The Catastrophe That Has Befallen All of Us

When the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran started on February 28, I didn’t hear from my oldest friend, an educator who runs an art center in Tehran, for eight long days. Rahaa, as I’ll call her here, is in her fifties. We both lived through the bombardment of Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988. After living through last year’s twelve-day war, she is now living through bombardment again.

When Rahaa finally called me on March 8, she was overcome with anxiety. I invited her to keep a war diary, in part as a way to cope; she told me she would think about it. When she managed to break through the Islamic Republic’s internet blackout a week ago, she sent pages of text. What follows is my abbreviated translation of her reflections on “the catastrophe that has befallen all of us.” It is published here with her permission.

—Naghmeh Sohrabi

Wednesday, 20 Esfand 1404 [March 11, 2026]

I am against war. Against war. This does not mean agreeing with the Islamic Republic. I am against war. War is destructive. It’s not a strange thing to say; it’s very obvious.

Today news came that Israeli drones are targeting checkpoints [government-erected stops throughout the country, searching for supposed fifth-column activity and projecting power to thwart street protests]. Really, why is Israel targeting them? People have no choice but to stop and be searched at these checkpoints. What possible war goal could striking them have? What does this have to do with Israel?

The internet shutdown has kept me from reading or seeing any news on social networks, so I have been glued to the TV, including Iran International [pro-war diaspora satellite station, sometimes referred to as Persian-language Fox News]. But my main addiction is BBC Persian. When it’s on, it feels like family members are talking. Sometimes I listen to it even if it’s on repeat, or I don’t even listen, but let it play in the background as if it’s the din of family members talking to each other. But this Iran International!! Its presenters all support the Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran. Watching it feels beneath my dignity.

Last night my friend Ali called from the U.S. and gave me an analysis of the war that has really occupied my mind. He said that the U.S. is the loser of this. In previous days I myself was telling others that the U.S. and Israel have no purposeful or clear plan for this war and they thought this was like Gaza, that they could just take control of it. After all, this country with 90 million people has been functioning with a government that has stood for 50 years despite all the dissatisfaction. Why did they think they could overthrow it so quickly? This is the same government that started wars in neighboring countries to exhaust the whole region and the U.S. The result of this war will only be more misery and repression for people. But Ali’s analysis looked at this misery more optimistically, in a way welcoming it, and it was frightening, although maybe it was true.

I had decided to leave Tehran on Friday or Saturday and go to the Caspian shore where things are calmer but a few hours ago I changed my mind. I know I need to go somewhere quieter, somewhere safer, but I don’t want to drive alone on the road. None of my friends agreed to come with me. My sisters and their families won’t come. Going alone with mom is very hard, so I would have to go north and stay alone in a hotel. Last summer during the war [the twelve-day war in June 2025] I went by myself to the Caspian. It was too lonely. So altogether it doesn’t seem better than staying in my own house in Tehran. Yes, I wouldn’t have the danger of missile and drone attacks and bombing, which is not a small thing, but so far I’ve managed to survive.

If mom lived closer, I would feel much more at ease. She lives in Ekbatan [a residential township in the west of Tehran close to Mehrabad International Airport, which has been under heavy attack]. I go back and forth with fear. Every time I get on the road to drive there, I’m worried a bomb will fall on the road or on me. There’s always a checkpoint near her house and I worry that as I’m waiting, a drone strike will take it out. Maybe if I didn’t have to go for a day or two and could stay home instead, I might feel a bit less anxious.

Yesterday noon I went briefly to my workplace. I didn’t enter through the main door. Nasser, the office’s stray cat, was behind the main door, and as soon as I turned on the light, even though he couldn’t see, he sensed someone had come and started moaning. I opened the door and put out water and food for him. He ate the food quickly. I don’t know what he has been doing these days to survive.

