My Mother’s Voice: Messages From Tehran

The walls were cracked, the ceiling collapsing. Ruins underfoot. My manuscript spread haphazardly across the areas untouched by rubble. Pages lifting and settling on top of one another in the early morning or evening I could not tell. I only knew that everything looked familiar. And, somehow, that I was in my room in Tehran.

I pulled my long, white, tulle veil tight around me as a gust of wind rippled across a collapsed door. I edged my way over the wood and found the sitting room. I could hear a faint buzzing. I looked towards the sky, but it was empty. When I turned back, you were standing there in your black veil. It took me a moment to recognize you, a stranger I had known all my life. Then, I remembered, and walked towards you.

On the other side of the house, a crowd began clapping and cheering.

“Who are these people?”

I looked towards them and back at you.

“I don’t know them,” you continued, and then stopped, looking me over from head to toe. “I’ve never seen you in a wedding dress.”

“I never had a wedding,” I said.

“Your hair has grown. It’s still black.”

“You told me not to die it blonde.”

I wanted to hug you, smell you, kiss you, but I couldn’t.

I heard the buzzing again. It became louder. The crowd began clapping and cheering again. Then I heard nothing but a weird, rhythmic noise, a constant, pulsing vzzzz-vzzzz-vzzzz that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“You have to go!”

“Where?” I asked.

“Go!”

It was in that moment I realized how much I missed you. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move.

A huge blast shook the building. Then everything went dark. I could feel something heavy in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t cry. I was a baby in your arms. I looked at you. Your eyes were wide and staring at the red flames that were stretching across the sitting room. The house was on fire, and father had gone to war again. You rushed me to the crib in your bedroom, setting me down to pull on your black veil, before taking me in your arms again, and running in the darkness. My body moved up and down against your shoulder, and I could see a long corridor closing as if it were a kaleidoscope of our former lives being turned from within. I shut my eyes. I heard bombs sounding around us. Then your voice whispering God’s name. I was not afraid anymore. I felt safe in your arms. I opened my eyes.

It has now been more than a month since war began. That tomorrow hasn’t come. Nothing looks like it did before anymore.

Pirooz was standing at the door. His face as pale as milk. It was early Saturday. The last day of February 2026.

“I had a very bad dream,” I told him.

Pirooz kept staring at me, his eyes speaking what I already knew.

“War,” he confirmed.

I looked around my apartment in upstate New York. The Valentine’s Day balloons from a few weeks before were still hanging, but everything felt different. My home had instantly become a house of mourning. I began screaming and sobbing, hitting my face. I threw my phone, still playing a newsreel, across the room.

This was how the war began for me.

I tried calling my mother on BOTIM and WhatsApp. I called our landline in Tehran. I called my brother’s mobile. No one answered. Once again, there was an internet blackout in the county. The last time I talked with my mother was a day before the war:

“I can’t believe we’ve been talking for forty-five minutes,” I said to her, as I paced my bedroom. “The internet is working so much better now.”

“Yeah, if you don’t give it the evil eye,” she said, with a laugh.

“Ha, I must go, Maman. I will call you tomorrow.”

“Ok, Azizam.”

“Maman, I love you. Bye.”

“I love you, Shohreh. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

It has now been more than a month since war began. That tomorrow hasn’t come. Nothing looks like it did before anymore.

I read an old message from my mother:

When you send me videos and pictures of your life, I feel I am living with you in the US. I don’t feel you’re not with me in Iran. I feel I am always with you.

I scroll back a month, a year, even two years when I just arrived in the states. I review all the pictures and videos I sent her. I read the text messages over and over again.

Well, we should be thankful for the internet. I will send you more.

I wish I could reverse time. I wish I could go back to before the January 2026 protests or maybe before the 12 Day War. If I could, then maybe I would keep rewinding to February 2024, before I immigrated to the U.S. I wish I could.

Since the war began, sobbing and screaming have become part of my normal routine. I think my neighbors might have figured out I am from Iran.

