Dawn

Shohreh Laici is an essayist and literary translator from Iran. Her work has appeared in a range of literary journals and magazines, including World Literature Today, The Brooklyn Rail, The Millions, Michigan Quarterly Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Two Lines, and Poetry Daily. My Room in Tehran Is Called America, a memoir and documentary that details her journey from Iran to the United States, is forthcoming.

My first virtual tour of Iran started two months before the 12-Day War between Iran, Israel and the United States began. I was feeling homesick after having just emigrated to the United States and further alienated by a U.S. administration shifting towards authoritarianism. To manage, I deactivated my social media accounts in a form of self-isolation, virtually touring Tehran — scouring social media for videos from fellow Iranians in the country — alongside other cities across the country instead.

Tehran's streets, buildings, malls and parks look the same as when I was there a year-and-a-half ago. Occasionally, people walk by as the camera advances. One after the other, I notice women without headscarves. Since the "Woman, Life, Freedom" Movement, women have stopped wearing headscarves in northern Tehran and other major cities.

As if to prove this point, I see another woman walk past in the Zaaferaniyeh area of District One without a headscarf, and suddenly, I remember doing the same in November 2022. It was my first time walking without a headscarf. I remember how exciting it was to walk openly like I was in a mall in Paris or a luxurious district in Istanbul or Dubai, thinking "the protests had given us this freedom, at least."

The woman walks past and the video ends.

I search for another video that promotes northern, downtown and southern Tehran, thinking to myself: "Virtual tours without music in the background are my favorite. I like to hear people talking, laughing, and language." Some women are in hijabs. Others are not. Some have headscarves around their necks in case the Morality Police arrive, if they need to sneak them back on without suspicion. "Now, the regime is not sensitive about your hair. They arrest women for showing their skin these days," my mother tells me on the phone.

When I left the country in January 2024, women went without headscarves but still dressed conservatively. Now, I notice Iranian women with and without hijabs in the street, intermingled, walking and laughing side-by-side without concern for differing belief systems or politics. In a way, it has become a form of protest for Iranian women to show themselves on social media in ways that contradict what the regime promotes. It is a clear message in the aftermath of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement: "Look, I am here. You oppressed me, but I exist. This is my body. Watch me."

As the June 2025 war begins, I watch a video of residents fleeing Tehran north to a safe zone surrounded by mountains. Many escaped there during the Eight-Year War with Iraq in the mid-1980s as former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein threatened Tehran with missiles.

I ask my mother: "Why don't you go to that wooden cottage in the north for a few weeks?"

"I don't want to leave my house," she says. "If God wants me to die, I will die whether it's in the north or Tehran."

The phone cuts out for a moment before my mother's voice returns: "No, I will stay in my house and die here. If I'm supposed to die, I want to die in my own house — not a wooden cottage in the jungle."

This "cottage in a jungle" was my birthplace and my mother's temporary shelter during the Iran-Iraq War in fall 1985. She packed her life and escaped Tehran to the north, six months pregnant, with a single suitcase in one hand and a three-year-old child — my brother — in the other. She stayed with her relatives for a couple of months before giving birth to me alone in this "jungle" cottage that she now refuses to return to again.

My father — a lifelong Khomeini lover — joined the Iran-Iraq war as a medical team volunteer without any guilt for leaving my mother behind or anger at the government for not being compensated for his post-traumatic stress disorder or other injuries. Instead, he blindly clutched the connection between his faith, sacrifice and a life-size portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini that he collected, along with my mother, brother and myself. One month after I was born, he hung the portrait in the middle of our kitchen apartment in Tehran, just as we returned.

The Ayatollah stared at me with anger from his eyes, witnessing everything: my father's PTSD, my tearful eyes, our empty plates, our bare feet, my mother's nostalgia for pre-1979 Iran and many regrets. His revolution promised to distribute wealth among the poorest, building an Islamic society based on Islamic justice. This was the promise my father believed throughout his life, driving him to war, silence and the portrait. It also produced a childhood of poverty and false hope that made me hate war and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Women never asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Trump to drop bombs on our heads to be free. We achieved our freedom by ourselves after years of protesting, fighting and civil disobedience. We paid the price with our blood during "Woman, Life, Freedom." They did not.

