It’s hard to describe what it feels like to leave your home not knowing if you’ll ever return. For millions of Iranians like myself, that fear turned into reality this past week. The threat of war had been looming for days — you could feel it in the air, in every anxious conversation, in every long pause on the evening news. But no one truly imagined how quickly, and brutally, everything would change.
Just after 3 a.m. on June 13, I was jolted awake by a deep, shattering blast. Then another. And another. I wasn’t alone — across Tehran, millions woke up in terror as Israeli fighter jets, drones, and quadcopters launched a devastating wave of attacks. The sky outside glowed with orange flashes. Sirens echoed. Some explosions felt close — too close. We later learned they had struck residential buildings, military installations, even nuclear facilities buried deep in the mountains of Isfahan’s Natanz.
The shockwave wasn’t just physical — it was emotional. Entire families wiped out in seconds. Dozens of top military officers and nuclear scientists, gone. The kind of names we only hear in news reports, but whose loss shook the country to its core.
That morning, Tehran didn’t feel like itself. Streets were unusually quiet — it was a Friday, after all — but the silence was heavier than usual. It wasn’t peace; it was fear. Only the neighborhoods hit by missiles buzzed with chaos: ambulances, sirens, dust, fire, crying. Somewhere between disbelief and survival mode, people tried to grasp what had just happened.
By noon, a different kind of panic had taken over. Massive lines began to form at every gas station in the city. I saw families piling into cars, babies wrapped in blankets, elders clutching their medicine. Some were trying to get to the provinces, others just wanted to get away. Away from the unknown, from the next possible strike.
I left with my family that evening, heading north to Gilan. It wasn’t a decision made lightly — our home, our memories, our lives were in Tehran. But survival doesn’t wait for sentiment.
As I write this from a safer, quieter place, the feeling is still raw. Tehran is wounded. My heart is heavy. We left, yes — but our minds are still back home, with those who couldn’t flee, with the injured, with the dead. And with a terrifying uncertainty about what comes next.
