When the US and Israel bombed Tehran, I did not flee. Here’s why

It was 3am on 17 March when the bombs fell near our home. The night before, I had let three kittens - born in the yard, with lung problems - inside because of the rain and cold. The blast threw me out of bed. I didn't decide to scream; my body did it for me.

I ran to the doorway and stood there, screaming and searching for the kittens. I couldn't see them. My bedroom window shook so hard the handle snapped off. The glass in the next room shattered.

For 18 days of war, bombs had fallen near us before - and each time, I whispered the Muslim shahada to myself, said "what can I do?", and went back to what I was doing. 

Drinking tea. Reading. Trying to sleep. There was nothing else to do. But this was different. It felt like an earthquake exploding. I was certain they had hit the neighbour's house, and the next one would be ours. When it stopped, I thought about leaving. Then I thought about the kittens. 

No one else would feed them. I thought about the things I should take with me if I left. The most important things were my photo albums, my childhood pictures with my mother.

But what would happen to her clothes? Her things? Two days later, I learned that another cat had climbed through the shattered window - covered with plastic - and given birth in the bedroom closet. Now I had more kittens. More responsibility. And the bombs kept falling.

Six months into the Gaza genocide, I knew Israel would come for Iran too. I had seen the maps of the so-called "Greater Israel". I was walking back from shopping. I looked at my neighbourhood - where I grew up, where I had lived for 30 years, where I had so many memories with my mother - and I thought: if war comes, no matter where I am in the world, I will return to Iran.

If my neighbourhood is to be levelled like Gaza, I need to be here until the last moment I can be with it. But after that night - the bombs, the shattered glass, the screaming - when I still decided not to leave, I had to ask myself why.

Then I saw I was not alone. Iranian families were returning from Turkey, Germany, America. Not young men called to fight - the Iranian government had not called them back to go to the front lines. Ordinary people. Middle-aged couples. Families who pulled their children out of schools abroad and came home to bombs.

When protests in Tehran and Isfahan were bombed, people did not flee. They shouted "Allahu Akbar" louder. I saw a photo of a woman - a bomb had fallen near her. She did not even turn her head. Her eyes stayed on the Quran.

So why did Ukrainians flee the moment war began, crowding trains so desperately that Black international students were left behind? And Syrians - why did they risk drowning in the Mediterranean to reach Europe? What is different about Iranians and Palestinians that makes them stay, or even return, when the bombs fall?

Western psychology has an answer for people like me. It would say I am suffering from complicated grief after losing my mother. It would say I have developed PTSD from the bombs, freezing me in place. The rational choice, they would argue, is to flee. And these theories are logical - within the western context where they were developed.

But I was raised differently. On Persian poetry and Iranian mysticism. On Fereydoon Moshiri's "roots in the soil". On Sohrab Sepehri's way of seeing life. I understand the western view, but I do not feel it.

When a bomb falls next to us, we do not necessarily shatter. Strong faith holds us. We do need serious research - psychological, sociological, philosophical - from an eastern perspective. But until that research exists, all I can tell you is this: 23 years ago, I was watching the news of America's invasion of Iraq on television. My mother's eyes filled with tears.

She said to me: "You are still a child. You do not yet know what homeland means." She was crying for Iraq - the same Iraq that had fought an eight-year war against us. She had been a young mother then, raising children born into bombs, saving them from explosions. But she knew: America's invasion would not bring good to the Iraqi people.

My mother taught me what it means to love your country. Even when she was sick and struggling, she voted in every election because she knew the right to vote was not given to us easily, and we should not lose it easily. She believed in change through the ballot box, not through war and killing.

I love Tehran. I don't enjoy the traffic or the polluted air. But every corner of this city holds a childhood memory with my mother. The parks we walked in. The cinemas, the theatres. The schools and universities where I studied.

And now, her memory lives in every corner of our old house, in every street of this city. Iran is not just my country. Iran is literally my mother. And leaving her is not an option.

One year into the Gaza genocide, there was a temporary ceasefire. Israel said it would open the Rafah crossing so Gaza's residents could leave for other countries. I watched a video of an old Palestinian man. He had been living in a tent for a year. No water. No electricity. He had witnessed the genocide with his own eyes.

Someone asked him: "Do you want to leave?" He said: "Even if they gave me paradise, I would not go. My son's blood was spilled right here, on this ground. I will not move from this spot."