Sal Tahvil 1405

They broke

the world

Then handed us

the pieces

and called it

peace

– Karim Wafa-Al Husseini

The only person who called me just a couple of minutes after the ‘sal tahvil’ (countdown to Nowruz or Persian new year) of 1405, which was at 7:46 am on Friday March 20, 2026 was my brother. I was so happy to hear my phone ring because I thought it was my parents. I was hoping it was them so I would know that they are safe, that I could just hear their voice at the beginning of the year. But it was not them. It was my brother. We had actually been back in touch since the beginning of the war on February 28 when my parents could no longer call him for some reason but they could still call me and speak for a couple minutes at least.

When my brother called I was crying. I was listening to this sad song titled ‘Bazgashte’ which means returned on Spotify from an artist named NAVA who had a velvety voice while driving to work. I had come across this artist in my Instagram feed which was now mostly coverage of the war. I had reached the parking lot at work when he called, which was perfect timing as I normally don’t want to answer phone calls when I’m driving except for calls from my family.

I was crying and he sounded happy as usual. He said Eidet Mobarak Aidoo. I said how can you be so calm? How are you not worried? How do you keep it together? He was laughing and saying why do you always act like everything is falling apart? I told him that after I had breakfast I heard from a video that the neighborhood where my parents lived in Tehran, was hit. He said they are not gonna get hit. They are fine. He sounded so sure. How can he be so sure? He was saying they are not after civilians as he had been saying from the start of war, but I assured him that civilians were dying in the thousands as a result of these strikes that were now entering the third week.

My brother had left years ago right before Covid, after which we kind of lost touch. Except for when there was a birthday or a text from the bank. Now we were talking again which was one of the good things for me that was coming out of this horrendous war. Although he didn’t think the war was so terrible. He was hopeful for a positive change in Iran as were many Iranians inside and outside Iran. But I was more skeptical. I couldn’t let myself believe that bombs could lead to a tuning point. I was more focused on the suffering of innocent people caught in the cross fire all over the region, on all sides of this conflict. What is the cost of change? How many lives? How many destroyed homes and families? What will be left after this is over?

Being a preschool teacher has changed me in so many ways. It has maybe naively led me to believe that we can try to create a brighter future for the world when we spend more time and effort nourishing the young soul as it is learning about the world. Teach children to trust the world because it protects them and takes care of them.

When the elementary girls school was hit in the south of Iran on the first day of the war, my heart shattered. The same way it was shattered every day over and over again when I would see images of children in Gaza being pulled out of the rubble. The images of children holding empty metal pots in a big crowd of hungry people to get food. The images of children playing with the ruins of cars and buildings. How can this be the start of anything good? Did they hit this school by mistake? Was this a miscalculation? Did AI decide this target? How can anyone call this liberation?