It’s 9:30 AM on a Saturday morning, the beginning of the work week. My cheeks are pressed against the window of the dilapidated bus. I am daydreaming, staring at the tired faces negotiating the busy street. The sky is overcast. I would like to shake myself awake from this lethargy in which I have been sunk since the war with Israel last June, but I am unable to.

Suddenly all the pedestrians turn toward some distant point to the left of us and high up in the sky, outside my line of sight. As the bus lurches forward, I lean away from my window, and glance up to see thick smoke rising in the east. The passengers start shouting. “It’s the Americans. They’re here. They’re bombing us. The Ministry of Intelligence – it’s already been hit.”

The crowd outside grows, fed by people streaming out of buildings. I watch groups of terrified schoolgirls run in the opposite direction, holding hands. Now the bus has slowed to a crawl; fists are pounding on its sides. The doors open and slam shut several times. A woman stumbles inside clutching her young child, and tells us in a stunned voice that the supreme leader’s compound has been hit.

I am in disbelief. My job involves watching lots of movies and reading dozens of film scripts every month. I know a thriller when I see one.

In the first days of the new war, my friends and I would sit together staring at each other until we heard the unmistakable whistle of an incoming missile. A few seconds later we would hear a massive impact, and then run up to the rooftops to see where it had landed.

Once I watched as a fighter jet circled above the city like a bird of prey, trailing smoke as it changed direction. It destroyed at will, as if in a video game – a comparison that a lot of people were making. This is a new kind of war, but our imagination still can’t get past video games. The difference is that those who die don’t get back up to play the level again.

One attack in the first week was particularly disorienting. There was hardly any gap between the sound of the missile and the thunderous shake of the impact. As soon as we opened the rooftop door, ash from the explosion, just two blocks away, settled on our clothes. It was as if the ash had been hovering, waiting just for us. On the next rooftop we saw a man in tears, beating his head and wailing: “Flesh, flesh everywhere!” Pieces of paper – tens of thousands of them, it seemed – floated in the air above us. The smell of burning stung our nostrils.

After the internet was cut off at the start of the war, we were almost totally isolated from the rest of the world. The conflicting reports that reached us only made everyone more crazed, and more prone to repeating rumours and conspiracies. We still had the domestic internet, which isn’t much good. So many sites are blocked that you feel like a trapped animal banging on invisible walls. For a hefty price, however, you can acquire two gigabytes of VPN credit and connect to Starlink. It’s not clear who is profiting from these connections, and I had usually stayed away from them. But then I left Tehran with some friends to go north. It was safer there, but the relative calm made me restless. I was out of the loop, with no idea about the situation in the capital, or the war’s “progress”. So I paid for those precious gigabytes and got online.

Imagine my astonishment when, scrolling through 11 days’ worth of unread emails, I came across a message from a film residency in Istanbul that I had applied for two months earlier – exactly three days before what we now call the January massacres, which were followed by a 20-day internet outage. As part of the application, I shot a video in which I explained how important the opportunity was at this juncture in my career. I said I wanted to get out and see more of the world, and to engage with other artists. I had applied without much expectation of success – and the war, I imagined, had been the nail in the coffin. But they had accepted me, and now they wanted to know: could I make it, despite the war? I wrote back thanking them profusely, and stressed what an honour it was.

The Iran-Turkey border, which had been closed during the first week of the war, was open again. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip away. I had to figure out how to get to Istanbul by 8 April, which was about a month away. Before that I needed to take a train to the south, where my family lives, to spend Nowruz with them.

While my friends discussed my journey – and the dangers of checkpoints, which the Israelis had been targeting – the little daughter of one of them hugged me tightly and said pointedly: “Auntie, please don’t die!”

“Don’t be scared, auntie dear,” I said. “I’m not going to die.”

And I didn’t. I made it to the deep south: first to Ahvaz, and then to Behbahan, a small, sleepy town barely 50 miles from the Persian Gulf, not far from several cities, ports and islands – Bushehr, Ahvaz, Kharg Island, Bandar-e Mahshahr – that had been in the news because of American and Israeli bombings.

Behbahan was quiet. A few sites on its outskirts had been targeted, but the town itself seemed unaffected, except for the presence of security guards patrolling the streets. For the first time since the war began, I saw Nowruz goldfish being sold in the markets – a tradition that seemed to have been suspended in the rest of the country.

During those relatively quiet days, I spent a lot of time on the domestic search engine called “Magnifying Glass”, conducting a gruelling search for a way to get to Istanbul – gruelling because Magnifying Glass’s default is to present you with errors rather than answers. Eventually I found a train going from Tehran to Van, on the other side of the Turkish border. I bought a ticket online and breathed a sigh of relief. It was still hard to imagine that I might soon be in another country, away from this war.

Meanwhile, the American president’s threats were becoming more repellent. What if he hit our power grid or our water systems? The conversations in my grandmother’s house, where we gathered every night, were at times heated, and at others utterly resigned and hopeless.

Grandma herself remained a beacon of strength throughout. She calls the American president “Carrot the Blind”, because of his complexion and hair, and the fact that you can barely see past the slits that serve as his eyes. She had come up with a new favourite saying: “I’ll chew right through Carrot the Blind’s shoulders until I get to the bone.”

Grandma can barely walk, even with a cane. But she loves Iran intensely, and thinks her country is the absolute centre of the world. During the Obama presidency, we’d often remark on what a pleasant change it was to actually like the American president. But not grandma. She’d frown and ask: “What good is a president who doesn’t speak Farsi?”

We all would laugh. But deep down, I’ve always envied this formidable woman’s worldview.

