‘Sent SOS to Indian embassy. Waiting. Almost every minute, there are explosions’: Kashmiri med student stuck in Iran

"We have been hardly able to sleep since the attacks began on Iran on Sat… Almost every other minute, there are explosions happening in the city."The message from Asif Gulzar, 22, arrived in fragments — hurried, sometimes out of sequence. A third-semester MBBS student at the Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences in Ahvaz which lies in the country's southern region bordering Iraq, Gulzar, who hails from Baramulla in Kashmir, has been stranded in Iran amid the ongoing conflict involving Israel and the United States.Ahvaz is nearly 700 km from Tehran, yet distance has offered little comfort. In the early hours of Mon, Gulzar, who has lived in Iran for two years now, managed to briefly access the internet using his Indian SIM card through a VPN connection. TOI had sent him queries on Sun morning, but complete shutdown of internet and mobile connectivity in Iran delayed his responses by nearly a day. At his university, there were 12 Indian students enrolled, alongside students from Iraq and Pakistan. Nine Indians left for home after the Feb 23 advisory issued by the Indian embassy asking citizens to leave Iran by any available means of transport. Three students stayed back — all from Kashmir, including Gulzar."We stayed back because our exams ended on Feb 25 and we were preparing for another one scheduled on March 5," he said. "We managed to contact the Indian embassy in Tehran for possible evacuation, but they said that there are no such plans as of now due to dramatic escalation in the tensions. We have been advised to stay indoors to ensure safety. We are waiting," Gulzar added."After news of the death of the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spread, we have been witnessing constant explosions and missile interceptions in the sky," Gulzar wrote in text responses. "There's noise and fear all around."Voice calls were impossible, he added. The connection could not sustain a VoIP line; messages alone were going through, sporadically.The Iraqi students left a few days ago. The Pakistani students, he said, decided on Mon morning to travel by road towards the Iran-Pakistan border in the hope of reaching home. He had no idea how far they could make it.From the ninth floor of his hostel building, Gulzar and his friends watch the sky flare and dim. Asked about the atmosphere in Ahvaz following reports of Khamenei's death, he described a city sharply divided."Both pro-govt and anti-regime groups are on the streets to protest and celebrate the killing, respectively," he said. "As far as the markets are concerned, shops are open as usual with no shortage of ration as of now."The surreal co-existence of routine and rupture, he added, is what struck him most -- open markets beneath a sky lit intermittently by missile trails.Asked how they were observing Ramadan fasts amid the tension and sleeplessness, Gulzar's response was steady, almost defiant. He wrote: "If you are true believers, you will not find excuses not to fast. Indeed, Allah is with those who are patient."