Two of my colleagues were at the institute. I was very happy to see them. I told them I’m in a very bad state. It was the day after the non-stop attacks on Ekbatan and I’d been with my mom. She and I had stood in the hallway near the bathroom door where there are no windows, and I was bent over from severe stomach pain. My colleagues gave me advice. Don’t you take pills? said one. I said no, I shouldn’t take sedatives or sleeping pills because of my heart condition. The other said he has no problems sleeping. They both started packing up. They had to go. I pulled myself together and went back to my office, watered the plants, tidied up, and left. After they had gone, I wanted to say to them that even in my worst days I don’t stop living life, and if I say I’m in a very bad state it doesn’t mean I’m paralyzed. I still don’t stop life and daily routines and a thousand other things. In the afternoons when I’m in Ekbatan, I go to Café Anseh [Those Three Café] to visit the three women who run it and drink a double espresso. I don’t stop going to cafés even during war. I also take my exercise class online with my personal trainer. Still war is devastating. More than anything else, more catastrophic than anything.

In the afternoon one of the colleagues I had seen in the morning messaged me:
“Trust in God.”

I wrote: loneliness bothers me. Still I’m on my feet. But I’m sad. Not as bad as I said, but I’m sad.

He wrote: yes, I can imagine. But I still believe in trusting and relying on God. The experience of constantly feeling God can really soothe loneliness.

I wrote: thank you, thanks for talking with me.

I wrote: I’ll try.

He wrote: that’s good, in my opinion when you try, that also smooths the path more.

I wrote: trying and the path are the same.

He wrote: this trying is good because it has no risk at all. I’m just saying based on personal experience

I wrote: yes, that’s right. Your experience is great. Thank you

I became more hopeless about the war and the situation after talking to Ali, but overall I felt better. I felt calmer. At the end of the night I was washing my face and thinking where is my God? And I was thinking about my own interpretation of God, when suddenly the image I had of God in childhood, from my grandmother’s words, came alive in front of my eyes. An old man dressed in white whose hands and feet and body were completely covered under a cone-shaped white robe, with a bright face and a hat like the grandfather in the book Baba-barfi [a children’s book from the 1970s], and from up there, from above the sky or the edge of the sky, calmly observing everything. Just now I realized my image of God came from the book, so beloved in my childhood, because one of my sisters loved it very much and something beloved by older sisters can always turn into a sacred object.

Loneliness makes the days of war more anxiety-inducing. When all day, a whole day and several days, you are alone with yourself, you can’t even find a reason to tidy up the house. Because in the middle of any task you lose the reasons for doing it. Not that you think about the task or its reason, but suddenly you see it is lost, you have left the task and occupied yourself with something else or nothing. And then that heavy feeling and the churning of your heart from so much stress; you don’t know which hormone is being secreted so much that your heart, your head, and your intestines are not at peace. My intestines hurt. My stomach and intestines hurt. I have irritable bowel syndrome with anxiety. And anxiety and restlessness have become the most normal experience in our daily life these days.

What should I write about war? I am running out of my bold nail polish. We’re not allowed to wear it to work, and if by chance I wear any, it has to be the palest color in the world. But now there is no work, so no restriction. I am free to use strong and strange colors. Dark brown, dark bluish-purple. Burgundy tending to black, or even mustard, or olive green or murky green. Today when I went to my sister’s house I took some nail polishes with me and removed the brown and applied a very elegant deep red, but it feels strange to me. What calmness and reassurance they provide don’t fit what’s happening. These days need strange nail polish. A color that matches the unrest of our lives. This color I have on now feels like it wants to act like it’s something it isn’t. Why pretend?

Monday, 25 Esfand 1404 [March 16, 2026]

BBC Persian is broadcasting Trump speaking. He is talking about war with Iran. I really dislike him. I disliked him since his first presidency. He reminds me of [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. Vulgar and pretentious. I took a mild painkiller and muted the TV to write.