On the sixth day of the June 2025 war, I watch a video of Israel's attack in Lavizan, District 4 of Tehran, and my left arm goes numb. I lose grip of the coffee mug in my hands; it shatters on the kitchen floor into a thousand pieces. Reaching to pick it up, my neck goes stiff and I cannot move — emblematic of a panic attack, nerves or both. The impossible fear of never seeing my mother again leaves me restless. I look back and forth between the video of the attack and the shattered mug on the floor, fearing something may have happened to her, but unable to act.

I call and no one answers. The regime has blocked the internet again.

I lay in bed, scrolling through videos from Iran. One from Roya News English depicts a bombed-out apartment complex in Tehran near the Iranian Red Crescent Building, with smoke rising in the front yard amid screams. The site is five minutes from my parents' house.

I drop my phone and start hitting my face. My husband bursts into the bedroom, but I cannot tell him what has happened. I hold up my phone instead. We search for more news. Nothing. We check a map online to see if the video truly showed the Red Crescent Building in District 4. Hours later, we learn that it was another branch in District 3.

It is difficult for life to be as it once was in Iran. I have forgotten how I lived before the war. My life feels divided into two chapters — before and after the fighting.

The Iran–Israel War ends on June 22, 2025, and the pain in my left arm and neck disappears. I call my mother on BOTIM, a phone application Iranians can use in-country without a VPN, telling her about the end of the war, but she doesn't believe me: "Then why are there drones on our roof?"

The war is over, but things are not as they used to be.

My therapist — the daughter of a Holocaust survivor — asks me to write about my trauma and the 12-Day War. My husband does, too. "Can I?" I ask my husband. "Can I write about everything I went through during war? I'm in this country with a two-year green card. Can I tell the truth or will I be deported? If another war happens, and the United States bombs Iran or my family gets killed, who will I be in America's eyes then?"

Six months after the 12-Day War, on Dec. 28, 2025, protests break out in Iran. The Iranian rial has fallen to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar — hardly a new development. Prior to the protests, the Iranian people were already struggling financially. Meat, rice, chicken and dairy products were extremely overpriced. Now, people are starving. It is impossible to live in such economic conditions under the weight of a closed society and brutal regime.

I watch more videos and see protests spreading to other cities. Although many chant about the ailing economy initially, the rhetoric quickly shifts to demanding the end of clerical leadership. "Javid Shah!" protesters chant. "Long live the Shah!" Although some slogans favor the monarchy, there are many variations, such as "Death to Khamenei!," "We will fight!," "We will die / We will retake Iran," and "Azadi, Azadi, Azadi" — which means "freedom" in Farsi.

At this point, life will only become more difficult for Iranians. More war and sanctions could be on the horizon. The Iranian people are alone, no matter the calls from Washington or Tel Aviv. I feel guilty that I am not there.

I lie down on the couch and virtually tour Abdanan, a small city in western Iran's Ilam Province. In the video, protesters break into a chain store owned by the Revolutionary Guards, tearing open the soldiers' rice provisions. Rice flies into the sky and back down on their heads. The protesters can barely afford rice, but their gesture is a definitive reaction to the government's $7 subsidy for every family to help with economic hardship, let alone quell the protests.

Suddenly, I realize that I am crying. Having lived in poverty — feeling it in my flesh and blood — makes the protestors' message resonate through me. That message to the regime is clear: Dignity and freedom are priceless.

I feel that the revolution has just begun with this video.

In another video, a demonstrator holds the original flag of Iran prior to the 1979 Revolution, containing a sun, sword and lion at its center. The Mullahs erased these emblems after 1979, installing many other rules and regulations to define a "new" Iranian identity: One in which failing to follow the new leadership and ideology was viewed as anti-revolutionary, non-Iranian or alien. Many left Iran after 1979 as a result. Some stayed in the country and remained silent. Others adapted. Many died.

