A first-person bipolar diary from Tehran captures war as blackout, class fracture, grief, and the fragile insistence on living.
Sunday, March 8, 2026 — Ninth Day of the War
When I open my eyes in the morning, the sky is black as pitch. They have hit the oil depot. All night, without pause, the sound of explosions and the shaking of windows continued. Red spread across the sky above us and would not fade.
Getting out of bed is difficult. At dawn, my period started, and the irritation of premenstrual syndrome has multiplied with the sleeplessness of the past few nights. The result is a body that feels as though thousands of stones are hanging from its back and legs.
Yesterday, on the way back from N.’s studio, the ride-hailing driver was a young man with tinted car windows. Because of those windows, every checkpoint stopped us. Their behavior was so polite that you wanted to say: What if we had treated one another this way from the beginning? What if we had not been “others” to you, but fellow citizens?
The young driver was playing loud rap music, and I kept worrying that we would be hit and I would not hear it. Every time we entered a tunnel, my heartbeat rose. When the music stopped, I asked him whether he wanted to change the tinted windows. He said, with an indifference under which anger was burning: “What’s wrong with my windows?” I said, “They keep stopping you at checkpoints. It must be exhausting.” He sped up a little and said, “It won’t stay like this forever. Light will defeat darkness. One day it will be our turn to stand at the checkpoints.”
I leaned my head against the car window, helpless and sad. How did we get here? When did we become enemies to this degree? I know, and I do not know.
Today is the ninth day of the war. Nine days, added to all the dark days before this. I had fallen silent, as if everything inside my head had turned white. I had nothing to say. I still have nothing to say. Since the hell of January, it is as if a thick fog has covered me from head to toe and will not let me move.
My car tire is flat. I look at the sky sitting in mourning, at the blackness settled on the white cars parked in the alley, at the flat tire, and think how perfectly everything we have resembles everything else we have. Then I wonder what has happened to the singing sparrows of this city, because today none of them sing.
Yesterday, while we were sitting on the balcony, a missile passed over our heads with a terrible sound and at very low altitude. We all rushed inside. In that instant, I thought of what the ride-hailing driver had told me that morning: the windows of his home in Pirouzi had been torn out and thrown into the house in the middle of the night. His thirty-year-old daughter had a seizure, foamed at the mouth, and slammed her head hard against the wall. He had sent his family to another city and stayed in Tehran to earn a piece of bread, if he could. “Madam,” he said, “people either have money to go north or to distant cities, or they have somewhere to stay. A poor person has nowhere to go.”
I remember my brother saying that a friend told him some Tehranis who had fled north were buying up to 50 million tomans’ worth of goods from shops. As much as business has collapsed in Tehran, the wheels of business there are turning well.
R. jacks up the car. All the neighbors come down to help us find a wheel wrench, but none of theirs fits. We get in the car and go buy one. Around us, there are no visible ruins. Only yesterday, passing in front of Ararat, I saw a military site folded into itself. Near R.’s home, they had also hit a police station. When he showed me the news agency footage from the first moments after the bombing, I could not believe it. Everything had been pulverized. Even the windows across the street had been ripped from their frames.
The tire is not punctured. The valve stem is broken. I do not know whether to be relieved that I will not have to pay more or not. Everything seems to have changed.
Z. calls. A. is supposed to be released tomorrow. Today is International Women’s Day, and I think: a lonely arrest, a lonely imprisonment, and a release lonelier than both.
I think of the young ride-hailing driver who told me angrily never to pass through the Seventh of Tir checkpoint. “It’s very bad there,” he said. “They made me get out. They searched my phone. I had taken two videos from the January uprising in the crowd. They saw them and beat me until I bent over.”
I remember his thin body and repeat to myself: Today is International Women’s Day, and none of us can imagine bright days. The sky says the same thing. It is black as pitch.
Monday, March 9, 2026 — Tenth Day of the War
I call the ride-hailing driver and tell him not to come through the alley he is heading toward. He asks why. I say, “The Khatam Headquarters is on that street. They might hit it at any moment.” Bitterly, he says, “Madam, I wish they would. I wish I would die and be done with it.”
He is young, dark-skinned, and speaks through clenched teeth. I have to listen carefully to catch his words. Some sentences I do not understand at all, so I nod and keep saying, “You’re right. You’re right.”
