World News

Overnight on March 7, Israel bombed fuel depots outside of Tehran, Iran’s capital city. Playwright and filmmaker Homayoun Ghanizadeh woke up the next day to black smoke and carnage. What follows is his account of a private citizen trying to maintain some normalcy in the face of a relentless bombing campaign.

I remember that before I went to sleep, Trump’s toys had bombed Tehran’s oil depots. My father calls American military equipment Trump’s toys. I like his fantasy and the way he describes Trump’s mental landscape. I wake up and sit in bed. My phone clock must be broken, because it is showing 8:45 in the morning, while the darkness outside suggests it is still the middle of the night. It is probably an internet disruption. Of course, there is no internet at all to be disrupted. It has been nine days since Khamenei was killed and Iran has suddenly fallen into the middle of a war. I realize that my phone clock is actually working correctly, but why is the sky still dark and the sun missing?

I step onto the terrace and see that a black and impenetrable layer of oily smoke has been drawn between us and the sun. My partner coughs. Her throat hurts. My eyes burn a little, too. Through the window, partly obscured by the thick crisscrossed strips of duct tape everyone is using to reinforce glass, I see that several birds are lying on the street. Seeing the bodies of dead birds lying on the street like the dry leaves of trees is becoming something ordinary for us in Tehran.