion.

From decades of repression, fear, and dashed hopes. From watching peaceful protests crushed. From seeing friends jailed for asking for basic rights. From knowing that reform doesn’t stick, and revolution might not survive. The idea of rescue seduces us when we are too tired to imagine saving ourselves.

But even in that fatigue, I look around and see clarity. No one I trust believes this is a good idea. No one wants to be saved like this.

There are long queues outside bakeries. The gas stations are packed too. Some parts of the city don’t have water. 110 doesn’t respond anymore. Government offices in Tehran are closed for a week. Flights are canceled. The Tehran-Qom highway is shut down. Final exams in schools have been postponed.

These are just today’s updates. I want to keep track so I don’t forget how war unfolds.

Back to Work

It’s Monday and I go back to work.

The world looks strangely intact. And again, it feels like instead of being there, I'm watching a movie about normal life in Berlin.

I feel numb, with a warm sensation behind my eyelids, the tears are soldiers armed to the teeth, ready for the next attack.

No one notices the soldiers, no one seems to care. I wouldn’t expect them to. We don't have an X-ray machine to see what's happening inside other people.

But I can’t hold it in anymore, so I try:

“Did you hear the news about the war in Iran?”

My colleague looks up. A middle-aged Berliner, calm. “Yeah, I read something.”

“I’m from Iran. My family’s in Tehran.”

“Oh,” she says, “sorry, I didn’t realize. At least they can go to bunkers.”

I answer plainly.

“No, that’s the problem. There are no bunkers in Tehran. The government never built them for times like these.”

She nods. “It must be hard for you.”

Her voice isn’t soft or dramatic. It’s steady. And that steadiness does something. I don’t know what, but it helps.

“Working helps,” I say. “Keeps my mind occupied.”

“I get it,” she replies, before we both turn back to our low-paid manual labor and the task in front of us.

Leaving Tehran

As I head home, I pass a neighbor and say hi. I’m not sure if he remembers me - we’ve crossed paths before but rarely spoken. This time, he nods and returns the greeting.

'Have a good one,’ he says warmly.

A few minutes later, right in front of my building, I spot another neighbor. I wave, he waves back. A warm feeling of belonging moves through me. After two years of living here, am I finally being recognized? Am I becoming a part of the neighborhood?

When I get back home, I find out that my family has decided to leave Tehran and now they are on the road. Such a relief!
Israel has issued an evacuation notice for District 3. They frame it as a democratic gesture, an early warning to civilians, but the reality is messier.

Not everyone can leave. Not everyone has a car. Not everyone has relatives they can stay with outside the city. And for a city this size, the math doesn’t work. The roads clog, the fuel runs out, the options disappear. Announcing an evacuation is easy. Escaping is not.

The Glass Building

A strike, a memory, and a missing name

The video shows the anchor mid-sentence, loud, confident, hijab tightly pinned. She speaks of Iran’s offensive with the pride of someone who thinks they’re making history. Then, just as she raises her voice to deliver another line of propaganda, the lights go out. A blast cuts the transmission. The Glass Building in Jame Jam has been hit.

She calls herself a journalist. Says Israel is now targeting “the press.” But she’s not press. She’s a mouthpiece. And the building isn’t just any media headquarters—it’s a symbol.

Designed by Abdolaziz Farmanfarmaian in the 1970s, the Glass Building once stood as a marker of a different Iran. A modernist vision in glass and concrete, part of a larger master plan co-drafted with Victor Gruen Associates to redesign Tehran into a polycentric, livable city. That plan was sidelined by the 1979 Revolution and buried entirely by war. What remains today is mostly its ruins: symbolic, architectural, ideological.

I’ve been inside the building once. At sixteen, I was invited to a youth radio program, a show meant to celebrate emerging musical talent. We lived far out, and my mother and I woke up early, dragging my heavy instrument through half the city by bus. When we finally arrived, exhausted, we were stopped at the gate. The woman at security decided my hijab wasn’t proper enough.

Excuse me! I was here to be praised, but instead I was reprimanded. A teenage girl with a musical instrument; that was the threat.

