When he saw the skyline as he passed through the city of Tehran, the capital of Iran, Indian student Sheikh Mohammad Azhan had not praised his sights – instead, he was scanning missiles.
The 22-year-old medical student told CNN. “We could see smoke around the roads, we could see the city being attacked.”
Sheikh, who is in his third year at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, is one of more than 1,700 Indian citizens who have fled Iran since the outbreak of conflict between the Islamic Republic and Israel. Iran has long been a popular university destination for Muslim Indian students, attracting the country both by its affordability and shared religious connections.
With the Iranian airspace closed, they embarked on a volatile journey with roads and air, and faced long waits and uncertainty when the Indian government worked to bring them home. Sheikh said he felt he had overcome his fear.
“We had very disturbing thoughts in our minds. What will happen to us? What will happen to our future? And most importantly, what will happen to our lives?” he said.
The Sheikh journey from Iran, which began last Monday, took about six days. He first took a bus arranged by the Indian Embassy to QOM city, about 150 kilometers south of Iran’s capital. It usually takes about 2 hours, but the shake took almost four times.
Two days after arriving at QOM, students were asked to move again. This time, I was planning to travel to Turkmenistan to the city of Mashhad, nearly 1,000 kilometers east, where I was planning to continue my journey to New Delhi. But uncertainty struck again.
“We had some kind of problem near the border, like with a visa. So we can’t go to Turkmenistan,” Sheikh said.
Two days later they were told they would take the plane from Mashhad itself in a “special flight” arranged by the Indian government. As they walked over to the plane, they were worried that the plane would be attacked. “We were scared. What if they attacked us too?” he said.
The flight from Mashhad to New Delhi took just 2 hours. The video, shared with the CNN show, cheered and applauded as it landed in the Indian capital.
While out of mating, Sheikh now faces uncertainty about his future, as many students have evacuated.
“Moving from one country to another during your degree is not effective in India,” he said. “I have to start from scratch. Three or four years of study — and now we don’t even know what will happen next.”