He says he came from the north to work. His wife and child are there, and he has nowhere to sleep in Tehran during this war, so he sleeps in his car. He complains about the percentage the ride-hailing company takes, about the costs of having a child, about expenses. Several times he says, “Forgive me, excuse me, but instead of making someone’s daughter miserable, I should have just had a girlfriend or something. I wouldn’t have had all this trouble.”
I think that, for him, a girlfriend must mean someone who gives without expectation and satisfies sexual needs without demanding responsibility. Perhaps that is why he is ashamed to say it.
I say, “I hope the war ends. I hope your situation gets better.” Irritated, he says, “Madam, let it end. I’d be happy to sit in traffic. I’d accept it. But what is this war? What happened now? Does the enemy feel sorry for us? They say a person’s homeland is like one’s honor. They are violating our honor. Tomorrow or the day after, if they set foot here, the first thing they will do to our women is that.”
I fall silent and stare outside. My head swings somewhere far away.
I run up the stairs, take A. in my arms, and kiss her again and again. For the thousandth time, I am glad my prison sentence did not take me back inside. Not because of prison itself, or fear of serving the sentence, but because of the fear of being attached to a world where you both belong and do not belong. The fear of knowing Pakhshan, who is under a death sentence.
A. was Pakhshan’s cellmate. She left her heart there and came out. Every few minutes she bursts into tears and thinks of Pakhshan. I was in the general ward for only three days, yet for a year after prison I descended the stairs of that ward every day in my mind. Without having lived what they lived, I know what kind of pain it is to leave people behind and never be able to leave them.
A. says Pakhshan hates speaking ill of others. She knows how to do everything: wiring, caring for the wounded, avoiding conflict whenever possible. Everyone loves her, especially the newcomers. A. speaks to Parshang, Pakhshan’s sister, and says, “See? I didn’t bring Pakhshan out with me,” and begins to sob.
The others insist I stay the night. I want to, but I am afraid the attacks will begin and I want to return before they do. Today I went out three times, and each time my heart clenched. We took my father twice to the hospital and the doctor’s office. The doctor was fasting, but he had still come to see his patients. He said my father was fine; his legs were swollen.
Last night, until four in the morning, U.S. and Israeli aircraft flew above us at the closest possible distance. I kiss A. and head home. Immediately, the explosions begin.
March 16, 2026 — Seventeenth Day of the War
Last night, from two to four in the morning, they struck without pause. The windows kept shaking, and every time I jumped awake. In the morning, I decided I would get out of bed earlier, but no matter what I did, I still could not exercise. It has been more than two weeks since I last exercised. My movements have slowed; even ordinary daily tasks are difficult.
Around eleven, I walked and ran in the parking garage, and felt a little better. I decided that from tomorrow I would go there in sneakers and sports clothes and run. When I came upstairs, I listened to my father’s small demands. For some time now he has been moving around the house, limping from one room to another, still complaining about pain in his legs, about not being able to bend down or sit behind a table for long.
At noon, the sound of explosions began again, and the windows shook harder than last night. The sounds were very close. I called R., and we learned they had hit Zarafshan, near his mother’s house. Apparently two banks had been targeted. At the same time, I called my brother. He said they had been hitting the area around Manouchehri for half an hour. I called one of my friends; she did not answer. In the morning she had said she was going to report on the damage to Golestan Palace.
A few days ago, they had placed a checkpoint in front of the bus lane, and people protested: “Do you want to get us killed?” For several days, Israeli micro-drones have been hitting checkpoints.
At noon, I am supposed to meet a friend at the end of the alley. I see that they have set up a checkpoint across the boulevard. My heart drops. I have heard of several checkpoints being hit. I tell N., “I am not pleased by anyone’s death.” N. says, “This is the path they chose. I do not feel sorry for them.” R. says, “If they are not here, who will secure the city?” Y. says, “They are the killers of people’s children.”
I try to pass them from the greatest possible distance. Their clothes show they are Revolutionary Guards. But they are too young. They are not children or teenagers; they are young men. I think how bitter and costly such a death is.
Later, in the park near the alley, we smoke a cigarette. One of them seems suspicious of me and passes by us several times. Even when we go to the supermarket, he comes in under the pretext of shopping. I wonder what about me is suspicious: my clothes, or something else I do not even know.
My mother calls and asks me to buy flatbread. The bakery is next to the checkpoint, so I give up. My mother grumbles that she will go herself, but we all raise our voices and talk her out of it.