Eventually, we found a workaround. My mother gave me her chador (a full-body-length fabric used as a maximum-level hijab), and I went in alone. No one guided me. The compound was huge. I remember juggling the weight of my instrument with one hand and holding the chador closed with the other. I didn’t dare take it off, even after I passed the checkpoint. I was too obedient, too earnest. I didn’t want to be what they had already accused me of.

That building was never a neutral space. It was a contradiction, an architectural relic of modernity housing the language of the regime.

Tonight, the news banners on the same state TV say “Iran” instead of “Islamic Republic of Iran.” An astute observation reported from online users. Was it a technical error or a symbolic fracture? I don’t know.

But I watch. I notice. I wonder.

This morning, still half-asleep, I get up and start drifting toward it like I’m under a magnetic spell. I check a couple of headlines before heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

Next thing I know, I’m on my knees, scrubbing the inside of the cabinet under the sink, where the bio waste bucket hangs. A sponge in my hand. Stains resisting. And so am I.

It’s a warm Sunday morning. We’re sitting on the balcony, coffee in hand, half-reading, half-talking, swapping whatever strange, terrifying, or hilarious things the internet is serving today. And then, out of nowhere, he asks:

“Why do both those guys have such similar names? Khomeini and Khamenei. Is that, like, a Supreme Leader thing?”

I find his observation adorable. I tell him it’s just a coincidence. Their names come from two different villages in two completely different corners of Iran, Khomein and Khameneh. No relation. No grand plan. Just a phonetic accident, stamped into decades of Iranian history.

And yet, the fate of an entire nation somehow ended up in the hands of two men whose names sound almost identical. As if history were copying its own homework.

Then I tell my partner that I’ve started publishing my notes about the war.

“What if the Bad Guys find my writing and make my family suffer?”

Even as the words leave my mouth, I hear how irrational it sounds. I don’t have a big readership. I don’t have a viral post. But the fear is not logical. It’s old.

It belongs to a part of me I’ve recently started getting to know. I call it my Inner Censorship Officer.

You might imagine a stiff man in a white buttoned-up shirt, an unkempt beard, behind a fogged glass desk. Clipboard in hand. Frown lines deep. Red pen always ready.

I met him through a book I read this January by Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model.

The book felt like someone finally explained what’s been going on inside me all along. That we all have parts. The fearful child, the inner critic, the performer, the protector. They show up when we try something hard or when life overwhelms us.

The Inner Censorship Officer wants to protect me from danger. He still lives in a world where being outspoken means punishment not only for me, but for the ones I love.

And it’s strange because, as a professional writer working with clients, I help others get visible.

I know all the strategies: how to optimize text for search engines, how to use the right keywords, how to write headlines that perform, how to link to authority websites, how to promote on social.

But when it comes to my own writing, the goal isn’t to be read. The goal is to get it out despite the fear. To show up, hit publish, and face the Censorship Officer inside.

So I reverse all the SEO lessons.

I’ve stopped counting. There are too many. Too many places hit. Too many columns of smoke. Too many names I recognize, not just as dots on a map, but as places where I’ve walked, met friends, lived life.

But it’s the footage from Tajrish that does something to me. I watch it over and over.

A brown flood rushes through the square. That square, where I used to meet friends to hike, to shop, to go to the cinema. The end of Valiasr. The street that connects the south and the north. The one that mirrors class and contrast so plainly, you can read the city’s power dynamics just by walking up it. Tajrish is the crown of that line, the soft landing.

And now, the water’s coming up through the ground like a spring. Cars are honking. People are standing ankle-deep, confused. Some buildings are in ruins. It doesn’t look like Tehran. It looks like memory collapsing in real time.

Somewhere between these images and the blur of updates, I see something else begin to circulate. Posts that are not just about war, but about how to survive it.

“How to take care of yourself when the bombs fall.”
“How to prep your pet for war.”
“How to regulate your nervous system.”
“How to make space for emotions in your body.”

