UNSC condemns Iran’s Gulf attacks.
UN resolution urging Iran halt Gulf attacks gains backing from 135 nations worldwide.
The news reaches us through the crackling radio my husband keeps on the kitchen counter, a relic from his father’s time that now feels essential again. Thirteen votes in favor. They condemn Iran’s attacks. They demand we halt hostilities immediately.
I stir the pot of lentil soup, our third meal of it this week, and try to feel something about this news. Shame? Defiance? Fear? All I feel is tired.
My name is Samira. It is still March, still day thirteen of something they call a war but feels more like a slow drowning. The resolution says Iran must stop targeting ports and energy facilities in the Gulf. I think of my nephew, Ali, who works at Bandar Abbas port. His wife called this morning, hysterical, because she hadn’t heard from him in two days. The port was hit, they said. Not the energy facilities. Just the dock where Ali loads cargo containers to feed his three children.
The resolution doesn’t mention Ali.
The radio voice is smooth, professional. He speaks of international law, of overwhelming support, of China and Russia abstaining but not vetoing. I imagine these men in their suits, in their glass buildings, voting on our lives like they’re choosing a restaurant for lunch. One hundred and thirty-five countries. My daughter Leila has one hundred and thirty-five crayons in her worn-out box. She asked me yesterday why we can’t color anymore, why the electricity goes out just as she finds the perfect shade of blue.
I don’t know how to explain that the world has colored us with a different crayon today.
My husband Reza comes home as the news ends. His clothes are dusty, his eyes hollow. He has been helping dig through rubble in the southern neighborhood, where a missile hit an apartment building similar to ours. Four floors collapsed. A family he knew slightly, from the bakery we all used to visit, is gone. The mother, the father, twin boys Leila’s age. He doesn’t tell me this directly. I read it in the way he holds his tea, both hands wrapped around the cup like it’s the only warm thing left in the world.
“They passed a resolution,” I tell him.
He nods slowly. “I heard. The men at the shelter were discussing it. Some are angry. Some are relieved, thinking maybe it will stop.” He looks at me, and for the first time in days, I see something other than exhaustion. I see a question. “Do you think it will stop?”
I have no answer. The resolution doesn’t address the fact that our grocery money now buys half of what it did two weeks ago. It doesn’t mention that Mr. Esfahani, our elderly neighbor, cried yesterday because his cat died in the first wave of strikes and he couldn’t even bury her properly. It doesn’t know about Leila’s nightmares, about the way she sleeps between us now, her small body a fragile barrier against the dark.
Outside, the muezzin’s call to prayer echoes through the streets, a sound older than any nation, any resolution. It mixes with the distant hum of drones, the occasional boom that makes us all flinch in unison. This is our life now—ancient faith and modern warfare, tangled together in the same polluted air.
The radio says Iran must abide by international law. But what law protects a mother watching her child forget how to laugh? What resolution restores the color to Leila’s crayon drawings?
I think of those 135 countries, all those flags, all those diplomats who raised their hands. Did any of them pause to imagine a kitchen in Tehran, a pot of lentil soup, a husband too tired to speak? Did any of them wonder about the port worker’s wife, clutching her phone in the dark, waiting for a call that may never come?
Probably not. Resolutions are about nations, not about people. They draw lines on maps, not in hearts.
Reza reaches across the table and takes my hand. His fingers are rough, calloused from digging. “We will manage,” he says. It’s what we always say. It’s what we have to believe.
The soup is ready. I ladle it into bowls, three of them now because Maryam and Farid are still here, sleeping on our floor, waiting for their baby to arrive into a world that just passed a resolution. The baby kicks inside Maryam’s belly, oblivious to borders and votes, demanding only to be born.
That’s the thing about resolutions. They can condemn and demand and deplore. But they cannot stop a mother from loving, a child from hoping, a family from gathering around a table to share what little they have. They cannot erase the sound of Leila’s voice when she finally laughs, just once, at something Farid says.
Outside, the sky darkens. Another night approaches. We will light candles, tell stories, pretend tomorrow might be different. And somewhere in New York, in a building of glass and polished stone, the resolution will sit in a folder, filed away, one more piece of paper trying to govern the ungovernable terrain of human survival.