Tonight they do not strike. At midnight, music begins, then chants of “God is greatest” and “Haider, Haider.” I remember R.’s building. I think it was the second week of the war when the neighbors fought over chanting slogans. It turned into shouting and insults. Apparently one neighbor called the local militia, and they came, poured into the parking garage, threatened people, and fired shots into the air inside the building compound.
Bombs over our heads, religious chants in our ears, bullets in the walls of our homes. This is our life these days.
My brother comes at noon. He says they hit the Pirouzi power plant. He says there was an Etka store beside it, and they hit that too. He says the brother of his friend’s friend lived there and was killed. His friend was walking through the shopping center like a madman, hitting himself on the head.
I also speak to R. They have hit Malek al-Shoara Street. The houses around it, and the homes of B. and Y., shook badly. But N.R. says they hit Shiroudi. And in the depths of our lack of news, with no internet and in total darkness, we pass reports from mouth to mouth, whether true or false.
A friend says that as soon as the bombing began, she went to her mother’s house in Amirabad. Somehow, cheerfully, she and her mother then went to Tajrish to buy New Year sprouts and sweets. I begin sweating all over whenever I step outside. Today my brother asked me to take his shoes to the dry cleaner, and I drove in circles just to get there, because I am afraid of passing the Khatam Headquarters on my route. The thought of being burned alive in the car makes me nauseous.
In the afternoon, after a long time, I cook: pasta with pesto sauce. Later, just as my eyelids begin to warm, our neighbor comes to give my mother her injections. I go into my brother’s room and crawl into bed beside him. His friend calls. In the middle of their greetings, he suddenly asks, “Is it true so-and-so’s cousin was killed too?” The voice on the phone answers: “Pulverized. Her workplace was Kaleh. They hit the building across from Kaleh. She was in the car in front of the entrance.”
How thirsty this damned soil is. Why is it never sated?
March 17, 2026 — Eighteenth Day of the War
At midnight, N. calls. The sound of rain and thunder mixes with the sound of bombs and falls against the windows. Since they hit the Revolutionary Court and the police station near her home, N. has been having panic attacks. When she walks, her legs give way and she falls. A few days ago, when I saw her, purple bruises on her legs were terribly visible.
I tell her to breathe. The thunder grows louder. I say, “Let’s talk about irrelevant things.” The sound of bombs shakes our homes. I speak to N. until morning, and when the sky begins to turn fully light, the bombs can no longer be heard. We say goodbye. I lie down and stare at the ceiling.
S.’s voice from across the water rings in my ears: “Tell me you will endure.” Under my breath I say, “I will endure. I promise you.” My tears fall quietly from the corners of my eyes onto the flowers of the pillowcase.
For eighteen days, the internet has been turned into what they call the “national internet.” National internet means falling into absolute darkness. It means ignorance, humiliation, swallowed rage.
I stare at my red eyes in the mirror. My mother is tired of staying home and says, “Let’s go out.” I say yes. We go to a shopping center to buy coffee. Just as we arrive, R. calls: explosions can be heard; we should return home quickly. At the traffic light, I see black smoke rising from behind the buildings. My mother says, with indifference, “So we’re not going to buy sweets?” Nervously, I say no. “Can’t you see?” With a strange carelessness that frightens me, she says, “Look, if they hit us, we’ll die in an instant and feel nothing. Why are you so scared?” I look at her in astonishment.
They have hit Valiasr Street. I call A.H., who, in the middle of all this, has gone to Aladdin Shopping Center to fix her phone. I say, “Damn it, they hit Valiasr. Where the hell are you? Why did you go there?” She says, “I know, I know. I’m coming home.”
Today is the fire-jumping festival before the New Year. Reza Pahlavi has issued another call for people to come out, as if people had found their lives lying in the street. I know no one will set foot outside.
At noon, news comes that Larijani and sixteen others have been hit. Iranian television has said nothing yet, but apparently the BBC has confirmed it.
I speak with A.G. She is angry at people. Still angry. I try to empathize with her. I do not know exactly why. Maybe I want her to calm down enough to see people better, to understand more. I understand people’s anger. I understand their desperation, and unlike A.G., I do not call so many of them cannibals. I too am saddened and hopeless in the face of all this anger, hatred, and the river of blood that has opened among people.