One post lingers in me:

Check in regularly. What do you feel? Where in your body? Make space for it. Let it be there, without judgment.

It gives me hope.

Not in a naïve, everything-will-be-okay kind of way. But in the way a nation that’s been through everything knows something:
We can’t afford to forget ourselves.
Not again. Not like the last generation, who were either in service of others to the point of burnout, or so selfish that they soon turned into a tyrant.

Taking care of yourself is not a luxury. It’s survival.

We pack a bag. Table tennis bats. A handful of balls. Ice-cold drinks because it’s one of those Berlin days when the sun doesn't hold back. On the way to the park, he holds my hand. My nervous system exhales. I feel safe.

The ice cubes click against the bottle as we walk. I can’t stop thinking about the war.

We set up next to the table, place our speaker down, and play music. I start dancing between points. My hips move. I laugh. Somewhere deep inside, a voice sneers: You’re not supposed to dance. You’re not supposed to be happy.

The Bad Guys say dancing is degenerate. That joy is criminal.

Am I happy now? Is that allowed? I don’t know. I just know I need to move. I need the physical expression of uncertainty, of not knowing what comes next.

We keep playing. The game is good. My serve has improved.
The sun is too much. I take breaks, sip cold water. And then it comes an unwanted image comes into my mind: My mom is missing. I see her in the rubble. Dust-covered. Lifeless.

I freeze. He notices. Asks if I need a break. I nod. We sit in silence for a moment, side by side in the shade.
Us, a lonely teenager on his phone, and a homeless woman circling the bins with a stolen shopping cart are the only ones in the park. Later, she stretches on a bench in the shade, eyes closed. Cooling off. Resting.

Later today, I talk to an old friend. We’ve known each other for nearly twenty years. We've seen each other go through heartbreaks, visa applications, first jobs, therapy breakthroughs. This time, we have the same fatigue after being through all this and our desire to sleep and cancel social commitment.

We also talk about the solidarity extended from our western friends and how it feels like they’re watching a documentary about our pain while we are inside it. Something about these kinds of conversations, one-sided, well-meaning, distanced, adds to her exhaustion.

The family group call today is short and efficient. We talk about strategic plans. Meeting points if the internet goes out. How to pack the emergency bag, the possibility of evacuation.

The roads are already blocked. People left the city, waited in traffic for 6 hours without moving an inch, then turned around and came back.

After I hang up, I feel proud for a while: Look at us, we are functioning without going crazy. But the stress creeps back.

I drink the second bottle of beer. Then a third. The a fourth. Why is alcohol not serving its purpose, the numbing warm sensation that makes you forget, is not created?

That night, I almost finish the entire jar of candies in bed. The good kind, vegan sour sugar-coated gummies. And I decide not to brush my teeth tonight. The thought of leaving bed again feels unbearable.

I lie there, sugar-sticky and tipsy, body humming with the soft static of everything left unsaid.

It's a warm day, so a t-shirt and shorts will be fine. I put them on, brush my teeth, and do some stretches. But then I can't resist checking my phone. I come across a video of a psychologist talking about five things to do during a crisis. One piece of advice: Do routine stuff: drink a cup of tea at a certain hour, write something down, even if it's just: I don’t know what’s happening.

Ok. Let’s do that before jogging. Let’s write.

I send messages to a few friends to see how they’re doing. I scroll again. A young girl, a poet, has died. One of the neighbors. Such a shame.

I open a Telegram news channel; 68 new posts since last night. This is a channel I only join when something like this happens, then leave after a couple of days.

I try to read the posts carefully, not just scroll. Scrolling gives me a great deal of stress without time to process what I’m absorbing. I notice a lot of technical terms, war terminology.

How am I supposed to know what they mean?

Surprisingly, many of these terms in Farsi are actually purely Farsi words, not like other specialized languages borrowed from English, French, Russian, or Arabic.

This makes it hard for me to talk about what I read with my partner. Our mutual language is English.

He reads articles from The Guardian and The New York Times and reports them back to me. His descriptions are full of technical war terms.

