One Night Under the Bombs

ONE NIGHT UNDER THE BOMBS IN TEHRAN

I stop the car and pull up to the shoulder. It is crazy driving now, there is no way I can be at home before the rockets start raining around us. The city is in total darkness. The highway is dark also, there are no lights. Iraqi jet fighters are flying low overhead and you can hear the woosh of their engines. The city is in total darkness, like the second world war, like the modern warplanes don’t have radars and a million other technical innovations to direct them to their targets, like we are still living in 1940s, but … “they” order us to turn off lights each night, and we have to abide by it. I can't even have the car lights on in this pitch black highway and must rely on the faint moonlight to drive.

The first explosion, I hear it and a moment later I see the skies lighten up in south Tehran. A direct hit, somewhere in downtown, more dead people, more destroyed houses. We have to take cover. I can nearly smell the fire and smoke of the second and third explosion.

My son is only two months old, sleeping safe and sound and undisturbed in his mother’s arms. We open the car’s doors and run away towards the bushes. You can hardly see anything, I know there might be a ravine around, and we might just fall off into it, but there is no time to think. The bombs are dropping all around us and each one is closer. I take Ben from my wife, he is now in my arms, soft and warm, a bundle of life, deep asleep, as if nothing is happening. How I wish I could be like him, not knowing what is happening. Not knowing that there are jet fighters right there over our heads, with pilots intent on killing people on this dark night. You can’t believe that you are right in the middle of an air raid and any moment you might be the next target and explode into a million little pieces. We duck under the bushes, lie down, try to be one with the earth, like it can protect us. I can see the horizon now, red and orange hues behind the hills, and the smoke, and the sound of other explosions, getting further away. They break the sound barrier as a good-bye to Tehran and disappear. Just in a few moments, which lasts like a lifetime, tens or hundreds of people are dead, gone forever, families destroyed, hopes and futures dashed. Is this life we are living? Every day new air raids, without any anti-aircraft defence, the city is wide open to the jets and rockets of the Iraqi dictator, and people are welcome to be “martyrs”. After all, what is better than getting killed with one of these bombs? You become a martyr instantly and end up in paradise for eternity.

We get out from under the bushes, tap the dust away from our clothes and get into the car and drive back home in silence. My son is still sleeping, in his little innocent world, there is no death, there is no war, and there is no air raid.