I open my eyes. It is April 7th. I check my phone. Social media is flooded with comments about Trump’s post on Truth Social:

A whole civilization will die tonight and will never be brought back.

I stare at the American flag I put on the wall of my apartment in Rochester when we arrived here from the Midwest. As young children growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran, we were encouraged to burn the US flag on the yearly anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy, or what we were told to call The Capture of The Spy Den. On those days, we had to listen to our principal deliver a long speech about America’s inhumane crimes against our country and around the globe.

“Can I buy a flag?” I asked my husband, who was scanning the other side of the aisle we were walking with our cart in a Wegmans grocery store in Rochester, NY.

“What?” he asked and looked over at the flag in my hands “You really want an American flag? Where do you want to put it?”

“In the house,” I said and looked back at the flag again. “Is it a bad idea?”

“Um,” he said looking back at the flag. “I don’t really know what to say.”

“Why?” I asked. “I always wanted to have one.”

I didn’t wait for his reply, and grabbed a second flag for good measure, holding them both in my hands as we continued through the store.

“Two?” he said.

“Yes,” I laughed.

As we walked to the checkout counter, a white American woman looked from me to the flags in my hands and smiled.

“Do you think it’s time to put the flags in the cart?” Pirooz asked.

“Why? Are you afraid people might think I’m MAGA?”

“It’s a strange time for America,” he said.

After we paid for the flags and groceries and were heading to the parking lot, my husband asked why I really wanted the flag.

“Do you remember Dr. King’s quote, ‘love your enemies’? I want to be like that.”

I stare at the flags in the apartment now. I put my phone down on the coffee table and walk towards the wall where they have been hung. Tears start falling. I am full of grief and anger. I take the flags down. Fold them and put them in a box in the pantry. I lean back against the pantry door and sob.

Since the war began, sobbing and screaming have become part of my normal routine. I think my neighbors might have figured out I am from Iran.

“Iran…Iran…Iran, oh Iran, God…” I have screamed while crying.

My husband jumps on the bed and tries to calm me. My phone falls from my hand onto the floor; a short video keeps playing: Ferdowsi Square in downtown Tehran being bombed. Everyone is on the ground, covered in dust, surrounded by smoke. People are screaming. I understand their words. That makes it hurt even more. It’s one of the rare moments in my life I wish I didn’t understood Farsi. I can remember walking through that neighborhood many times. I was there just two years ago.

“You can’t scream like this in America,” Pirooz tells me, his hand on my shoulder. “People might call the police. ICE could become involved and get you.”

“What do you mean? Can’t I tell them I’m crying because of the war?”

“People don’t scream and cry like this in America. Not screaming and shouting for hours. They wouldn’t understand. It’s not like Iran where they have a different cultural attitude towards mourning. And this is a dangerous time in America for new immigrants. We have to protect you.”

“I wish I never came to America.”

I feel my whole immigration to this country has been a failure. I came to America for freedom of expression, but I haven’t even been able to express my true emotions for my homeland as it’s being bombed.

I feel nauseous. I no longer use my office. I try to write from home. The American community I have known invites me to dinner and events. I don’t go. They invite me to have tea at a teahouse near our apartment. I postpone. The first day of war, I receive emails from many American friends who show their solidarity with me. I haven’t answered any of them yet.

“Why are they inviting me to dinner?” I ask Pirooz. “Don’t they see my country is being bombed by America?”

“Getting together for dinner or tea is an excuse to show you they care about you. They want to see you and make sure you’re okay. They also don’t want you to see them as people to blame. They’re trying to empathize with you and tell you they feel your pain.”

“I would never blame them. But being around Americans while this country is bombing mine is the last thing I can do. I wish I could go to dinner with them. That would have been helpful, but I just can’t.”

I have lost time. This winter has been the most difficult I have ever experienced in my life. Cold, dark, and brutal. I didn’t even realize when spring came, Ramadan ended, or when Nowruz began. This has been the first time in my entire life I didn’t celebrate Persian New Year.