I don’t know what they mean. And I don’t ask.

I don’t want to look dumb.

A Flashback: Leaflets and Demigods

There are videos circulating of air defence systems. One of them is filmed by my sister from her window.

It throws me back to my school years. I remember a leaflet they gave us once. We had a couple of hours to read it and prepare for a small test. It was about military tactics, warfare, and defense.

I remember leafing through the booklet with a sense of wonder.

Why were they giving that to us to study?

There was zero chance we’d grow up to have a career in the military. Why? Hello; we were teenage girls growing up under a theocracy.

Another thing that caught my attention: the illustrations of soldiers in the booklet looked nothing like the real images of war we were used to seeing.
Those soldiers looked determined, unstoppable, impenetrable—highly trained, knowing all the tactics.

The real-life photos? They weren’t soldiers. They were your neighbor’s father or uncle, turned into martyrs. Ordinary people sacrificing their lives, leaving behind their identities and belongings, becoming demigods.

Now: Sharing News, Definitions, and Losses

At 9:30, my partner and I sit around the table to exchange war updates from our different sources.

Mine: Persian independent outlets.

His: English-language media.

Yes, now it’s officially a war.

Yesterday, I didn’t even think of calling it that. I look up the definition:

A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations.
A period of fighting between countries or groups.

Another source says:

The word war derives from the Proto-Germanic werzō, meaning ‘mixture, confusion’.

What a powerful insight.

“Tehran says 78, mostly civilians, killed in Friday’s surprise Israeli attack,”

my partner reads from The Guardian.

78 people. I try to do the math. How many of them were the Bad Guys? Ten? Twelve? So the rest are mostly neighbors. Young poets, shopkeepers, athletes, lovers, kids.

I’m thirsty to know more about them. But the lists only include names and bios of the Bad Guys. I search for a list of all who’ve died. Only government officials are mentioned.

But I remember the video I saw last night: a dead body among debris. No title. No identity. Just a body.

Parks, Possibility, and a Walk

At around 10:00, I decide to go for a walk. To leave the chaos behind. To throw myself into the calm of the local park.

My sisters don’t have that. There are hardly any parks left in Tehran. Parks are spaces where you cool down and return with ideas. There is no place for ideas in that country.

Besides, land for a park? It makes more money as a shopping center or a luxury residential building for the top 1%.

I grab a notepad and a blue pen, remembering the therapist’s advice from this morning:

Write whatever comes to mind. Keep the routine. Refuse paralysis.

As I leave the building, it feels like I’m watching a movie. People. Buildings. Cars. All normal. A nice summer Saturday.

A big moving truck is parked in the street, loading furniture piece by piece. A fresh start! Two young men play table tennis. Neighbors greet each other with smiles.

I don’t return from the movie until I see my reflection in a shop window.

I’m wearing an ankle-length sky-blue summer dress with vertical white stripes, a dark blue cap (my writer’s cloak), light pink shoes, and white lace cotton socks with tiny heart patterns.

I look great.

Very middle-class, I would say.

Illusions of Class and Safety

So maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the kid in worn-out shoes, visiting art galleries in the rich northern neighborhoods of Tehran.

The kid who never dreamed of living in one of those mansions.

The kid inside me who now sees those same buildings on fire after the 13 June Israeli attack on the Bad Guys’ homes.

But is that true?

Or is it an illusion, a story Europe lets me believe?

Here, even if you’re a poor writer barely making ends meet, you feel safe,
and you can look middle-class, even if you live under the constant threat of being kicked out.

Fences, Stickers, and Warnings

I get closer to the park entrance. I see a big fenced-off area on the pavement.
Another construction site, I think. I have to tell my partner when I get home.

Before I change my route to enter the park, I notice a small printed sticker on a pole inside the fenced area.

Berlin is full of these: ads, political slogans, funny thoughts.

I stop. I have time. I’m not in a rush. I walk over and read:

“We have sensors in our pockets that track us at every turn. Think about what this means for privacy. Use:
Startpage instead of Google
Diaspora instead of Facebook
Session instead of WhatsApp
Mastodon instead of Twitter.”

