On June 10, Elnaz Rokni, 43, a hairstylist at Nimbus Salon, was buoyant during an impromptu photoshoot with the Los Gatan along Main Street. She was so upbeat, she shared, because after two years away, her flights were booked and she was on her way to her homeland of Iran, to visit friends and family.
But when the newspaper reached her, Saturday, just after President Donald Trump confirmed in a press conference the United States had bombed key Iranian nuclear sites, it was not the sound of a Persian setar that emanated from the telephone speaker, but rather a harmonica.
Because her Quatar Airways flight to Dohah—and on to Tehran—had been cancelled due to Israeli attacks on her native land, she decided to head to Wyoming on a camping trips with two of her kids.
“I bought lots of gifts to take back home—for grandma, for family, for kids, cousins,” she said, relaying the preparations she’d made for a two-month overseas excursion. “I was so happy.”
Some of her clients had brought up the fact it could be dangerous to visit Iran at the moment. But she says she wasn’t too worried.
“I said, Of course it’s safe. Nobody realized something like this was going to happen,” she said, adding when the Israeli airstrikes began, she was shocked. “The shocking level is so high that you become numb, and you don’t think.”
Her mother, who the Los Gatan met randomly downtown last year, had returned to Iran a few months back.
Internet access had been cut, so Rokni, had no idea how her mother was faring.
“They shut down internet for three days,” she said. “So, finally, yesterday morning, my mom called crying.”
Her mom said she’d been worrying about how she was doing.
“This bombing everywhere is just scary,” she recalls her mom saying.
“Why are you worried about me?” Rokni replied. “You know I’m in Wyoming. I’m having a great time.”
In truth, she was putting on a good face for her mother’s benefit.
“She just cried a lot,” Rokni said. “And I try so hard to not cry…I’m worried to but I tried to not show it to her.
“I had to just kind of make a joke.”
That’s when she learned how close her family had come to tragedy:
She learned one of the early strikes hit a location right near the home where more than a dozen of her family members had been sheltering.
Rokni has been glued to her phone, hoping for updates from her family members in Iran—where she was supposed to be right now
Iranian officials confirmed, June 13, that Maragheh (the East Azerbaijan province city where Rokni grew up), had indeed been targeted.
Rokni compared the distance of from the home to the impacted area as similar to length of a walk from Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Co. to Happy Dragon Thrift Shop.
According to locations she indicated on Google Maps, the strike missed them by perhaps .16 miles.
“The problem is, we are fighting with our government, and now the enemy’s attacking,” she said. “The Iranian people, we are confused.”
Rokni had originally wanted to bring her son with her to Iran. But his passport had expired and it would’ve been too much of a hassle to sort out a solution.
Another Silicon Valley Persian couple had been in a similar situation.
Just days ago, at a house party in Saratoga, they were debating about letting their young daughter go to Iran with dad.
“They almost had a fight,” Rokni remembers.
She couldn’t help but put in her two cents: they should let the daughter see Iran.
So, it wasn’t just her mother she was thinking of when the airstrikes began.
“The first thing I did think about was like, Oh my god. What did I do?” she said, adding she didn’t exactly feel guilty, because she knows she gave the advice with the best of intentions.
The mother had stayed behind. The father and daughter became trapped in Iran.
Rokni reached out to the mom and says the message she got in return went along the lines of, My heart is in pain.
Thankfully, in the end, dad and daughter finally made it back to the Bay Area, safe and sound.
Rokni says she was moved by the update the mom shared on social media:
“I’ve lived this moment in my mind—again and again—since the instant I heard Israel attacked Iran. With a heart pulled tight between fragile hope… and a fear so deep. And now—finally—it’s here. Standing at SFO, waiting to hold them again. May every soul find their way home—safe, and whole. May no mother wait in vain. May no child ever carry the weight of war.”
Rokni says she’s been glued to her phone, even while getting ice cream after canoeing on Sunday.
“As an Iranian-American who is always ‘no problem with anyone,’ I’m really sad about the whole situation—even Gaza,” she said, as TV news channels show Tehran launching retaliatory action. “I’m against war…We have no problem with any people. It’s just the governments.”
