Sana – a pseudonym – writes from Iran.

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I’ve read a lot about war. At school, history classes consisted of biased accounts of recent decades all the way back to 2,500 years ago, when the first emperor was crowned in Iran. Naturally, we then researched everything else ourselves to get the whole picture. So I always thought I knew what it would feel like.

My parents lived through the Iran–Iraq conflict in the 80s. They’ve told me all these stories about sitting in a family gathering and the alarms going off, and going to the basement or the nearest shelter until the bombing has passed, and then hearing the radio tell them that it’s all clear then starting to recite dead people’s names.

That wording sounds incredibly offensive now that I’m living it. Except that it isn’t the radio but social media where I go for the names of the deceased. And instead of alarms we just hear the bombs when they come, as we cross our fingers that our houses are spared.

For the past week, since the war broke out, I have lived a hundred years. Time crawls when you hear the drumming of your heart every moment. When every hour you text your friends who are scattered across cities a quick ‘Still alive?’ message and then wait in anticipation. When you can’t talk to your mother because the internet is mostly down and your mum is stuck in another country, anxiously gazing at the news, worried that every missile might go astray and this time hit her daughter.

They tell us not to tell anyone what’s happening. That Mossad can tail us, pinpoint us, and determine the exact locations of the strikes. So every time my mother texts me to ask if I’m okay, to ask what’s happening, I can only tell her: ‘All good. Nothing to worry about. We’re all good.’ I hesitate to put my location here, or my real name.

~

But I ought to put the details of that first day. I always have my phone on silent with the vibration turned on. Because I’m usually bouncing from one class to another, and you’re not allowed to have your phone ring in class. And because I’m an anxious person, and must know if someone’s calling me.

That morning I was lying on my mattress, my phone next to my pillow, asleep. Since I was a kid I have been good at one thing only: sleeping, whatever the situation. But now I’m not so sure. Now, I wake in the middle of the night and hold my breath as I listen for the sound of an explosion inching closer to us.

That morning, my phone was vibrating next to my pillow, and I cursed whoever had dared wake me up at 6am. But it wasn’t the usual. My mum hadn’t forgotten that people do something as mundane as sleep and decided to call me at an ungodly hour. My friend hadn’t wanted to wake me up early so that we could catch up on studying for our cardio pathology exam. Our neighbour hadn’t found yet another problem with my lifestyle that she thought best to discuss at 6am. No, it was one of my oldest friends, calling from Tehran, to inform me that last night an attack was launched on the city and that we were now in the middle of a war with Israel.

I wouldn’t know this for 30 minutes, because I allowed the call to go to voicemail. Still dizzy with sleep, remnants of dreams still swirling, I finally picked up the phone and opened a group chat and the first message I saw was ‘Holy shit, did you all hear that?’ It had been sent at 3am.

The night before, we had talked on this group chat about the sixth round of negotiations with the US that Iran was due to embark on two days later. And we had crossed our fingers that, maybe, this time was the time. Maybe they would strike a deal at last. We talked about whether prices would finally go down, whether I would finally be able to buy the iPad I had been saving for, whether we would finally be able to submit our research to reputable journals without being rejected because we were Iranian.

But those were pipedreams. Israel had attacked us, and Trump had known, and the higher-ups were dead.

At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I turned on the television: picture after picture of the deceased, reporters scattered across Tehran, the air defences hacked. Then my aunt called. She told me to come to their house – that it didn’t make sense for a girl of my age to be all alone in her house in a situation like this. I promised her I’d come that night – that the city hadn’t been attacked yet and that, honestly, this was no big deal. I told her: ‘There’s no way this will escalate into a full-blown war. And I dohave an exam and a very heavy textbook that I can’t just take with me anywhere.’ I would go there if things escalated, I promised. Just so that they wouldn’t worry.

She agreed. I let the TV run in the background as I made breakfast. Banana scrambled pancakes with whole milk on the side. I watched the news as I ate. I watched the news as I tried to study. I was cooking lunch – pasta – when something exploded in the distance.

There weren’t any government officials here. Just normal people, an airport and, a couple of military bases. Why would a city miles away from the capital be the target of an attack? Why hadn’t it occurred to me that this was a possibility?

The pan was sizzling, and I didn’t know if the smell of burning in my nose was from the explosion or the mushrooms turning to ash. My phone started ringing again. ‘Come here. Right now,’ my aunt’s voice hissed at me. I couldn’t argue, couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to be trouble and that it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing.

