Mohammad Reza Azimi smiles at the camera before he takes one red ring from a pile in his hand and tosses it towards a spike. He is playing ring toss in Marivan, a town located inIrannear the Iraq border.
The video was taken 13 days after he left Sydney to visit family in Iran, and three days since Israel launched itsfirst attack on the country.
“It’s hard to find even brief moments of happiness with everything going on here, but I try to hold on to the little things whenever I can,” he says in a caption on the video.
An hour before he posted this video to his social media, he posted another of rockets lighting up the sky.
“I feel OK for now,” he told Guardian Australia on Monday. “Although the situation remains unpredictable. I do my best not to focus too much on the tensions around me.”
Azimi is one of potentially hundreds of Australian residents who are stuck in Iran, with foreign minister Penny Wong saying on Monday that at least 350 people have registered with the Australian government for help to leave the country. Another 300 have registered for help in Israel as the two countries continue to trade fire.
Wong said there were “a range of plans” to try to get people to safety, including a plan for assisted departures when the airspace is open and it’s safe to do so.
Azimi left Tehran where his parents and siblings live just a day before the attack and didn’t even take his passport with him. He hasn’t yet registered for help from the Australian government because he says he’s unsure at this point what help they could provide.
“My family in Tehran has relocated temporarily to avoid the chaos. The area near their residence was among the places targeted, and I consider myself fortunate to have left when I did,” he said.
Though he wants to get back to his family in Sydney, he describes in a recent social media post that his emotions are conflicted.
“No flights are available to return to Sydney. My wife and kids are waiting for me there. In Tehran, my parents and siblings,” he wrote on Sunday.
“What a painful dilemma — torn between two worlds, each pulling at the heart in its own way.”
There are many others anxiously watching on from Australia who are also feeling personal toll of the turmoil deeply.
Kambiz Razmara, the vice-president of the Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria, says that a member in their network in Melbourne had family members killed by Israeli strikes over the weekend.
“There are no drills, no shelters, nowhere for people to go, no sirens warning people of imminent threats of bombs, so it is an awful situation.”
As the conflict entered its fourth day on Monday, more than220 people had been killed, with 90% of those casualties reported to be civilians.
Erfan, who moved to Melbourne from Tehran more than a decade ago, had hoped work might help to distract him from what’s going on, but it hasn’t.
He sneaks glimpses of the news where he can – his mind racing with thoughts of his family who are in Iran and can hear Israel’s bombs falling nearby.
“I just can’t get my head out of it right now, no matter how hard I try to distract myself,” he says from work in Melbourne. He’s also been struggling to sleep.
This is not the first time Israel and Iran have traded fire since 7 October, but Erfan says now: “I have a feeling of unknown. I don’t really know what’s going to happen this time.
“I’m really, really worried about the innocent people of Iran, because all this war and all of this conflict, all it does is affect innocent people.”
Residents began to flee Tehran and head towards the countryside on Sunday as Israeli attacks on the Iranian capital escalated.
Erfan’s parents have not fled because they have nowhere to go: “Where would they go? It could all be unsafe.”
Shiva, who moved to Melbourne from Iran to study more than two years ago and is the president of the Iranian Student Society said there are hundreds of students from Iran studying in Australia.
She’s had a number of students raise concerns about how they’ll pay their tuition fees that are due in the next few weeks if banks in Iran remain frozen.
Asked what she is missing most about her home, she says: “The people of Iran, they are so generous, are so kind and are so peaceful”.
“That’s why our hearts are melting right now to see that Iran is in war because we not only care about our families, we care about our neighbours ad our people,” she adds. “Every child lost feels like our own.”
Razmara says most people in the Iranian diaspora and many inside Iran do not like the country’s oppressive regime.
He points to thedeath in custody of Mahsa Amini– a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, jailed for not wearing her hijab correctly and themorality laws that followed– as an example of this.
However, he says that while people want change they are affronted by war and destruction without notice.
People are torn because while they are “desperate” for liberty and democracy, they don’t think the attacks by Israel will bring about positive regime change.
Azimi, who was due to return to Sydney on 4 July, says he is staying in Marivan while he assesses his next step.
“While it feels relatively calm during the day, the defense system is active from time to time, which is a constant reminder of the unstable environment,” he says.