I’m like a comma: wanting an ending, but condemned to continue
Some wit, humor, and pathos in time of war
When my best and oldest friend called me last Sunday from Iran, I was sprawled lethargically on the couch. I had tried to take a nap, but as has been the case for the past two weeks, not reading the news or not writing felt overwhelming. Being motionless didn’t make me calm or help me breathe. It just made me panic.
I was forcing myself to slow down, when the phone rang. It was her. I hadn’t heard from her since the start of the war when the Islamic Republic shut down the internet and our ability to call people inside Iran. I got so excited that I had a hard time answering the phone. Butter fingers and all.
“Hi,” she said. I burst into tears. I had thought she would cry too, considering she, not I, was under the barrage of Israeli and American bombs while also dealing with government checkpoints and an internet blackout. But she laughed instead. “Stop crying!” she said.
I took a breath and started bawling again.
“Stop it!” she said, laughing. “Don’t cry!”
“Why the hell are you telling me to stop crying? It’s none of your business,” I said, this time cry-laughing.
“It’s an expensive call, you little donkey and you’re wasting my minutes,” she said jokingly.
True, I was. Wasting minutes and time. I stopped. We talked for a while.
“How did we get here so quickly that everything is just so dark and sad?” another friend in the US messaged me this morning. His question, rhetorical to some extent, became our occasion to talk about how the internet blackout and the difficulty of knowing if our loved ones in Iran are okay after each round of bombing has knocked the humor out of us.
He made me think about how, perhaps ironically, the lived experience of war is both sadder and scarier, but also more humorous and more alive than what we imagine it to be. You have to be in it to experience it fully.
It made me think of jokes I know, and I realized almost all the jokes I can remember are from the time we lived in Iran during the war in the 1980s. Somehow, I have not retained a single joke from after that.
It also made me remember the time my family went to the Caspian shore in the 1980s during the war of cities, when Iran and Iraq were throwing bombs and missiles at each other’s cities. Back then, apparently, the UN Security Council thought that was unacceptable. Times have changed. But I digress. What I remember most from that trip is not war trauma or tears, nor dramatically falling to my knees to thank the Lord for safety (I had dabbled in religiosity a few years before, then abandoned god when it was clear the war would not end.) What I remember is how the cute boy whose family also had taken shelter at our mutual friend’s house, was flirting with me. I remember how fun it was to leave the parents behind and how fun it was for all of us kids, cute boy included, to run to shore in the dark and play as the sea danced back and forth.
***
Below is a translation of 20 posts from the Sharif University Twitter Telegram channel. The best way to describe this space is that it’s like an anonymous message board where people send short, pithy thoughts, jokes, grievances, and commentaries. In other times, the channel is brimming with humor. It’s a communal space for wit. This all changed after Bloody Dey in January, when, after three weeks of silence, the short messages became mostly expressions of grief and despair. After a while, though, some humor slowly returned, as people began to take stock of life after the state’s brutality. With the start of the war, messages came in drips. On days when it’s impossible to connect, there’s silence. On others, those who get through leave little bits of themselves for us to see.
I went through the posts between February 27, the day before the war started, and today, and picked some that spoke to me, either because they were funny or poignant. While it’s impossible to know the sender’s exact location, I focused on posts that strongly suggested the user was living in Iran (except in one case where they reported something about their mother.) The posters use pseudonyms.
I have to take a break from here for 3–4 days to catch up with other parts of life. So I wanted to leave you with something more than just sadness or darkness.I hope that, in reading them you laugh or chuckle at times, smile at others, tear up, think, and simply appreciate humans in their incredible grit and diversity under unimaginable pressure.
February 27
I’m like a comma: wanting an ending, but condemned to continue.
I told my sister not to let those two people come to my grave. She said we can’t hire a 24-hour guard for your grave. The effect of crisis conditions on the morals of family members:
February 28
The only preparation I have for war is that I take a shower every night, so if war starts I’ll get dirty later.
If something happens and I don’t make it out of the war alive, I was just a victim—not a martyr of the war against global arrogance and Zionism, not someone who sacrificed their life for the homeland. I didn’t become a gift to the homeland or anything else. I was just a victim—a victim.
Those of you who live alone, I suggest you don’t sleep naked this week.
I have to keep telling ChatGPT that I live in Iran, otherwise it suggests European-style solutions.
No posts until March 7
“Our upstairs neighbor is replacing his kitchen cabinets in the middle of a war. Every time he turns on the saw, we jump out of our skin and take cover. :))”
We can’t even take a proper shower anymore. I’m always worried there’ll be an attack and I’ll end up dying with my ass naked.
My sister called and said Mom took her expensive crystal dishes out of the display cabinet, wrapped them up carefully, and packed them in a box so they don’t get damaged. But she still goes out onto the balcony to watch the bombing.
Whatever I do, I keep thinking that maybe this is the last time I’m doing it…
Whoever I talk to, I think maybe this is the last thing they’ll hear from me…
I taped up the plastic bag of baking soda and thought maybe I’ll never open it again — so why am I even taping it?
Before I lose connection, I want to say that I kiss the hands of all the motorcycle couriers in this city who, in these conditions, are delivering people’s purchases, taking care of their needs, and moving around despite all these bombs and missiles. I hope not even a drop of blood comes from their noses.
March 8
“The fighter jets are flying so low that my mom told me to tidy up my room cause the pilot will see it and it’ll be rude.
I made an interesting discovery yesterday. Kids born in the current war were actually conceived during the previous war.
March 10
“Living in Tehran really sharpens your hearing. You can accurately distinguish between different frequencies of sounds from missile explosions, bombs, the upstairs neighbor, delivery motorbikes, regular motorbikes, and air defense systems.”
Day 9 or 10 of the war.
Every year during this month [Esfand], this corner of my room has light that is faint and cool. A blossom has opened by the window. I haven’t bought any fresh flowers yet. The sounds of nightingales and fighter jets mingle together. [The photo was included in the post.]
Today, on the tenth day of the war, my mom pulled me aside and said: if this war continues for another week and your dad has to stay home like this, start thinking about a place for me, because our divorce is certain.
The sound of a fighter jet flying low,
occasional explosions,
and the distant sound of mourning.
This is our situation in the first minutes of March 9, 2026, in central Tehran.
March 11
A large percentage of people in Iran haven’t had any income for three months. Businesses are closed. Cultural and educational activities have been completely suspended for three months. People are mourning for Dey [the victims of the protests], and today they are under nonstop bombing. The internet is practically cut off.
All of Tehran is filled with the sound of electric shavers.
March 12
Write a good tweet. You know it’s expensive to connect to the internet .
Thank you Naghmejun. A big tight hug from here over there--Selim
💔♥️🙏🏽