But who was responsible? We were the ones who, for years, endured and entered through every possible door just to reach our most basic demands. We were so undemanding.
A friend says people have been told to evacuate Atabak, in southeast Tehran. Her brother lives there, and she is worried about his home. I have heard that, by today, more than a thousand homes in Tehran have been destroyed.
L. calls. She is worried, and whenever she is worried, she speaks without pause. She feels guilty that she is safe while we are trapped here. She tells me about the children she works with, and my heart begins to pound. For several years, she has run an educational center in a remote village for Afghan children, children without guardians, and children with unsafe homes. In the darkness there, she has walked with a lamp and has never lost hope. She says, excitedly, that Sayarak had never distributed food before, but things became so bad that they separated a number of students in order to give them breakfast and lunch. “You have no idea,” she says, “what eating does to the children’s spirits.” My throat tightens, and I cry.
From behind the windows I stare into the night. Tonight is the fire-jumping festival, and I feel nothing. The sound of explosions continues. My mother says she is depressed and wants to sit in the garden. I cannot believe we are getting used to the sound of bombs.
We go down. The neighbors have gathered and are collecting dry wood for a fire. The children are excited. They have sparklers. Their joy gives me life. The pile of wood catches fire, and everyone jumps over it. I only watch and recite the old line: your redness for me, my yellow pallor for you.
March 19, 2026 — Twentieth Day of the War
Early in the morning, I get up to buy bread. Bread lines are very long these days. I go early so I will not have to wait as long. Sesame flatbread made with unsubsidized flour costs 50,000 tomans. Near Z.’s house, the same bread is 60,000. A few days ago, Z. argued with the baker over the price and emptied the anger of the war and everything else onto him. Near R.’s house, there is no bread line, and plain bread costs 15,000 tomans. Tehran is a strange city. Nothing in it fits with anything else.
Last night, from two to four in the morning, they struck again. The sounds were distant, but their force spread everywhere. They say bunker-buster bombs are being used. Alongside drones and air defense, “bunker-buster” has now entered our vocabulary: one of those words you never wanted to learn.
N. calls. Her illness has reached the marrow of her bones. As I cut the bread and put it into the freezer, I speak to her. She says she has reached her limit and badly needs her psychoanalyst. I do not feel that need. That is, it would be good if my psychoanalyst were available, but since she is not, nothing can be done.
N. says that a few days earlier, passing by the ruins of Dey Fried Chicken, her heart shook. Memorial notices for the owner, who had been killed there, had been pasted on the walls of the ruins.
Today Iran has attacked Israeli positions and petrochemical infrastructure, and apparently downed an F-35. I do not know how long this story is supposed to continue. I only know that, once again, people have been displaced, killed, made unemployed, and left without money. So far, this has been the achievement of a war that many, out of desperation or hatred, had been waiting for.
March 20, 2026 — Twenty-First Day of the War
The New Year is supposed to arrive today at 6:15 in the evening. What a year it has been: two wars and the bloody January uprising.
As on every morning, I wash the dishes. I brew tea. I give my father breakfast, rub diclofenac ointment on him, give him his pills, and finally fill a cup with coffee. I sit and swallow it sip by sip, while swallowing the lump that has held my throat since morning.
From 3:30 to 4:30 in the morning, they struck. The sound came hard and strong, spreading through the air, and I counted the explosions, asking myself: How many people have died now? How many have lost their homes?
After the New Year arrives, we are supposed to go to my grandmother’s house, just like always—an “always” that is no longer always. My grandmother can no longer come to greet us. Her walker sits beside her bed, and she throws herself onto it to move painfully through the house. The doctors have given this condition the damned name of “medical error,” after the heart surgery that left her this way.
I exercise, and in the middle of my heavy breathing A.H. calls. She has come near us to see her mother. We arrange to meet. My mother keeps insisting she wants to go to the market near our house, where street vendors always spread their goods before the New Year and there is no room to move. I do not have the patience for crowds or searching for parking. Before they leave, explosions begin again: three, four, five blasts.
I call A.H. and silently pray she does not come toward our house through the back street. The Khatam Headquarters is there, and I constantly worry they will hit it. Every day I think of the grocery store across from it, the houses around it, even the mosque next door.
When I transfer money from the cash machine, I am surprised to see a woman withdrawing cash. Since the beginning of the war, cash has become scarce, card readers barely work, and even with the neighborhood shopkeeper one has to argue.
