This article is about the regional war, and about the return of fear as a form of bodily memory, one that awakens suddenly and chases those who believed they had escaped it.

In psychology, it is said that the body carries a memory of pain, one that reawakens at the slightest trigger. For me, that trigger this time was not a stray bullet in Tahrir Square, nor the cry of a protester fleeing a sniper’s fire in the dark alleys of Baghdad in 2019. It was a familiar sound, the sound of an explosion that pierced the glass of my window in the city of Sulaymaniyah on the night of 3 March 2026. 

When I fled my hometown years ago, it was not out of choice or comfort. It was an instinctive escape from the threats that pursued us as activists. I came to Sulaymaniyah carrying a small bag and a mountain of anxiety, believing that the mountains of Azmar and Goizha would serve as a solid fortress, shielding me from the noise of weapons and senseless death. For years, this city was the lung through which I breathed, its quiet cafés, its unhurried Salim Street, its universities. But geography in the Middle East offers no permanent guarantee of safety, and the death we fled in October has wings: drones and missiles capable of reaching even the far north. 

At 10:20 p.m. in Sulaymaniyah, a time that usually signals calm and stillness, an explosion suddenly rang out inside the city. It was powerful enough to shake the windows and stop passersby in their tracks, stunned. In that moment, an old tightness returned to my chest: the feeling that the ground beneath me is not solid enough to hold me. Within minutes, phones were flooding with messages: “What happened?” “Where did it land?” 

The same questions echoed across every news group. Shortly after, the picture became clear: a drone had struck the “UN Hill” area inside the city, a well-known zone housing government buildings and international entities, whose premises had long since been turned into a U.S. base. It had suddenly become a site of bombardment. No human casualties were reported, according to the authorities, but the impact of the incident was a psychological earthquake. Sulaymaniyah is not a city accustomed to direct attacks. I went to sleep that night wondering: has death come back to follow me? 

The anxiety had barely settled when 5 March arrived, and the sounds returned—this time from the outskirts: Arbat, Zar Gwez, and Surdash, areas that host headquarters of Iranian-Kurdish opposition parties. Reports spoke of Iranian missile strikes targeting those sites. Though the strikes hit mountainous areas, their echoes in the city were enough to multiply our fear. 

It did not take long for anyone to conclude that Sulaymaniyah was no longer just a city, but a victim of its proximity the Iranian border, and host to opposition groups to the Iranian regime. We are living in the midst of a regional conflict far bigger than us. Iran sees these groups as a security threat and justifies violating the skies, while we, the residents of what we thought were safe homes, pay the price of these military messages written in gunpowder. 

At dawn on 8 March, in the early morning hours, I knew that the nightmares of 2019 had returned in full detail. The city woke to the sound of successive explosions. This was not a single blast, but a coordinated attack involving six explosive-laden drones targeting sensitive and vital sites. The strikes were distributed in a terrifying pattern: headquarters of Unit 70 of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and locations near a UN-affiliated building (a guesthouse). Most shocking was that this particular building was struck three times within just half an hour by suicide drones, despite its proximity to the Turkish consulate and the Titanic Hotel, one of the city’s most prominent landmarks. 

This multiplicity of targets, within such a short span of time, stripped the city of its calm. It was no longer an isolated security incident. We were now facing a broader escalation. The question in every home became: where will we go if Sulaymaniyah turns into an open battlefield? 

Politically, Iran views the presence of Kurdish opposition groups and U.S. activity in the region as a direct threat. Armed factions close to it within Iraq accuse Sulaymaniyah, and the Kurdistan Region more broadly, of providing space for intelligence activities linked to the United States or Israel. The U.S. president reinforced these justifications by expressing a desire for Kurdish participation in field military operations against the Iranian regime. 

The broader regional conflict between Washington and Tehran had already turned Iraq into a ground for exchanging indirect messages. After the United States and Israel launched war and assassinated the Iranian Supreme Leader, those messages became direct. 

In this equation, our university city, our cultural city, has become a mailbox. When missiles are launched, the message does not first reach political decision rooms; it reaches our bedrooms. It shakes the bed of a child who has never heard anything in his life but soft Kurdish songs. 

For me, as a young woman who fled when activists were threatened in 2019, I now find myself confronting the same existential questions. I feel fear in leaving the house. I catch myself watching the sky. The anxiety that what comes next might be worse does not leave me. Sulaymaniyah once embodied safety for me. Today, that safety trembles under the weight of six drones in a single night, and the fear that it could become a launch point for ground military operations.  

What happened in the first week of March is a warning bell in the Middle East: a city does not need to be a party to a war to be bombed. It is enough for the interests of powerful actors to collide within it. 

In the moment when missiles are launched and fall, people do not read geopolitical analyses. In every home in Sulaymaniyah, there was only one question on the night of 8 March: is it over, or is this just the beginning? 

I do not want the impossible. I only want us not to be forced to flee again. Sulaymaniyah is a city that loves life. Its residents, and those who sought refuge in it from death, have the right to to something simple: to sleep through the night without fear, without the sky tearing open, without their windows trembling under the weight of messages written in missiles. 

Published in partnership with the Iraqi Network for Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ). Adapted by Jummar from Arabic, available here.