al-majus

April 7th, 2026, 17:45, Landskrona, Sweden

Written in response to the President of the United States’ threats today. With notes based on Annie Jacobsen’s book, Nuclear War.

They say your skin melts. And your clothes. And your shoes. Melt right off. And your insides become your outsides.

I think of their pretty olive skin. Hers gets rosy when it’s cold. Her sister’s turns amber in the summer. I think of the new Crêpe de Chine dress with the pink roses the little one got for Eid. And the leather shoes that her grandmother polished for her that morning.  The dainty white socks with the lace trim on top. The satin bow on the cat.

They say the flash is beyond our human comprehension. Some Englishmen in a documentary about Japan said you can see the bones in your hand if you cover your eyes. If you’re far enough.

‘Cover your eyes and blow out the candles,’ a mother might whisper to her little boy tonight. Is his own tiny skeleton the last thing he will see?

They say the heat in the heart of it is so intense that the streets explode.

I imagine the little alleyway where my mom and uncles used to play football as children. Who is playing out there tonight? Who begged to go out for just an hour? They were so tired of cards and backgammon and the internet has been down for weeks.

Metal liquefies.

That’s the gold Allah on Maman’s neck. The aghigh ring on Hajj Aqa’s wrinkly finger. The knife Amu inherited from his old mother that he used to peel oranges with in front of the television. That’s Khanum’s faded samovar. The little silver tea set my father bought her with his own money that one summer. Khaleh’s incense burner from her wedding day. It still smells like wild rue.

Stone shatters. Buildings are pulverized.

I imagine the yellow bricks in the walls surrounding their garden. The turquoise tiles in the pool. My grandparents’ graves. The Palace of Roses that has stood there since Tehran first became Tehran. The pale mosaic Gates of Rey.

And the more humble corners. The little bakery where that man might still be baking bread for his neighbours. The dilapidated balcony where Daee goes out in the evenings for a smoke; or the one across the street, where that nosy lady pretends to shake out her rug all day, just so she can hear what the couple next door is fighting about this time. 

If you’re in the heart of it all, they say, you’re one of the lucky ones. You instantly turn to soot. An explosion of black human powder.

That’s an entire family eating dinner in their courtyard. The teenage boy whistling to his pigeons on the roof. His pigeons. 

A little further out, people’s clothes are on fire.

The young lovers who snuck out to the park for a kiss under the moonlight. An old man and his little white dog. He’s holding the radio to his ear as it happens. One last song from Shajarian. 

The city is on fire. The slightly yellowed curtains in a couple’s simple home, the cloths of termeh from their wedding day, the henna-coloured cups of tea sitting on a walnut coffee table. I think of the professor’s collection of carefully curated books. A copy of Edward Said’s Orientalism and the poetry of Hafez. I think of the professor.

I think of the long lost photograph of our great-grandfather. The only copy. Forgotten in somebody’s album, stuck in-between a postcard and a smudged receipt for flowers. And my birth certificate. And hers. Filed away in some hospital basement.

And all those rugs. Miles of them, rolled out in virtually every home. Each one telling two stories – that of the hands who wove it and of the family who now lives on it. 

And the grand chandeliers and the green desk lamps. The way they reflected the light in the great halls or shone on the books of students after midnight, all a mere memory. 

Most of all I think of the warm, hardworking hands of our men. Hands like my dad’s. Generations of them that built this city. Rough, warm hands, speckled with sun spots and curved into themselves. And the long majestic dark tresses of the women who look like my sisters and my mom. Women who are now left unveiled, as promised, but dead in their millions.

written by Alaleh Mohajerani