TEHRAN - I am a 15-year-old girl named Shakiba. Ironically, my name in Persian means “patient,” but I’m not patient at all—though maybe I am, I’m not really sure.

I live in Tehran, and I’ve never had anything to do with politics. In fact, I’ve always disliked it. But recently, I’ve found myself deeply and unwillingly caught up in it.

It all started in late February, when Israel and the United States attacked Iran. By sheer luck, I hadn’t gone to school that day. With that attack, our dark days began. “Dark” in two ways: first, the internet was cut off; second, every day we were jolted awake by the roar of missiles. Frightened and disoriented, we would rush up to the rooftop.

It was the second day that I woke up to the sound of an explosion, a close one. 

I jumped up. I didn't even have time to register anything or check my dying phone properly before my dad and I went up to the roof. It was 12:00 p.m. 

I used to wake up at 5:00 a.m to go to school, but after the first attack, my whole routine went sideways. When we got up there, it was just me, my dad, my tiny parrot, and some neighbours. 

We went to the rooftop, and that's when we saw it, a giant cloud of smoke going up from what I assumed— and was later clarified, was the police base near my home, and my school. 

We asked our neighbours what had happened, and we found out they had gotten up there not that long before us, but before we could ask anything else we heard the sound of a missile approaching, and our neighbour quickly taking out his camera just in time for all of us to see the missile hitting the base. 

It was so loud, so much louder than anything I thought. All of us hid behind one of the walls, one of my neighbours filming while all of us screaming at him to get cover. 

When everyone had calmed down, I remembered my friend. She lived near the base, and I didn't have my phone on me. We quickly went down the stairs to our house, where I got out my phone to call my friend. She was okay— well, physically, at least. Her house had been destroyed.

The phone call was such a blur that could either be my memory, or the fact that her voice wasn't reaching me well. Even now, when I try to think about it, I don't remember anything past that, it was either uneventful, or a little too eventful.