When the two gigabytes of VPN cut out on me, the vendor claimed their servers were down. I bought another gigabyte from a different vendor, and managed to open the residency’s next email, which asked: “For what day should we book your flight from Van to Istanbul?” Before I could answer, the new VPN cut out on me too. A cousin lent me a third. But just as I began texting a friend in Istanbul to ask for help with the arrangements, that one also sputtered and died. As a last resort, I bought an international calling plan, and after several failed attempts, I finally managed to reach the residency’s offices.

My mother was restless and my father was angry. Neither of them wanted me to leave the country under these circumstances.

I got ready for the 15-hour journey back to Tehran, where I would stay for another three days before heading to Van. The American president had vowed to burn all the bridges, and to prove his point he had attacked one over the Karaj River, which had only recently been completed.

As we said our farewells, my mother would not stop weeping, convinced that she’d never see me again. My father squeezed my hand and told me to be careful. “How?” I asked him. “Do I hold my hands above my head when a missile comes my way?” We both laughed nervously. Then it really was goodbye.

Back in Tehran, the pharmacy in my neighbourhood was gone – and so was the cheerful young pharmacist. Several other businesses nearby had been turned into ruins as well. My apartment shook constantly from the munitions dropping from the skies. I left the windows open so the blasts wouldn’t shatter them. But what was going to happen when I left?

The Tehran railway terminal felt more like an airport. Families had come to see their loved ones off to distant countries. In every corner someone was crying. The uncertainty weighed on every family. You could feel it in the air.

Burdened by guilt, I’d already begun regretting my decision. I should have stayed in the south with my parents. What if they really did hit the power plants and the water supply? Shouldn’t I be there to help my mother at a time like this? Instead, I’d only added to her worries by leaving. That I would be in Istanbul in two days felt surreal – like a joke, in fact. The persistent headache I’d had ever since the war started wouldn’t let go.

The three other women in my compartment were all crying when I walked in. Raha had lived in Germany for the past 20 years, and had come back to Iran for chemotherapy. “Wouldn’t it have been better to get treatment in Germany?” I asked. She said that she felt alone abroad. In Iran she had her whole family alongside her. She wouldn’t have been able to survive six months of chemo without them.

Yeganeh was also going to Germany, to join her fiancé, who was studying there. Maryam planned to go from Van to Ankara, to take her IELTS language exam, because she was hoping to emigrate to England; they hadn’t been offering the test in Iran for a few months because of the constant internet shutdowns. Maryam had booked flights twice, and both times it had come to nothing. “Even if they close the borders, I’ll just sneak into a transport truck,” she said. “I don’t care anymore. So many of my plans have gone up in smoke, so much money I’d saved for this is already wasted.”

As the air in our compartment kept switching from hot to cold, my headache got worse, and I was soon nauseous. At the border, when I saw the Turkish flag, a pang of guilt shot through me again. I had left everyone behind. I was being selfish.

The Americans’ new deadline was fast approaching. If no agreement was reached, we were warned, they’d hit our power plants. A day earlier, the Mahshahr petrochemical complex had been struck; a cousin and uncle were out of work because of it.

I thought about my 30-year-old cousin, whose marriage had been planned for the new year holidays. His whole life was ahead of him. But after Israel assassinated the supreme leader, all weddings were cancelled. My cousin, who had spent his life savings on this wedding, had to search for a new job.

At the border we got off the train with all our luggage. It took them more than three-and-a-half hours to stamp our passports with exit permits. Ten minutes later, we did the exact same thing on the Turkish side: another three-and-a-half hours for entry permits.

Once in Turkey, I went online. “Don’t go back home after the residency,” my friend Elham texted. “Come to Germany instead, as a refugee.”

“And do what?” I replied. "You make it sound like they’re rolling out the red carpet for me. And what about everyone I love? My family, friends, my yoga buddies, the people who work at my favourite salon who always want me to tell them about the latest films?"

A colleague messaged to inform me that the company we worked for was conducting mass layoffs, because of the lack of internet access, which made business next to impossible.

We arrived in Van at 2 PM on Monday, a full 24 hours after departing. I wanted to go to my hotel room right away and sleep. But a Czech journalist stopped me, insisting on an interview. “You must talk to us,” he ordered. “How else do we know what’s happening in your country?” I was exhausted and unsure that I could express myself in English right at that moment. I had a lump in my throat as I told him this. He waved his hand, saying he understood. I looked at him. He understood nothing.

The next morning, I left the hotel as early as I could, dragging my suitcase along Van’s streets. On the plane, I took two codeine pills, hoping to keep myself together. At the airport in Istanbul, I was frantic, pulling myself this way and that, trying to guess which one of the many drivers outside was there to pick me up. Someone called my name, came over, smiled, took my suitcase and ushered me into a shiny new Mercedes-Benz.

Normally I’d be thrilled to be sitting in a VIP car. Now all I could do was pull a plastic bag out of my purse and heave into it. Luckily the partition between the driver and me was tinted, so he couldn’t see me. My headache was exploding. I lay down in the back seat and fell asleep.

Beykoz Kundura, the arts complex where the residency was being hosted, was enchanting. I was grateful to be here. And yet, on being shown to my suite, I could only manage a weak smile for my gracious host. Once the door was closed, I went to the bathroom and threw up again for several more minutes before falling asleep. Hours later, in the middle of the night, I woke up and started frantically checking my phone, convinced that the madman on the other side of the world had finally given orders for my country to be obliterated.

In fact, a temporary ceasefire had been announced. I took a deep breath, paused, and then started bawling. I couldn’t stop. Here I was, a guest in this charming suite at a renowned artist colony with windows facing the sea, and all I could do was cry myself back to sleep.

I woke up at dawn, put on some clothes and went out to sit by the water. Through all these sorrows we remain standing. Without realising it, I’d begun humming the melody of an old song with completely different lyrics.