I have tried to imagine what it must mean to be caught up in a country under bombardment. From where I sit thousands of air miles away, I am seeing images on a screen. Smoke curl into the sky, buildings blackened and broken and windows blown out.
Every footage of American and Israeli strikes on Iran has left my chest tightening. Whatever I feel is a faint echo of something far more vicious. Distance insulates, kind of, allowing you to look away and scroll past.
But for those in Iran at this moment, there is no scrolling past the sound of an explosion, no muting the sound of missiles and no turning down the tremor in the walls when another building is hit.
When fumes rise from concrete and steel, they do not rise from an abstraction. They rise from someone’s kitchen. Or shop. Or bedroom. I try to imagine what it must be like for a parent when the sky itself feels hostile. When every loud sound forces a calculation. How close was that? Is my child safe? Do we run? Where would we even run to?
It is easy, from afar, to frame events in the vocabulary of geo-politics. But beneath the framing are innocent human beings, who woke up expecting an ordinary day and found themselves in a war.
Then the changes in geography. Familiar roads become potential traps. Landmarks become targets. Home becomes fragile. It is easy, from afar, to frame events in the vocabulary of geo-politics. But beneath the framing are innocent human beings, who woke up expecting an ordinary day and found themselves in a war.
I find myself unsettled by the helplessness of it all. Watching smoke rise and knowing that beneath that smoke are lives permanently altered. There are children who will remember those eerie sound long after now. There are families who will measure time not by birthdays or holidays but by the day the bombing began.
Empathy, from a distance, can feel inadequate. For example, it does not stop a missile, does not rebuild a wall and does not bring back the dead. But it is the only honest response when confronted with the suffering of strangers.
I am far away. I am safe. That knowledge carries its own discomfort. Because somewhere in Iran, at this very second, someone is not safe. And their sky is still burning.
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