Watching the protests, I see the youth on the front lines. Iran's regime succeeded in brainwashing older generations, but Gen Z searches and learns everything within seconds. They cannot be fooled by false subsidies or other forms of media-driven propaganda. This generation compares pre-1979 Iran to today. Their disinterest in the current regime is clear, and reports published by the GAMAN Institute in June 2024 reaffirm this growing shift in Iranian society. Only 20% of Iranians support the continuation of the Islamic Republic, with 26% desiring a secular republic, 21% supporting a constitutional monarchy and only 15% support the federal system. According to GAMAN, former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi stands at the top of the people's lists as a potential new leader, with a 31% approval rating.     

"Pahlavi Barmigardeh!"  ("Pahlavi will return!"), some shout. In another video, a crowd of all ages shout alongside an elderly woman with a bloodied mouth, walking with her fist raised above her.

"I'm not afraid!" she shouts. "I have been dead for 47 years!"

In a CBS interview, Nora O'Donnell asks the prince a simple question: "Is it responsible to be sending citizens in Iran to their deaths? Do you bear some responsibilities?"

"As I said, this is a war, and war has casualties," the prince replies.

I pause the video, speechless. The prince who previously spoke of empowering civil society and the importance of civil disobedience — citing Nelson Mandela and Gandhi as his lifelong role models — invoked people to violence against a regime fully armed while he sat safely in the West. How can any political leader endanger the lives of protesters in such a way? In every movement and every revolution, the people who fight and protest are the lifeblood — the very backbone of that movement. Their loss is an act of political suicide.

"In order to preserve and protect, and minimize the death toll, minimize innocent victims yet again be killed by this regime, action is needed," the prince continues in the interview, while video of protesters shifts into families crying over dead corpses. Others search for confirmation among the dead.

I can't watch anymore. I am scared I might see a familiar face, fearing one of those corpses could belong to a loved one I left behind.

My husband watches television in the living room as I go to prepare dinner. I overhear U.S. President Donald Trump threatening the regime with military action in support of the people. He demands that the regime stop shooting and executing protesters. Suddenly, a news correspondent interrupts with news that the Islamic Republic will retaliate if Washington attacks.

My knife slips on the cutting board, cutting my hand. I grab a kitchen towel to stop the bleeding. War and violent revolution revive my past trauma, as I fear a far-right fascism backed by foreign powers might keep me in exile forever. Nursing my hand at the kitchen table, I listen to political shows on YouTube run by different Iranian opposition groups. predicts Venezuela could be a model for Iran, arguing the United States could deal with the oligarchy from within the regime after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is removed.

I think about the regime's oligarchy — children of high-ranking clerics and IRGC commanders who own luxury yachts and private jets after attaining enormous wealth over years of sanctions — alongside a now nonexistent Iranian middle class. I think about the poor living up in absolute poverty. Those supposedly meant to benefit from the revolution now pay for the ruling class' wealth and power with their very blood and bodies on the streets of Tehran.

On another channel, Iranian analysts discuss the appearance of an "Iranian Napoleon" from Iran's army or the IRGC who might get a better deal with Washington. "It seems like my exile will be a long time," I call to my husband. "No matter who takes power in Iran, I cannot go back."

After making Persian black tea with saffron and cardamom, I return to the couch. I recall my first time walking without a headscarf in front of security forces in October 2022. In that moment, I was free. I walked in front of a guard with my head held high: I was a free Iranian woman.      

Women never asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Trump to drop bombs on our heads to be free. We achieved our freedom by ourselves after years of protesting, fighting and civil disobedience. We paid the price with our blood during "Woman, Life, Freedom." They did not.

At this point, life will only become more difficult for Iranians. More war and sanctions could be on the horizon. The Iranian people are alone, no matter the calls from Washington or Tel Aviv. I feel guilty that I am not there.

I look at my phone and watch an early protest video of people marching in western Tehran chanting: "Death to Dictator" I close my eyes, repeating the words in Farsi to myself: "Marg Bar Dic-ta-tor." What a slogan: one that not only targets the current theocratic dictatorship in Iran, but anyone who dreams of any kind of dictatorship or authoritarianism in the future.

I open my eyes. I am in my apartment in New York. The last time I talked with my mother was Jan. 7. The Internet blackout is ongoing.

I write a message on WhatsApp to her: "Maman, maybe my exile won't last long, and I will return to Iran. And we will walk in the streets of Tehran again. This time free and secure."

My message to my mother on WhatsApp may never be seen.