A new friend suggested that I write a piece for a website that publishes narratives about the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. To write about my experience of being in a war zone, both as an Iranian citizen and as a pediatrics resident.
The very first thing I noticed when I started writing was forgetfulness. Most of my memories of the past few months have faded into vagueness, confusion, and oblivion.
When I think about the war, a scattered picture of key moments comes to mind: the first explosion, the first time I heard that someone I knew had been killed, or the final moments before the second ceasefire, when Israeli Channel 13’s countdown to a full-scale attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure was nearing zero.
My memory is less a linear account of events than a recollection of the feelings I experienced: grief, anxiety, anger, and more complicated feelings such as confusion, uncertainty, a sense of injustice, and loneliness. I went back through my journal entries from the days of the war.
Now, looking back with some distance and from a broader perspective, I understand that because of the sweeping impact it has on almost every aspect of our lives, war is inherently a complex and interconnected form of trauma. It is not easy to isolate and identify each of its effects separately; it is a complex situation shaped by direct violence, the disruption of the normal course of life, a sense of insecurity, precarious living conditions, damage to healthcare infrastructure, and the simultaneous anxiety of both those seeking care and those providing it.
As my journal entries recount it, the war began for me with the midnight bombing on Patrice Lumumba Street on June 13, 2025. The series of explosions still feels strange to me, even a year later—that I was the one who witnessed it; that I was standing in the middle of the living room beside my brother, waiting to become the next victim of an explosion at any moment. When I went to the hospital that morning, no one yet knew that the body of “Professor Askari” and his three-year-old daughter was buried beneath the rubble of his childhood home. There was still more talk of assassination than war, and we had not yet believed that the war had reached our homes.
The following night, when I woke to the sound of successive explosions and the firing of the air defenses, I stared at the windows of the hospital quarters for half an hour That was when I finally realized that we were at war.
For the first few days, I was in shock. The city had become empty, bleak, and terrifying. Even now, one of my bitterest memories of the war is the sight of people leaving the city and the strange traffic on the roads leading out of Tehran. I spent most of my days at the hospital, and I thought that since I was hardly ever home, there was no need for anyone to stay in the city and put themselves in danger just so that I would not be alone; a decision that I later came to see as a serious mistake.
I walked along the streets and looked at people—people who had just been caught up in the war, the fear in their eyes as they bought fruit, stood in line at the bakery, or even sat in a chair at a men's barbershop in the metro station, waiting to have their faces shaved.
I was sleepy and dazed all day, and my understanding of what was happening around me was blurred. My psychiatrist friend told me that my mind’s defense mechanism was dissociation and distancing myself from reality, even to the point of blurring everything around me. I continued seeing patients in that same state of confusion; in that same state, I went to my friend’s wedding ceremony, and in that same state, I learned that pieces of my professor’s body, as well as those of his daughter and parents, had been found.
Our hospital was a pediatric internal medicine center and saw almost no injured patients throughout the two wars. However, everything was chaotic and in disarray.
The news that a projectile had struck Hakim Children’s Hospital, and the fact that the possibility of hospitals being targeted no longer seemed far-fetched, had created a tense atmosphere in the hospital. We discharged everyone we could. We emptied the top floor of the hospital in preparation for possible bombing. We placed the metal lockers from the hospital quarters in front of the glass windows and accepted that we were living through a war.
Most of the patients who could not be discharged were chronic patients, oncology patients, and NICU infants—patients who had no choice but to accept the risk of staying in a city at war. The city had emptied out, and few people were coming to the hospital. The occasional new patients who came in for a consultation were in serious condition and had no other choice. One night, we had a five-year-old girl who had no vital signs when she arrived at the hospital. Her family lived in Tehran, but for several nights they had gone to Pardis out of fear of the bombings. It had been about half an hour since her lips had turned blue and she had lost consciousness. A previously healthy little girl whose death was a major tragedy even for the healthcare system had gone into cardiac arrest following a viral fever, a seizure, and eventually aspiration. Even her body had become cold. We spent the night listening to the cries of parents who had left a city under bombs and missiles because they wanted to protect their child.
During the second war, we had been through this before, and we quickly returned to wartime conditions. We knew how to arrange our shifts, which wards to empty, which devices to reset after the emergency power came back on when the power lines exploded and the electricity went out, where to sleep between shifts, and which patients should receive a slightly longer supply of medication.
One of the strangest experiences of my professional life during the war was admitting triplets from Arash Hospital—two boys and a girl. They were 30-week preterm triplets, conceived with a donated egg and donated sperm and carried by a surrogate mother—and remarkably punctual, they had decided to enter this strange world right in the middle of Israel’s attack on Iran. Later, when Arash Hospital was evacuated in Esfand because of its proximity to a police station and thirteen premature infants, each weighing around one kilogram, were sent to us, it became clear to us that, as one would expect, the greatest harm of war falls on the weakest, even the most physically vulnerable, among us.
The busiest period at our hospital came during the ceasefire between the two wars. The children returned carrying a burden of illnesses, most of them caused by anxiety, and some by not seeking medical care during the war: a child with asthma whose condition had worsened, a diabetic child whose blood sugar had become uncontrolled, a child who had developed a stutter, and so on. Losing a neonatology subspecialist, in addition to its psychological impact, had placed enormous pressure on the ward and the NICU. Taken together, these events introduced me, and much of the hospital staff, to the concept of “professional and emotional burnout”—a burnout partly caused by the absurdity of a situation summed up by one of the PICU nurses: “Whoever we keep alive, they kill.”
For me, working during the ceasefire between the two wars felt like expecting shade and fruit from a tree that had been struck by lightning. I was unable to perform even the smallest parts of my routine work. Rather than being in the position of providing care, I felt more capable of being the one receiving care. I had no patience even to see someone who expected the smallest favor from me, and I was filled with shame about being in this state.
The fact that much of the hospital staff shared these feelings made the workplace tense and exhausting—a situation that continued for months. Eventually, for me, medication, psychotherapy sessions, and relying on the support network of those close to me helped lessen the severity of the problem. Another thing that I believe helped improve my mood was returning to spending time with children.
Because of my work, my experiences of spending time with children have always been full of surprises. One night during the war, I went to the oncology ward to watch television with the children as a way of easing my anxiety. An eleven-year-old boy with ALL, who had noticed that I was worried, sat beside me and explained why there was nothing to worry about and why I should put my mind at ease.
When I think of his big heart and his boundless kindness, my heart hurts.
In my view, every child needs support and care—not because of the person they are expected to become or the impact they are expected to have, but simply because they deserve to experience the joys of childhood and to have the freedom to be a child. They also deserve it because of the fragile sense of wonder, hope, and freshness they bring to the world. Yet in our world, that support and care are being denied more and more each day 1.