‘We were just praying’: Pakistani students recount escape from war-hit Iran

Islamabad, Pakistan – It was the first working day of the week and Muhammad Raza, a 23-year-old Pakistani medical student, was assisting the doctors treating patients at Tehran University of Medical Sciences hospital in the Iranian capital.

A loud explosion brought the ward to a halt. Israel and the United States had began bombing Iran in a joint operation on the morning of February 28.

“We had been hearing about an imminent attack, and when it did strike, it sent a surge of anxiety and panic through my body,” Raza told Al Jazeera from inside a bus on his way to Islamabad on Tuesday.

As chaos and fear gripped Tehran following the bombings, Raza rushed to his hostel near the hospital compound and immediately called the Pakistani embassy, less than 2km (1.2 miles) away.

The mission instructed him and other students to gather with essential belongings by the evening before arrangements could be made to send them home.

“It was really scary. All of us were afraid of what might happen and wanted to reach Pakistan at the earliest,” Raza said.

Muhammad Tauqeer, another Pakistani medical student, told Al Jazeera he was on a field deployment away from the college campus when the strikes began.

“The second we heard the first strike landing in Tehran, everything fell into chaos. People rushed outside. Our teachers told the foreign students to immediately seek assistance from our embassies and return to our hostels, which is what we did,” said the 24-year-old on Tuesday, speaking from another bus to his hometown of Jhang in Punjab province.

“I called my family and told them about the situation,” Tauqeer added.

The Pakistani embassy in Tehran asked its nationals to report by Saturday evening. Hundreds arrived, carrying essentials including clothes, laptops, textbooks, documents and cash.

Five buses left the embassy compound on Saturday night for Zahedan, a 1500km (932-mile) journey that took about 20 hours as the convoy cut through central Iran, passing cities such as Yazd, Isfahan and Kerman as they were being hit in the US-Israeli assault.

During their journey, the students were also trying to get updates on the Iran war, which had soon escalated into a regional conflict, with Iran’s retaliatory attacks targeting US assets across the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

Kainat Maqsood, another Pakistani student, said it was during the “deeply distressing” journey that she learned about the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“It was such a devastating news for us,” she said as she waited to board her onward bus to Multan city in Punjab. “He was a leader many of us looked up to, and now he is gone.”

‘Entire bus was silent’

From Zahedan, the Pakistani border town of Taftan was about 100km (62 miles) away. For almost the entire stretch of their journey, the passengers had no mobile signal.

“We were all so scared. The journey was at night and we had no idea what was going to happen,” said Tauqeer. “The entire bus was silent. Everyone was just praying.”

The buses crossed into Pakistan on Sunday evening. Pakistani officials on Tuesday night said nearly 1,000 citizens, including some 400 students, had returned to the country in the past three days through the Taftan border in Cha­gai district and the Gabd-Rimdan border in Gwadar district.

Both the border crossings fall in Balochistan, Pakistan’s most volatile province, where deadly separatist violence has spiked in recent months. The convoy from Iran was barred from any night travel by the local authorities over security concerns.

But now, the students were finally able to talk to their families. “Since I finally had my mobile working after entering Pakistan, I informed my family that I would join them soon,” said Raza, a resident of Skardu in the scenic Gilgit-Baltistan region.

‘I want to go back’

On Monday morning, the buses left for Quetta, the capital of Balochistan – another arduous 12-hour trip through the barren expanse of Pakistan’s largest province. From Quetta, the students parted ways for their respective hometowns.

“I am just very tired and want to get home to see my parents,” Tauqeer said on Tuesday evening, the repeated honking of his bus to Jhang audible over the telephone.

Iran hosts nearly 35,000 Pakistanis, according to officials, including some 3,000 students at various institutions in Tehran, Isfahan, Zanjan and Yazd, among other Iranian cities.

As the Pakistani students escaped the war in Iran, the fate of their careers weighed heavily on their minds.

“I have just two to three months left before I complete my degree. I moved to Tehran in 2021, and there is no way I am letting my degree slip with so little time remaining,” said Tauqeer, who is in the final semester of his MBBS programme.

Raza, who is in the penultimate semester of his MBBS degree, however, wondered if he would ever be able to go back to his college.

“I need to go back. I want to go back, I have only one year left,” he said. “But I don’t know, realistically, if I will be able to. I really hope things improve and I get the chance to return. We just have to sit and wait.”

Like Raza, Maqsood also has less than a year left in her programme. But she wants to return to Iran for more than just academics.

“There is no other country fighting on behalf of Muslims the way Iran is. I want to go back to show my solidarity as well,” she said, before boarding her bus for Multan.