How ironic.

A privacy warning inside a fenced area.

Parks and Publics

It’s a local park in a working-class Berlin neighborhood, but it reminds me of the Enghelab Sport Complex in Tehran—formerly the Imperial Country Club.

My park has tennis courts, football fields, minigolf, a swimming pool. Accessible. For everyone.

Whereas Enghelab Complex offers the same facilities, but only if you pay an entrance fee or have a yearly membership. A bubble for the rich. A haven from the “nasty” public.

Watching, Walking, and the Body

I enter the park. The usual scenery: dogs lifting legs to pee, toddlers in strollers, young dads pushing them uphill.

Suddenly, I hear footsteps and someone clearing his throat. A man. My body reacts: heartbeat spikes. Why? Because where I come from, it’s normal to expect catcalling, groping, stalking. I try to relax.

I’m safe here. Men are decent here.

I slow down, let him pass. When you see someone, the fear shrinks. When you only hear, your imagination pictures the worst.

I pass a spa in the park. A luxury for tired bodies. For my birthday, I even got tickets to go. I haven’t used them yet. Why? Because you have to be naked. And my body and I don’t have that kind of relationship yet to see each other naked. It takes time.

While I’m lost in that thought, a half-naked jogger appears from around the corner.

Returning and Remembering

I come back from the walk feeling lighter. The confusion is still there, but now it’s bearable.

So when a friend calls and suggests going for a walk, I surprise myself with good humor. So much that I even ask myself:

Shouldn’t you reflect the war in your tone?

We meet soon after. Having friends in the neighborhood is a blessing; it’s never a nightmare to plan, especially in times like these when you need friends.

We talk about everything: relationships, old contacts, how to quit smoking, even pizza types.

“I used to think I needed a strong will to quit,” I say. “But now I know that’s not how it works.”

She quit. I always ask how. I tell her about the writing routine. How and why I’m doing it. One of the tricks to stay sane in disaster.

I share my regret about not writing after September 2022. I gave myself up to consuming news without digesting it in the sacred space of writing.

Back then I was obsessed with lists:

A list of events, of casualties, of new music, of graphics.
Different versions of Baraye, the anthem of the movement.

I wanted to remember what’s happening to me. I wanted to fight against forgetting. That’s our blind spot as human beings; not forgetfulness, but the lack of a built-in mechanism to remember.

Writing is that mechanism.
That’s why I write.

That's the news I woke up to this morning.

How many mornings have we woken up to paralyzing news? How many evenings, afternoons, and nights have been spent in shock? One immediately comes to mind:

The Bad Guys shot down a passenger plane headed to Canada and denied responsibility. 176 lives lost.

Could it get worse? Did it get worse? I’m not sure. Maybe your nervous system simply gets used to it.

And why is that?

Let’s see what happened in between.
(Skip this part if you're prone to fainting.)

• Port of Shahid Rajaee explosion (April 2025): 57 dead, over 1,000 injured

• Tabas coal mine explosion (Sept 2024): 51 dead, 20 injured

• Kerman bombings (Jan 2024): 95 dead, 284 injured

• Schoolgirls poisoned (2022–2023): No official count; Amnesty blames the regime for taking revenge on schoolgirls for refusing to wear the mandatory hijab

• Bloody Friday of Khash (Nov 2022): 16 killed, dozens injured

• Shah Cheragh attack (Oct 2022): 13 killed

• Evin Prison fire (Oct 2022): 8 inmates killed, 57 injured

• Zahedan massacre (Sept 2022): 96 killed, 300 injured

• Death of Mahsa Jina Amini (Sept 2022): Sparked protests; 476+ killed

• Metropol building collapse (May 2022): 41 killed, 37 injured

• Flight PS752 downed (Jan 2020): 176 killed

And this list is only a fraction.

I usually don’t check my phone first thing in the morning. You learn not to, if you're from the Middle East. But today I had to. It was work-related. I opened my screen and froze - again.

