June 17

The hours pass without me noticing. I’m glued to my phone. I look up and realize I’ve been scrolling the news since 5 a.m. and it’s already noon. Time moves on, unbothered by what is happening in my country, Iran, just like the people I hear outside my apartment window.

Friday night. Saturday night. Sunday night. I stay on FaceTime, listening for the sound of missiles from a loved one’s rooftop. The chaos of Manhattan’s Lower East Side blurs the sound.

How can life go on? I’m confused. But then I remember, it always has. Life has gone on for years, while people in Gaza died. It went on as Sudan bled. As Ukrainians were displaced. And now, of course, it will go on while my people shiver in fear.

I wish I was home. That surprises people. Why?

Of course I’d rather be home. I’d rather be afraid with my family than be a world apart, walking the streets of New York City, riding the subway, locking eyes with people who have no idea their country is complicit in murdering mine.

I know they aren’t personally responsible for the war. No one asked them whether they thought bombing Iran was a good idea. Yet I can’t help but ask myself: How am I supposed to smile at them?

To imagine life after war, after my country is struck, to even fathom waking up, eating, breathing in a world where I’ve lost my family, my best friends, my partner — is unbearable. I want to be back home because the guilt I feel right now is heavier because I’m safe. At least if I were home I wouldn’t be scared alone. At least then I wouldn’t have to hear “thank God you’re safe,” because even if my life isn’t in immediate danger, I am not safe.

You’d have to think deeply about the meaning of safety to understand that feeling. A few days ago, we thought we were safe. Then, we saw the photos: buildings in Tehran reduced to rubble. If safety is this fragile, were we ever truly safe? Not even the New Yorkers I pass on my way to class are. If only they understood the danger of living in a world where one country can decide to go to war, ignoring international laws, laws they helped write. If they did, maybe they’d be afraid too.

Not just in the past two years but for as long as I can remember, thanks to my father and his Palestinian friends, I grew up constantly hearing about the systemic injustice Palestinians face. And in these past two years, as I began graduate school, I made it my mission to speak out. To tell anyone who’d listen that Israel hasn’t stopped and won’t stop with Palestine. But deep down, I didn’t think I’d ever feel it. Not fully. And surely I still can’t. However empathetic I’ve been, I’ve always had a roof over my head.

When Israel attacked Iran, something dark began to grow in my heart, a sick knowing. I know what Israel is capable of, how little its leaders value human life. And for the first time, I felt a sliver of what the Palestinian people have endured for nearly a century. Even that fraction made me sick to my stomach.

June 19

There’s an internet outage. I haven’t spoken to my dad in days. I keep sending him the news headlines but my messages don’t go through.

June 22

I’ve lost track of how many days have passed. Time is a blur, days and nights folding into each other. I wake up to a series of alarms, set only to check the news.

But all this time, I kept telling myself: there’s no way the United States will get directly involved. The people don’t support it. Not even Donald Trump’s supporters. It’s not in the country’s interest. They won’t make the same mistake they made in Iraq.

I was wrong again. It’s as if six years of studying global politics meant nothing once politics became real. A panic I’ve never felt before filled my chest. If this could happen, anything could. Is there any line that won’t be crossed?

I lay down and watched Trump’s speech, J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth behind him, nodding in unison to his claims. I kept thinking, what will be said about this moment ten years from now? Will students watch it in classrooms and marvel at how surreal it was? And what does it matter, if knowing it’s surreal doesn’t stop it from happening again?

I drifted off to the sound of Al Jazeera reporters analyzing the “success” of the US war machine in bombing Iran.

June 23

Again, to my disbelief, but this time while sitting in class, multiple tabs open to every news site I could find, Trump announced a cease-fire. Silence from Iran. Silence from Israel. Will it become normal for presidents to declare war and peace on social media?

The same ache from the previous night filled my heart again, this time mixed with a strange kind of hope. Not joy, but that nervous hope you feel when there’s a chance that the bombs might stop, that your country might be able to sleep through the night without hearing bombs.

Still, there was no promise of morning. I was relieved the sun would rise but terrified of what the light would reveal. Then I checked my phone. Trump, smiling, congratulating himself and the world. Meanwhile, Iran and Israel experienced the heaviest bombardments of the past twelve days. As if it was all orchestrated. Announce a cease-fire. Distract the world while missiles rain on people as they sleep. It disgusted me that I had even felt a moment of relief.

June 25

Has the war really ended? Who knows. Most of the people who fled their homes have returned. The many who stayed behind, to protect all they had, are now busy clearing the rubble of homes, of everything they once called normal. I’m afraid for all of them. What is Iran like after the war? Even this question feels too soon. Once the dust has settled, those who survived will have to carry the wounds.

My people have now seen, up close, what the war machine does. The same machine that has killed and starved thousands of children in Gaza without restraint.

Tears fall as I scroll through posts, read blogs, and look at the faces of homes that no longer exist. This is the cost. And yet, we remain. We will claim our liberation on our own terms.