"She is much younger than me, yet she took on the responsibility of protecting my son so that I could stay somewhere safe and avoid being arrested again. I remind her how grateful I am. My heart is in turmoil: I thought something terrible had happened at home and that she was unable to say it."
"For a moment I picture our neighbour. Like me, he smoked cigarettes. He must have been on the balcony for a smoke. Or maybe, like many others, he had gone out to watch the drones and see which direction they were flying. Maybe he had gone there to cry for a country and a people being destroyed."
"Why is it that here, unlike everywhere else in the world, we cannot cry like ordinary people? Why have we suffered so much that even new pain no longer shakes us?"
At 5am on March 12, a phone call from the narrator's younger sister brings news of their neighbor's death from a blast wave in Tehran. The siblings have been separated since war began, with the sister protecting the narrator's son while the narrator hides to avoid arrest. The narrator struggles with the emotional weight of loss, reflecting on how war has created a psychological numbness where new tragedies no longer provoke normal grief responses. The narrator questions why suffering in their country prevents ordinary emotional expression and contemplates the neighbor's possible final moments. Unable to sleep, the narrator seeks comfort in making coffee but faces economic hardship, highlighting the daily survival challenges amid conflict.
#war-and-conflict-in-iran #grief-and-emotional-numbness #family-separation #survival-and-loss #psychological-impact-of-violence
Read at www.theguardian.com
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