My partner (non-Iranian), his morning coffee in hand and surprisingly in a good mood, passes by singing and smiling, and I can't smile back.

I want to share the news with him. But there is something awkward about these moments:

• Getting a phone call about a friend's death at a party where everyone is dancing and having a good time;

• Having a mental breakdown at work while everybody else is going about their normal day;

• Hearing about someone's cancer diagnosis in the middle of a lighthearted chat with a friend.

These moments come more often when you’re in exile. So I decide to get my ass to the bathroom to have a moment before sharing the news with him. I go there with my phone. I check again. It's real.

Israel had attacked Tehran.

Tehran. My city. No longer young. A middle-aged soul with tired eyes.

From a village in the 11th century to a capital in 1786, to now one of the biggest cities in the Middle East, with 18.6 million people.

A city full of fire, love, chants, and sorrow.

I scanned the names of the affected neighborhoods.

Mostly the north.

What does Tehran mean anyway? Ahmad Kasravi says: “Tehran means the warm place,” (center and south) versus Shemiran, meaning “the cool place” (northern parts).

The attacks hit Shemiran, the cool place, with all the gardens, palaces, and wealth. Once occupied by kings. Now, by commanders, generals, and the rich, the top 10%.

I think back to walking those streets. Even walking there felt expensive. What was I doing there? Probably heading to a gallery. Or an overpriced café with friends.

I remember those buildings; clean, modern, unreachable. I couldn’t imagine what they looked like inside. I was working class. And someone like me could never live in one of those.

Now those buildings are burning. A general probably lived there. A commander. And I’m watching fire consume beauty.

I get a compulsion to check the data to see if the 10% I'm talking about makes sense. I find the World Inequality Database and check the data on Iran. The chart shows the top 1%, the top 10%, and the bottom 50% shares. The gap between the top and bottom is wide, and unchanged over time.

I check other countries: Germany, Denmark, and Japan. In the 1800s, the rich had a lot. Then, over time, the gap shrank.

Data is fascinating!

My sister calls me around 10 a.m. to let me know they are alright.

My mom apparently got up from the noise but decided not to wake others up. Maybe she thought to herself,

"If this is our last night on Earth, let us sleep through it."

That’s what happens when your whole life is a struggle to survive.

I think about the dead. About the neighbors. How many people got killed? What if an innocent neighbor had perished, too? And some ugly thoughts surface: you don't need to think about the rich!

I talk to my sister about this forbidden feeling. She agrees that it's a tricky situation and more complicated than seeing it in black and white.

I remember the criticism after the Green Movement in 2009:

“Only the middle class is protesting. We need the working class.”

Then came the Mahsa Movement. The working class did join and paid a massive price with their lives, the number of casualties being much more than any other time. Why? Lives of the working class don't matter. The lives of the working class living in impoverished cities don't matter. They died in media silence without their names being remembered by anyone.

So. The middle class showed up. The working class showed up. Guess who's missin’!

Later today, a friend shares a theory with me:

“The rich don’t want a regime change. It’s risky. It’s chaos. They know how to profit from the mess.”

I want to share my raw feelings with my sister. She’s my refuge; sharp, kind, never quick to judge. I tell her I need to let this messy, uncomfortable feeling rise before I bury it.

‘Who are these neighbours?’

People in the top 5% live in those luxury homes. And in Iran, the rich don’t get there by merit. The data is there with me! So why should I care about their lives?

I ask her,
“What if your neighbor was a Bad Guy? Would you try to get rid of them?”

“No,” she says. “Maybe that’s why they’re still here. We didn’t kick them out.”

She pauses.
“But I would’ve moved away.”

That sounds reasonable. But we know it's also naive.
“What if they’re everywhere? What if you can’t escape them?”

The truth is, no one deserves to die.
Not even the Bad Guys.
Especially the Bad Guys.

Because what they deserve is justice.
To be put on trial.
To be held accountable.

No one deserves to die.
Not the neighbors.
Not the top 1%.
Not the top 10%.
Not the bottom 50%.
Not even the rock bottom 39%

.