Exodus From Tehran

Friday, June 13, Tehran. My phone rang at five in the morning. My brother’s name was on the screen. I thought someone had died because he was calling so early.

Half-asleep, I picked up and mumbled, “Who died?”

My brother said, “Haven’t you seen the news?”

I looked at X and saw Israel had targeted several military commanders.

Still dazed, I jumped from one website to another. For the first time in years, I turned on national TV. The ticker was reporting explosions in various locations, but the anchor kept saying, “We don’t know details—follow the news for more.”

As usual, someone was cursing Israel and the US and demanding a crushing response. Meanwhile, Israeli social media was showing attacks on nuclear and military sites. At that moment, I heard several explosions. I tried to go to the rooftop to see what was going on, but the building manager had locked the access door.

As daylight broke, I got dressed and went to the corner shop. The street was empty, but that was typical for a weekend.

At around 11:30, the internet was cut off, and the VPNs I had on my phone stopped working.

That night, the attacks started again. The sound of explosions and anti-aircraft fire could be heard from different parts of the city.

On Sunday morning, attacks started in daylight for the first time. On the rooftops, you could see the smoke rising from the blasts.

Friends and family kept calling and asking why I was still in Tehran. “Go up north or somewhere safe,” they said, but I didn’t want to leave.  

I heard about the traffic jams on the roads to the north. A friend was stuck in the middle of the Tehran-North highway and said he regretted bringing his wife and kids. I told him he’d done the right thing. He lowered his voice and said, “Look what our lives have come to—we don’t even know if we’ll be alive tomorrow.”

I joked, “You’ll be OK, but I might not be!”

He said I never listened. “You told me to leave the city, but you’re still there yourself.”

“You go ahead. I’ll join you tomorrow.”

On the fourth morning of the attacks, I went to buy some groceries. The supermarket was quiet, but fully stocked. The streets were empty—nothing like the usual traffic. My phone kept ringing: my brother, my sister, my cousins, and several friends in Europe and the US—telling me to leave the capital as soon as possible.

As soon as I reached home, I packed my things and tried in vain to order an online taxi. In the stairway, I ran into my neighbour, who offered to take me to the bus station. 

A few cars were parked in front of the station entrance. One man shouted out his destination, “Chaloos! I’ve got one seat left!” I asked how much the fare was, and he said, “Five million tomans.”

“For one person?!” I could not believe it.

“Yes—I’m risking my life right now, and that amount is nothing.”

On a normal day, a shared ride to Chaloos was around 500,000 to 600,000 tomans; the price had basically gone up tenfold.

I checked with several bus companies that serve Chaloos, Nowshahr, and Tonekabon, but they all said nothing was available. The Terminal-e-Gharb station was packed with families standing in the shade with suitcases and bags.

An elderly woman in a wheelchair clutched her handbag, while a young woman held a small girl in her arms while a boy of about six or seven ran behind her. Her husband was dragging a suitcase.

I couldn’t help but wonder how these war-displaced people would reach a safe place—and whether they’d be able to return to Tehran anytime soon.

I thought of a friend whose family had to flee their home in Ahvaz at the start of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. They left with one suitcase, thinking they would return in a few days. When they went back years later, their house was gone.

“The war had ended, and my childhood in Ahvaz had turned into just a memory,” he told me.

We returned home, and later another friend told me about a ridesharing Telegram channel for students to find a way to get to their hometowns.

I joined the channel. Someone messaged that they had room for one person, tomorrow afternoon, but only as far as Royan. Another posted that they were heading to Mazandaran tonight and had room “but with very little luggage”.

Everyone was looking for a way out of Tehran—friends, family, ride-hailing apps, buses, trains and taxis.

With my brother’s help, I finally found a driver willing to take me to Chalood. There was another passenger: a woman traveling with two cats and a lot of food—everything from chicken and meat to water.

The traffic on the road was bumper to bumper. A thick fog covered everything, and a few people stepped out of their cars, trying to forget the fear and chaos of war by opening their arms and taking deep breaths of the misty air.

What should have been a three-hour trip took seven hours. I got off in Chaloos, where the pleasant, rainy calm was a far cry from the heat of bombarded Tehran.

From there I made my way to Nowshahr, one of Iran’s top tourist destinations. Located beside the Caspian Sea, it has beautiful beaches, dense forests and mountains. But on the sixth day of Israel’s attack on Iran, the beach resorts had never seen such a crowd.

Traffic was heavy, with license plates showing that most of the vehicles had come from Tehran. The province, Mazandaran, has a population of three and a half million, but the police said that between June 14 and June 20, six million people had arrived.

Faces showed anxiety and despair; people barely spoke to each other.

I spoke to a man called Hamed who had decamped from Tehran with his family.  Six children and 14 adults—four of them elderly—were all gathered in a villa in SiSangan ّForest Park.

“Life for 20 people in one house isn’t easy,” he said. “The kids want to play, the elders want quiet, and the adults want to watch the news on satellite TV.”

He laughed and added, “We’re war refugees, packed together like sardines.”

Another man, Iman, had come from Tehran to stay with his friends, an elderly couple in their 80s.

Iman has multiple sclerosis and said that his physical condition had deteriorated due to the stress from the bombardment. He could barely keep his balance while walking.

“My hosts are struggling to prepare food for themselves,” he said, “I feel guilty, and I’m thinking about going back to Tehran in two or three days, no matter what happens.”

Most things could still be found in the market, but people were trying to stock up on whatever they could.

“Just yesterday, I bought ten pounds of chicken for one meal—and that was only after a lot of pleading and begging,” said Hamed. “The seller claimed he couldn’t give more than 5 pounds per person.

Masoud had taken his elderly father and sick mother-in-law out of Tehran after a week of bombing, before having to return himself. His wife insisted on accompanying him.

“When we entered the northeast of Tehran, the city was very quiet, and smoke was rising into the sky from different parts of the city,” he told me.” My wife was asleep, but I couldn’t control myself and burst into tears. I couldn’t believe that the city I was born in and love so much had been left so defenceless.”

This account was originally published in the Persian online magazine Aasoo. The translated piece has been shortened and edited for clarity.