‘We had an ordinary life’: Iran fisherwoman navigates uncertainty of war

In this first-person testimony told to Al Jazeera, Khadijeh Bandari, an Iranian fisherwoman from Hengam Island in southern Iran, explains how the United States-Israel war on her country has disrupted her work and the lives of all the people on the island.

I am 28 years old, and for as long as I can remember, I would go out to sea with my mother, who taught me how to fish.

When I was older, I got a boat of my own and started fishing. The sea belongs to us women just as much as it belongs to men. Like my mother, I consider fishing to be a part of my life.

When I married, my husband, who is from northern Iran, was living on nearby Qeshm Island. After we got married, he moved to Hengam Island, and we opened a small guesthouse together. We sold the fish we caught through our Instagram page and delivered it to different Iranian cities. At a seaside restaurant we also owned, my husband and I served tourists fresh fish we had caught ourselves.

We have a three-year-old son named Keyhan, whose name means “the world”. For us, he is our whole world. Sometimes he comes out to sea with me to fish, but other times he stays on the island with his father.

Life started to become difficult for us when for several weeks in January the internet was shut down in Iran. Few tourists visited the island, and the online sale of fish, which was a big part of our business, also stopped. When the internet was restored, we breathed a sigh of relief and thought life had finally returned to normal, but we were wrong.

On Saturday, February 28, my mother was out at sea fishing while I stayed behind at our restaurant on the shore.

What she called out from the water was the last thing I expected to hear. “The war has started,” she shouted. The sound of explosions from the American bombs reached Hengam Island soon after, and then a village near us was hit. Before we could even understand what was happening, a coastguard came to shore and told us to pack up our stalls and stay away from the beach.