“The child died in his arms,” my mother explained. “When he came back home, I saw that his clothes were covered with blood.”

I search among the things I have brought from Iran. I find an old photo album. I look through the pictures. Memories invade my mind. I stare at my childhood photographs from the early ’90s in post-war Tehran. Each picture tells a story. Each of them talking to me.

I look down at a photo of my brother and I when we were children. It was February. The anniversary of the Islamic Revolution:

“Death to America,” I say and run after my brother.

In the background, a radio announcer sings a patriotic anti-American anthem. I was eight and my brother was eleven.

“America, you’re the Great Sataaaan!” my brother and I sing along with the anthem on the radio. “Our youth’s blood stains your haaaaands!”

My father smiles proudly and turns up the radio.

“Can you please turn down that radio?” my mother says to my father, sipping her tea in the sitting room. “We’re getting a headache from this anthem.”

“Death to America!” I shout again and run after my brother, past my mother and around the sofa.

“Shohreh, stop repeating whatever they taught you at school,” my mother says and points a finger at me. “Here is home, not the primary school.”

“Why?” my father says, sipping his tea next to her. “Let them learn to be patriotic and revolutionary like their father.”

“You were patriotic and revolutionary. That’s enough for us. We’re now paying the price of that. Look how we’re living.”

“Why can I say, ‘death to America’ at school but not at home?” I ask, and stand next to my mother for a moment.

“Because I don’t want to hear hate speech in the house,” my mother says.

“My children must learn what imperialism is,” my father says and puts down his tea.

“They’re my children, too. I want them to learn better things. Their lives shouldn’t look like yours or mine.”

“Dad, what’s imperialism?” I ask and walk close to him and put my hand on his lap.

My dad looks at me and nods his head, smiling.

That day, my father didn’t answer my question. Years later, my mother shared a memory my father told her about the Iran-Iraq war. She described how my father rushed into a residential building in Tehran after it had been hit by Saddam’s missiles funded by the West. The building had been completely torn apart, but my father rushed forward as a member of the medical team to the side of a young girl amid the ruins. He reached down and took her up in his arms, and called back for a stretcher to his team members. Her family was gone, and the child took several short breaths before dying in my father’s arms.

“The child died in his arms,” my mother explained. “When he came back home, I saw that his clothes were covered with blood. I was breastfeeding you. The building was across from ours. He still talks about it, even after all these years.”

I feel nauseous again. My body feels strange since the war began. I am not sure why that is. I feel something is growing inside me. I am not very functional these days. Washing a plate can take me half an hour now.

I open a window and try to get some fresh air. I lie on the bed. The cold breeze makes me feel better. I play my mother’s voice messages over and over.

An Iranian American friend in NYC put me in touch with one of her friends based in Tehran. He had purchased different VPNs and could open WhatsApp for a very short time every other day. He has sent me four audio messages of my mother so far. Each of them is less than a minute.

I play all four messages. One of them sounds like the reading of a will. My mother doesn’t feel very comfortable revealing her real emotions over the phone, particularly while a stranger is recording, so she speaks in a type of code. I keep replaying her words in my mind, trying to decipher them:

Shohreh, I know you’re very worried for us. I know it’s difficult for you not to be in touch with me like before. I know all your fears and anxieties about the war, but I want you to stay strong. I want you to realize it’s war and anything can happen, and I want you to be prepared for anything. And, if something bad happens to us, I want you to keep living your life in America. The only thing which makes all of us very happy at this moment is that you’re safe in America. You’re the last one of us who survived. I want you to live your life in the U.S., have a child, build your life there and never think about living anywhere else. Your life is there; the future is yours.

The sun is setting. The room is cold. A man is walking his dog in the backyard of the complex. My Persian teacup on the nightstand has turned cold.

I text Pirooz: “Do you know where we can get a copy of The Constitution of the United States?”

Shohreh Laici

May 2026, Rochester, NY