The Korea Times
"I'm just calling to let you know we're okay." Those were my mother's first words when she called me from Tehran, three weeks into the recent U.S. and Israeli war on Iran. A bomb had just hit the police station in her neighborhood. "I didn't want you to worry if you saw it on the news." I hadn't, but relief washed over me at the sound of her voice. Since the war began on Feb. 28, reaching her has become extremely difficult. The internet blackout is widespread; one-way calls out of Iran are occasionally possible, but punishingly expensive. These sporadic and frustratingly brief phone calls are precious fragments of reassurance in the face of overwhelming uncertainty. Whenever she gets through, my mother tells me not to worry. "Are you eating well? Sleeping well?" she asks. I tell her I'm fine — but I'm lying. From the start of the war through the ceasefire announcement on April 7, I began each morning by scanning reports of strikes across Tehran and measuring their distance from her apartment. The police station struck on March 18 sits along the route she walks each day to the park. I
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