When Israel triggered a war last Friday after it sent a wave of airstrikes into Iran, Saina Salemi and Oscar were at work in Melbourne, sitting at arm’s length away from each other at their desks.
Salemi saw the news headline first. She turned to Oscar and said: “I think you and I are at war.”
“I thought she was kidding,” Oscar, who asked for his last name to not be used, recalled. “I didn’t understand. And then we went to the news, and it had all started, and my heart just sunk immediately.”
Salemi, who is 26, moved to Australia from Tehran when she was 7, and Oscar, who is 24 and from Israel, says for the past week they’ve shared in a grief that feels unending – but there has been a release in sharing it together.
The pair became friends when they started work the same day as each other 18 months ago. Since last week, finding out what is happening overseas and if it is affecting their families has become a shared obsession.
While sitting next to each other at work, they keep track of the rolling live coverage. Salemi also watches Persian news sources while Oscar watches the Hebrew channels.
“We’re translating documents for each other. We’re tracking where the missiles are being hit and seeing if they’re close to our family members,” Oscar tells Guardian Australia, both he and Salemi speaking on the phone together from their office.
“If we find out information we want the other to know, we text each other, no matter what time of night it is,” Salemi says.
Oscar’s parents, who were visiting Israel when tensions flared are – for now – stuck there. Salemi’s grandparents, aunts, and uncles live in Tehran.
Their shared grief has not just been defined by doomscrolling and sharing news about loved ones. Salemi says their focus is on the civilians suffering and the governments “making the choice” to continue it.
“My people, Palestinians and Israelis are being used as political shields for geopolitical aims,” Salemi says.
Oscar says he is also battling a feeling of guilt, despite having no control over what is going on.
“I really care about her family. I feel so guilty, and even though obviously I’m not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, but nevertheless, it really pains me to just see even more suffering being inflicted.”
“I don’t want people to become desensitised to what is happening in the region, and the … scale of pain that is taking place every day. It’s getting worse.”
A sense of numbness
By Friday, Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 657 people and wounded 2,037 others, according to Washington-based group Human Rights Activists. Of those dead, the group identified 263 civilians and 164 security force personnel.
Iran has not given regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimised casualties in the past. In its last update, delivered last Monday, it put the death toll at 224 people and 1,277 wounded.
According to the latest figures cited by Israel’s health ministry on Thursday morning, there have been no casualties yet from Iranian missile strikes on Israel. The Associated Press reported that at least 240 people had been wounded.
Salemi says she has not heard from her family since the Iranian authorities blocked the internet.
“My auntie woke up in the middle of the night thinking that she was having a heart attack because the initial missile was so close to where she lived,” she says.
“I haven’t heard from my family members in 36 hours, and there’s a great sense of numbness when you worry that maybe that’s the last time you’ve ever heard from your family members,” she says.
Oscar says he sometimes has difficulty reaching his parents by phone to check in on how they are. He struggled with the news that a hospital – where his nan had gotten care once after she had a stroke – had been hit by an Iranian rocket.
Salemi says while the bombs are falling from Israel, she also blames the Iranian regime – unpopular among many – for failing to protect its people. She points to there being no bomb shelters for people to turn to and disruptions to internet access that could help in planning escape routes with loved ones.
Despite the ruling regime being unpopular, Salemi is frustrated by rhetoric from Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Israel could support regime change. “Regime change in Iran will come internally, at the hands of my own people,” she says.
‘When will this end?’
Oscar and Salemi say the war has inflamed the grief they were already feeling for the thousands of people killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. Oscar said on top of this he is also grieving loved ones that died when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
Since Israel and Iran began trading strikes, over 100 people in Gaza have been killed while seeking aid.
“The safety of Israel can’t come from anything other than peace – lasting, negotiated peace,” Oscar says. “I want a serious political solution and a lasting peace.”
Asked if there is anything they want the Australian government to do, Salemi says it should focus on getting Australian citizens out of each conflict zone.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said on Friday there were about 2,000 Australians and their families in Iran and approximately 1,200 in Israel who wanted to evacuate.
“The security situation is obviously very difficult,” Wong said. “ The airspace remains closed.”
Oscar says that last Friday, after Israel first struck Iran, he and Salemi sat on the steps outside their work together. They already felt it could be different to the “tit-for-tat” strikes in past months.
“I remember I turned to her and said, ‘when will this end? How much longer does this have to go on?’.”
