“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,”
some thoughts as we wait for 8 pm Tuesday April 7, 2026
This morning the US president called for the killing of an entire civilization--his words not mine. My friend Rahaa texted me from Tehran: Do you think there will be a deal before the deadline? I wrote “Why do you ask me? What do you think?”
“I think there will be a deal,” she wrote. “Because if I don’t, the anxiety will kill me.”
I’m supposed to leave in 15 minutes to go see the ocean. Seeing the horizon might do me good, I’m told. But I’ve been watching the clock tick towards my departure time, and I haven’t been able to move.
I can’t make myself get up and do the things you need to do to make time travel forward: Pack a bag, lock up the house, get in the car, go to the ocean, see it. My paralysis is not so much from anxiety. Anxiety has been my companion for these past weeks. The paralysis is born from an anger I do not know where to place, what to do with, how to let go.
Because the fact of the matter is: We did not have to be here. This did not have to happen. And when the debris settles, everything that made it possible in this country, will remain the same. The apathy, the disinterest, the lack of information, the refusal to hear, let alone accept, the humanity of people on far shores, the humanity of those on this shore.
I keep thinking this is an inflection point in my life. I don’t know if I can ever go back to thinking of this place I live in, and have lived in for the past 35 years, as my home. Someone in Iran wrote: “home is a place where we feel comfort and safety, a place where our bodies are not tense and constantly braced for danger.” This is not my home anymore. I don’t know what to do with this feeling either.
My interlocutors, friends, and colleagues in Iran in the midst of all these bombs falling and in the middle of a society that has ripped itself apart, with some saying come and bomb us and others horrified at the thought, keep articulating how empathy is itself a brave political act. As one put it: You do not need to agree with the person to have empathy. But you need to have empathy to rebuild this place.
The Persian word for empathy is hamdeli, to share a heart. I think to myself, if those people who are being threatened with civilizational destruction can try to share a heart, then I should too. But then, I watch the clock tick, I sit here, and I hold my fury in my heart. I will not share my heart, only this feeling that I do not know where to place.
I told Rahaa today I feel the minute I can go back, I want to go back to Iran. I told her, I want to spend the rest of my life over there. She laughed and said don’t quit your job. It’s too expensive here.
When my mother a week ago has said she wants to go to Iran, I’d just rolled my eyes (sorry mom!) so I’m surprised by how I feel. I spent 35 years making sure I’m not that person. The one with feet on one shore and heart on another. And here I am exactly who I hoped I wouldn’t be, pining for an Iran I have in my mind and heart, brimming with real, flesh and blood people who I love so much, my heart wants to burst.
There it goes again: a heart of fury, a heart of love. I just can’t make it be a heart that I can make hamdel with those who made this moment possible. I feel I never can, even if the threat to erase an entire country does not come to pass. I was wrong about Israel attacking Iran in June 2025 and the ongoing US/Israeli war on Iran. Maybe I’m wrong about my ability to forgive too.
Everything I just wrote was an excuse for what is below:
I recently found a note I had written in my senior year in high school in Los Angeles. I wrote it 10 months after we had immigrated in late 1988. It’s a literature log. It ends in this way:
“My first day at school clearly showed me the change that had occurred in my life. I came from I [sic] school with strict regulations, where everyone knew me, to a place where students would apply make up in class. I also didn’t have any friends. Today, although I have become a bit accustomed to this life, I cannot still accept this change that has occurred in my life.”