On Saturday I went to Ekbatan to pick up mom to take her to the doctor. An endocrinologist. The doctor’s office turned out to be in front of a Basij checkpoint. I wasn’t expecting that. I pulled over right behind the Basij vehicle at the checkpoint to let my mom out. As I pressed the brakes to stop, one of the boys, very young, with a pleasant face and stylish glasses, whose face looked more like that of an anti-Basij youth, and yet he wore Basij-military clothes and had a weapon, came forward and said hello, please don’t stop here. I said hello, I’m dropping my mom off and leaving, I’m not parking. With a smile and good manners he said it’s no problem for you to park here, but if they hit us your car might get damaged. . . .

Suddenly I was confused. I couldn’t believe what I heard. It was as if in a brief moment our relationship changed. I said God forbid. I don’t know if he understood that I meant, God forbid they hit you. He said let me help get your mother out. I said no, I’ll get her out. But he was already on the other side of the car, helping mom get out with great care and kindness. And I just kept thanking him. There was neither anger nor fear between us; there was empathy and respect and very polite social interaction, and of course my heart was breaking from sorrow.

Mom got out, I thanked the boy a lot and drove forward, and while escaping that situation I was thinking whether it was right to park much farther away from them. Are we different? Do I have the right to distance myself from a dangerous situation because of the presence of those few young boys who are the targets of Israeli drones? I thought about that boy leaving home in the morning to come to the checkpoint: How did he say goodbye to his family? Did he say mom, cook pasta for lunch? Or maybe he is fasting and asked for something sweet for iftar? Or did he say mom if I am martyred forgive me? Or phrases like that used by Basijis who still think there is martyrdom and elevation and ascension?

While intermittently crying I went farther up the road then turned around and parked on the other side. I was sure that if there were a drone attack, I was still too close for it to matter, but I had no choice. I had to get to mom quickly, who was going up the stairs of the doctor’s building. Sorrow was overwhelming me. I got out and when I was out of the Basijis’ line of sight, I burst into tears.

I know the Basij are hated by so many people. I know people are angry, hurt, still grieving for the brutality with which so many people were killed just two months ago. I feel the same but still I wanted to go up to the young boy and say: my boy, go home, tell all of them to go home. Your lives are precious. Even though all of us people, after all these years, are angry, even though now we’re pouring all our anger onto you and those like you, your lives are precious too. Don’t you have a mother? Don’t you have someone waiting for you? Aren’t you a child of Iran? War is an asset to the powerful so why should you, just a young boy, pay its debts?

If I told this to anyone around me, I could hear in my head that they’d call me a supporter of the Islamic Republic. To feel sadness at the death of this kid and so many kids like him now brands you as a regime supporter. When all it is is just grief for the catastrophe that has befallen all of us.

Mom’s doctor didn’t show up so we left. I told mom come quickly, very quickly. She said why? I said it’s dangerous here. She said I can’t. I said even if you can’t, you have to walk fast, and I pulled her along as much as I could. Then her eye caught the produce market and she said shall we shop? There was no way to say no. I thought well if I die, at least I’m with my mother, at least my mother won’t feel the loss of a child, and I said okay let’s go. At the entrance she sat on a chair and I rushed to quickly get what she wanted from various stalls when I noticed a juice shop among them. I got two carrot orange juices and in that awful and ugly produce market, amid the wave of general anxiety, with a bag of eggplants and carrots in hand, we drank juice and it felt very good, as if we weren’t in the middle of war. I also acted carefree and let that mother-daughter joy continue between us. In the end it’s just death; that’s not something strange, seize the moment!

We went home and through a call with a friend I managed to buy a VPN and connect. Oh my God! Two weeks without internet was terrible.

As I write this, next to me is a bag of mixed nuts that when the war started I ordered from somewhere other than my usual store, whose quality is way better than these. But I now try to shop from businesses that aren’t doing well to help them from going under. So many small shops are suffering and it’s painful. After dropping mom at home I went wandering around and buying small things. There is a girl who used to be a street vendor and for about two years now has opened her own shop; I went and bought two pairs of underwear and a pair of tights from her. I didn’t need any of them, but I thought it is our duty to help each other.