A.H. appears from a distance with her tall figure, short shiny hair, tight jeans, and purple vest. She smiles and says, “You came dressed like this to transfer money?” Since the war began, I neither see myself nor pay attention to what I wear, though in A.H.’s eyes I always look fine.
It is still Ramadan, but a café a few alleys away is open, or rather, it has left its back door open for anyone who wants to come in. The air is heavy with cigarette smoke. The last time I saw A.H. was, I think, in the second week of the war. We had gathered with the girls on the studio balcony. A fierce argument had broken out between A.G. and N.R. about the United States and Rojava. A.G. said Rojava receives weapons from the United States and therefore stands beside it. N.R. was angry at her analysis and said, “If they don’t take weapons, what should they do? Be slaughtered?”
In the middle of that argument, a missile suddenly passed over our heads, so low it felt as if it would scrape the roof above us. We all jumped inside so fast none of us could breathe.
A.H. is better today. She listens more carefully. I tell her the situation is heartbreaking, but I am not angry at people and I do not blame them. They did everything they could to speak with the structure of power, and each time they received nothing but despair and repression. She agrees. I tell her that media outlets like Iran International sold people dreams, while the Islamic Republic’s media have done such damage that people not only do not trust them, but even when they tell the truth, people assume it is nonsense.
A.H. listens closely. In the middle of our conversation, her hand hits the small wooden plate beside her and it falls. A boy playing backgammon near us jumps up, and we all laugh. The situation is such that we have become sensitive to the smallest sounds.
We leave the suffocating smoke of the café and walk together to my door. As we say goodbye, I kiss her and insist that she not take the alley beside the Khatam Headquarters.
My mother and brother return. My mother has bought a bunch of evening stock flowers. My brother teases her: “We went into all that crowd for four stems of flowers.” Then he adds, “But honestly, I love people. It’s as if there is no war. Everyone had come out for New Year shopping.”
This year, we do not have a New Year table. We are in mourning. We do not have the heart for it. A. says she has spoken to Pakhshan, who has set up her New Year table in Evin Prison, and some of the women criticized her for it. A. complains, “Why aren’t you setting one?” Since A. came out, the internet has been cut. She has not yet seen the images. The breath of catastrophe has not yet struck her face. She still knows nothing.
And yet I am glad that many people are still fighting for life and have set their tables. Living itself is resistance.
My brother says, with astonishment, that they bought sweets for 500,000 tomans a package. Money these days slips from your hands like water. There is nothing to be done. Poor people. They are tired and worn down. This was not our right. This was not the people’s right.
My mother makes schnitzel. It is hard work. I think I am slowly reconciling with cooking. Since I came out of prison, I had been at war with every pan and pot in the world.
There is little time left before the New Year arrives, and I am angry at myself. I wanted to be at the cemetery, to end this year beside grieving families. I am furious that I never give importance to my own wishes. I tell my brother. He cries. We hold each other. We have lost thousands of blossoms. Thousands of crushed blossoms.
We set off for my grandmother’s house. Tehran is strangely empty. My brother says: war does not suit this city. It does not suit this country.
When we arrive, my grandmother is lying down. Seeing us, she rises happily. I still have not grown used to seeing her walk with a walker, but I admire this woman’s insistence on life. Satellite television is showing the laughter and dances of children who were killed. My grandmother beats her chest and curses. My mother beats her chest and murmurs endearments for children who are no longer here.
The New Year arrives, and at that very moment they strike again. Apparently they have hit Jamaran as well. Yesterday, several more senior officials were killed. There are so many names now that I sometimes mix them up.
My uncle arrives late. We call everywhere for food. Everyone is so busy that no one can deliver. They all say it will take an hour or an hour and a half. My brother and I set out on foot. In an alley, I have found a terrible fast-food place. There are no customers. We order. On the way back, we laugh that tonight we will probably die from the miserable quality of this deserted fast-food place.
My cousin has seen a checkpoint where everyone was lying flat, dead under black covers. My uncle says, “I know they killed people’s children, but I still feel sorry for them. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and they too had people waiting for them.”
Mojtaba Khamenei has sent a message, without image, without even a face. Only writing. His absence increases rumors and doubts.
We eat together, laugh together, and return home. My brother is right: war does not suit this city.
