91 Pilgrims, One War, A Daring Escape

With missiles overhead and embassies overwhelmed, one group of Indian pilgrims faced a question: Do we wait, or move?

- Abbas Muzafar

We arrived in Iran on the 3rd of June, 2025, as a group of 91 people of all ages.

The oldest among us was my 83-year-old mother, still recuperating from a hip replacement surgery, and the youngest was three-year-old Sakina. This was a pilgrimage to two of the most sacred shrines for Shia Muslims in Iran—one in Mashhad and the other in Qom. The former is the shrine of Imam Raza, the 8th Imam of Shia Muslims, and the latter is that of his beloved sister Fatima, revered as Lady Qom.

Our return was scheduled for the 13th of June from Tehran Airport. On the intervening night between the 12th and 13th, I had almost finished segregating the luggage in preparation for an early morning departure to the airport. We were staying in Qom, around 100 km south of Tehran. I checked the time—it was 3 a.m. My mother was fast asleep, and I realized it made no sense to sleep now, so I decided to take a shower to stay awake.

Sometime later, I received a message from a journalist friend, Aamir Abbas Rizvi, based in Mumbai. Israel had launched a major attack on Iran, killing several top military leaders. It sounded like a precise strike intended to leave Iran's defense forces rudderless. All airports were closed indefinitely. My immediate thought was: we're stuck—indefinitely.

We had to check out of Hotel Zavel Qorba in the morning, as a new group of pilgrims with a prior booking was scheduled to take our place. Ninety-one of us were now in a precarious situation.

We began looking for alternative accommodations in Qom ourselves. With few options available for such a large group, and most of us having exhausted our funds expecting to return home that day, the situation was dire. By evening, we managed to find basic lodging and food to survive the coming days.