The landlord has messaged me and increased the rent by 30 percent for next year, though because of the war I might lose about 40 percent of my monthly income; I have to increase the rent, which is 30 percent of my income, by 30 percent.

On Saturday evening I got mom to get up and we went to Café Anseh. To those same three girls who are very lovely. We entered and I said “hello friends of wartime!” In the previous war too, on a day when I had been devastated, I went there and drank coffee and felt better. We stayed about half an hour and then came out to go buy trash bags and toilet paper when the sound of anti-aircraft systems, these days called air defense, started. We said forget it, let’s go home, and returned home. I brought my overnight bag from my car and stayed at mom’s house that night. At the end of the night each of us watched a silly Turkish series we follow in turn—first mom, then me—and then we went to sleep.

Well, I didn’t fall asleep. I don’t remember whether there was an attack or not, but I didn’t sleep until five in the morning when I finally fell asleep on the couch, and near 9 a.m. I saw mom sitting at the dining table about to eat breakfast. She had waited, but I hadn’t woken up. I ate breakfast with tea and no coffee and got ready very quickly like a dog in hell to come home. Mom took a shower and I blow-dried her hair. She is very worried about why I haven’t gone to the hairdresser yet for Nowruz [Persian New Year on March 20]. I told her I don’t enter unfamiliar buildings these days. She said are you going to a new hairdresser? I said no, but I don’t go to even slightly unfamiliar places these days. I didn’t tell her that I don’t even feel like going to the hairdresser; I don’t want my hair to be made up. Although I put on makeup three times a day and wear nice clothes, I don’t want to go to the hairdresser.

At six in the morning the next day I looked at my phone and saw Ali had written: give some news about yourself. And the next message: I’m very worried. I wrote: what?! why?! last night was very calm.

Then I went and checked the online news and I saw they had hit Tehran so much it had become a sieve. I looked around my bed and felt that I should by all counts be standing among the ruins of my house. But no. Around me was intact. I laughed. I thought poor Ali must have thought, I was so foolish worrying for nothing. Honestly I was very happy that I had slept until morning and hadn’t felt a thing. These nights there has been almost no night that I have slept so completely detached from the world.

I don’t know at which level of Maslow’s hierarchy I am stuck, but I know I am not at the level where cultural needs should be addressed. These days I haven’t read literature at all. I haven’t even thought about it. I almost constantly have a headache and a heavy feeling on my heart and constant irritable bowel syndrome. During every attack I get stuck between taking shelter and squeezing into the toilet.

The image of the Basij boy helping my mother out of the car doesn’t leave my mind.

I don’t understand cheering on the war. I don’t understand being happy about Iran burning. My heart bleeds for people dying. They hit the Javadiyeh neighborhood in south Tehran; many houses in that worn-out, old, and poor area were destroyed. A family of six all died under the rubble. And countless others whose news has not been recorded anywhere.

War belongs to innocent people.

When I was returning from mom’s house, on the other side of the street another group of Basijis had blocked the street for a checkpoint. In my heart hatred and anger toward them surged again, and at the same time sorrow and grief that they might lose their lives any minute. This push and pull, this fury at the regime and sorrow at the futility of war, this anger at boys playing men at checkpoint and the sadness that these children of Iran could die in a drone attack, brought me to tears.

This evening I went out for a drive. The sun was setting and darkness was beginning to descend. Night had not yet swallowed the destroyed FARAJA building [Iran’s law enforcement headquarters] and its twisted railings and the torn billboards along the highway. A darkness darker than night keeps the taste of war more persistent under the tongue and among the folds of the brain and between the right and left atrium of the heart and inside the inflamed intestines.

I got home and again images of war kept playing before my eyes. It is a quarter to twelve at night and the air defense has become active again.

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