I agreed to go. I took out an old backpack and packed up my life – my essential documents, my passport, the little liquid money I had in the house, a pair of pyjamas and a loose T-shirt, some medication I had on hand (antibiotics, cold suppressants, painkillers, alcohol), and some essential hygiene equipment. I turned off the gas, put the food in the fridge, and called a taxi.

It took 30 minutes for someone to pick me up. The city smelled like chemicals and fear. In a few hours it had transformed. It was a city I didn’t know anymore.

The air was musty and humid, the sun burning my hand through the car window. I cursed myself for not putting on sunscreen. A trickle of sweat travelled down my spine and I wondered if it was from the heat or the fear.

Then, a new thought: should I have taken my stethoscope? I had spent a couple of months’ worth of savings on it. Maybe I should’ve taken it with me so that it wouldn’t get damaged if my house was hit. Maybe it would be of use. Maybe I could help.

But how would I help? I hadn’t even started officially training in the hospital. All I knew was basic CPR and how to do medical recording. I’d be helpless, forced to watch people die when all I wanted to do was save them.

But then I was getting ahead of myself. Nothing thatbad was going to happen. It was a conflict between governments. They’d resolve this. This wouldn’t escalate into a war.

~

In the five stages of grief, I was right around when denial was supposed to hit. Deep denial, slowly making its way to anger. I didn’t know who I should be angry at. Myself for being so helpless? The officials for not having anticipated this? A small country 1,000 mile away for forcing us into a war we wanted no part of?

Then came the bargaining. This wasn’t a war. Civilians weren’t going to get hurt. It was just a show of power designed to scare the government into submission. It was bound to blow over. I kept repeating this, to anyone who would listen – my friends, my family, myself, the empty room I curled up in as I scrolled the news.

It was hours later when I finally sobered up, when they showed the remnants of buildings in a city I’d grown up in. I don’t cry often, and never in front of people. I didn’t cry when my father died, didn’t cry when I failed to get into my first-choice university. When I do cry, I do it alone in the shower, where I can pretend that tears are just leftovers of the water running down my body.

I lay on the hardwood floor of my uncle and aunt’s bedroom, alone, hugging my knees, staring at the headlines on my laptop, and I let the tears fall.

I didn’t know what I was mourning. If it was the country being destroyed, or my mother whom I’d never get to say goodbye to if I did die here, or my father who had died years ago. ‘Daddy. I’m so alone.’ I kept repeating this, chanting it as if he would hear my words. As if, somehow, miraculously, he’d be resurrected. And then do what? Resolve a political crisis?

I was objectively well-equipped to handle the situation. I was studying to be a doctor and I’d learned to handle the unbearable weight of life after my father passed away. But subjectively I was a seven-year-old girl who had come home after a crappy first day at school and simply wanted to vent when she found that her parents were still at work, and found that she couldn’t.

~

I’m past all the stages. I’ve reached the point where, every night, I read the news of more destruction, more missiles, more shootings, and I nod my head and tell myself that it is what it is, then I go to sleep. Every morning, I wake and check the news and check the group chat to make sure that everyone I know and love is still breathing somewhere in the country. Every afternoon, I feel restless and want to escape but tell myself that power is in numbers, and that it makes no logical sense to go back home and stay there, alone, even if I feel like a burden to my uncle’s family and feel that my aunt is getting restless.

Everyone around me has changed. People I don’t know intimately post on X about their ruined houses, about farewells, about pets that scream and howl and writhe into themselves as they try to flee. Those who aren’t leaving lie their heads on their pillows at night and count their blessings in the morning if they haven’t been startled awake by a bomb close by.

I don’t remember my old routine. How could I ever get up at 6.30am and walk to university and sit through nephrology lectures and nod off in immunology classes and then go to my part-time job in the evening? And I can’t wrap my head around the grievances I had. How could I ever think that the semiology exam was difficult and myself slighted because we had one too many tests in a day or because I was overworked and burnt out?

If we’re ever free of this, I know what I’ll do. I’ll eat pizza with my friends on a roof café. I’ll take a trip. I’ll buy that expensive dress I decided I couldn’t afford.

~

Every evening, when my mum texts – or, when the internet is exceptionally good, calls – I put on my brave face, and my smile, and I tell her that it’s all good. ‘We don’t even hear the explosions, mum. I promise. All is good.’ I don’t know if she believes me or not. But both of us nod and end the connection with ‘Love you, goodbye.’

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Sana is the pseudonym of a writer writing from Iran.