Death by a Thousand Cuts

It’s June 13. I’m off work today. Sitting on the couch watching a reality show—a stupid guilty pleasure—when A picks up his phone to check something, and I see a frozen look on his face.
I ask, “What is it?”
He goes, “Israel has attacked Tehran.”

I don’t remember much after that. I grab my phone and start scrolling through bits and pieces of information pouring into social media. People are talking about hearing explosions and military jets flying over their homes. This can’t be happening.

Days go by in a haze, and pictures and videos from familiar streets start showing up. This is my city. This is where I was born, grew up, laughed, cried, made friends, fell in love, got married, grieved, fought, lived. This is home, and now, from every corner of it, smoke rises into the sky.

But here, on the other side of the globe, it’s summertime. Life goes on. People are excited about their plans. Sundresses are coming out of closets, and I have to put on a brave face every single morning and drag myself to work. I sit at my desk, turn on my computer, pull up my task list. My mind is on autopilot. I try to get things done as much as possible.

Then comes noon—the hour the bombings usually start. New updates begin flooding the Telegram channels and news feeds. Tehran, District 6, 4, 3… these are the streets I know. People I love and care about live there.
What the fuck is happening?

I can’t keep working. I gather my stuff and go home, glue myself to my phone, and start relying on media again. Clinging, hopelessly, to the bullshit the pundits are trying to pass off as predictions or analysis. No one knows what’s going to happen. The guy with the big bombs and the destiny of a nation in his hands can’t make up his fucking mind—how are we supposed to?

Afternoon morphs into evening, into night, and I try to get some sleep, dreading what news I’ll wake up to in the morning. For the first two or three days, my mom sends a message every morning saying everyone is safe and alive, and I can breathe.
Then the internet goes down.
I can’t talk to anyone. All my messages sit there with one grey checkmark—unread, unseen, unanswered.
Where are my people?

I try to call. Nothing’s working. I keep trying everything I know or hear from others. Finally, a line goes through. My mom picks up and says everyone’s calling each other at least once a day now, just to say, we’re alive and safe.
I start crying. My mom says, “We’ve done this before—for eight years. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ll be fine.”
And I think to myself: what kind of lifetime is this? To have witnessed one revolution, two wars, and endless uprisings?
Did we deserve this?

Like everything else, people are divided. Some are celebrating the attackers, calling them the “saviours” who will finally free Iran. Others say war is war, and there’s no legitimate reason to bomb people and kill civilians under the guise of anything else.

People are quick to slap labels on each other and go for the jugular, even while cities are under fire and the number of casualties rises.
Where do I stand in all this?
Do I celebrate the death of evil commanders responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people? Not gonna lie—I do.
Am I happy my country, my home, my people are under attack? No, I’m not.
Do I applaud the attackers? Absolutely not.
What am I labeled as?
Traitor.

Here I am, finding myself in another limbo. Living thousands of miles away, being told I’ve lost the right to speak because I “abandoned” my country and left. That vicious survival guilt I’ve carried for years pokes its ugly head out again.
Twelve days pass... and then: ceasefire.

I can breathe now, but is there a sigh of relief? No. Because the ones who put people in this miserable situation are still standing.
Severely wounded, but still breathing.
Like they’ve got nine thousand lives instead of nine.

Two months have passed, and my life is still on hiatus. I know it’s nothing compared to the people who couldn’t sleep night after night, fearing the next bomb would hit their home. I know that. But I feel the pain nonetheless.
It’s like a part of me never left June 13, 2025—still stuck in the fog of those horrible 12 days.

It took me weeks to finish this piece. Every time I thought about publishing it, I felt I wasn’t ready to talk about it. No one knows what’s next.
We’ve become used to living with PTSD, uncertainty, and fear of the future.

I tried to end this on a high note, but I can’t.
Because I don’t have it in me to say, this is it, this time it’s going to be over, they’re not coming out of this one.

Our lives have been death by a thousand cuts for as long as I can remember.