The author, an Iranian artist living in the diaspora, describes the profound psychological impact of the ongoing war on her homeland. She experiences a constant state of displacement and terror, feeling tethered to Tehran through news of bombings in the Alborz Mountains, which transforms her sense of geography and home into one of anxiety and helplessness.
She finds a resonant framework for this experience in the 12th-century Persian poem "The Conference of the Birds" by Attar of Nishapur. The poem's allegorical journey of birds seeking their king becomes a metaphor for the exile's psyche and the search for self and home. The mythical destination, Mount Qaf, is linked to the very Alborz Mountains now under attack, making the spiritual quest painfully literal and highlighting the unbearable duality of diasporic life during conflict.