How often do I stare at an empty computer screen, utterly devoid of ideas for what to write about, wondering When will I ever feel inspired again? When will the urge to say something about my life or the world return? Despite all my experience to the contrary, it always feels like such a permanent condition when it comes over me, so irremediable and hopeless….and then, suddenly, Donald Trump decides to start a war with Iran in order to distract from his involvement in a global trafficking network, and I find myself with something to say.

In other words, trust in the universe. It will always provide.

My daughter, as you may know, is living in Jordan at the moment. If you’re like most Americans and couldn’t find Jordan on a map, I can tell you it shares borders with Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria (which maybe does not help you at all), but more importantly, it lies directly beneath the flight path of the missiles currently being lobbed and skeet-shooted back and forth between Israel and Iran. She is near enough to Israel that she can hear their air raid sirens, and yesterday she heard the blasts that killed 9 people in Beit Shemesh. She sent me some videos of missiles being intercepted that she took from the roof of her building, and you can see why Trump’s so jealous of Israel’s Iron Dome. It’s weirdly mesmerizing to watch the way they shoot bombs out of the air before they hit their intended targets, and the footage from Israel is particularly dramatic: you can really imagine this invisible forcefield as one bomb after another disintegrates overhead. Rarely acknowledged amid the awe, of course, is the unfortunate fact that the fragments of those intercepted missiles still have to come down somewhere, and several of them have already landed in and around Amman. The victims killed by this falling, flaming wreckage are no less dead for having been unintended.

My approach to coping with bombs falling around my daughter is to coach her in the same preparedness strategies I practice on a daily basis: does she have a go-bag with a supply of water and food? A power bank for her phone? Cash on hand? No, no, and no. For all the ways we are alike, we have very different anxiety-management styles. She has a LifeStraw water bottle (that I gave her), and that’s going to have to be good enough–though she did go to the store for more water. The Jordanians are unbothered by all this; they’re used to being caught in the middle of these dramas, which I at least find reassuring. Her classes have been canceled, but most schools and the gym are still open, and where coffee shops are closed, it’s because of Ramadan, not the bombing. War or no war, you’ve still gotta fast.

One way my daughter and I are alike, though, is in our monitoring of who’s paying attention to our personal dramas. I don’t know if any of you do this, but when I’m experiencing a crisis, I take note of who checks in. It’s ironic, really, because I have several close friends who routinely ask me how I’m doing, and I find this question almost personally offensive–Do I not seem ok? Why are you asking?!–but when I have, for example, a child living in the middle of a war zone, you better believe I’m making a list of all the people who don’t ask me how we’re doing. Also unappreciated: comments along the lines of “Maybe she should get out of there!” My God, what an incisive analysis! Perhaps you can use your tremendous intellectual powers to get the airspace over her region opened up, and the airlines operating again, and then clear a path through the missiles and fighter jets so she can leave safely.

Forgive me. I’m a little on edge.

She and her dad have big plans for this week: they’re supposed to meet in Vienna, spend a weekend in Austria, then return together to Amman. It’s unclear whether this can still happen; there’s only one airline operating out of Jordan, and the airspace is currently closed to them at night–a detail I find mildly amusing. The missiles are much easier to see at night, which seems like it would make them easier to avoid! I’d really rather they let the planes fly at night because it’s Ramadan and everyone is tired and cranky during the day. This morning, my daughter texted me that a fighter jet swooped so loud and low over her building that everyone around her scattered. If she’d reached up, she said, she could have touched it.

I told her that if she can get out, she should go straight to Vienna and stay there–though she also has a standing invitation from her boyfriend’s family in Tunisia, which we’ve established lies just outside the maximum reach of Iran’s longest-range missiles. We each speculated about how long this would go on, how infuriating it would be if she had to miss out on her Austrian adventure with her dad, how deadly boring it will be to have to hang out in her apartment alone for days on end if school continues to be canceled because of the war. She doesn’t want to come back to the US for any significant stretch of time, but with each passing day I feel more strongly she needs to get the fuck out of Jordan. Today she got alerts, first warning her to stay away from the US Embassy (it’s 4 kilometers from her apartment), then warning her “you know what, don’t panic but just stay inside, and if you happen to be in a car, calmly leave it where it is and find some stairs to crouch under.” So the sense of urgency is growing.

All of this has, obviously, gotten me thinking about the millions of people around the world who currently love someone in a war zone. This is a novelty for us–it’s the first week, and our current administration is capricious enough and distractible enough that it’s easy to assume this war could be a blip on the collective radar, and then on to other nightmares. But today I am thinking about Ukrainians living outside Ukraine. I’m thinking about Palestinians, the millions more of them exiled than still living in their besieged homeland, and about the displaced Sudanese and all the other mothers and fathers, children and friends of people who are trapped behind enemy lines, whose well-being and lives are in constant, and much more urgent, danger. I’m thinking about the toll it takes on them, the energy required to keep putting one foot in front of the other while the person you love is in harm’s way, for years. A few nights ago, I sat together with friends talking about the Ramadan fast, about how it’s not distinct from your daily routine; you do it while still living your normal life, and it must be hard to continue to meet all the regular responsibilities of every day without any food or water. It’s Ramadan now. I’m thinking of what it feels like to hit refresh on your news apps again and again; to keep checking your texts; to keep checking in, when there is nothing you can really do except sit, and wait, and hunger. For food, for news, for safety.

Most of all, I’m thinking about the Iranians, who have endured this regime for 37 years, but in particular these last two months, during which they have risked everything to rise up, and been crushed with a brutality that defies comprehension. I suppose it’s possible the killing of Khameini could bring them a step closer to liberation, though of course, nothing in the history of US interventions abroad suggests this will be the case. Whatever is going to happen will take time, and likely far more suffering, to parse out, and this is another thing I’ve been thinking a lot about these last few days: the ways in which war disrupts people’s plans, throws their lives into uncertainty. Last Saturday morning as the bombs started to fall, the people of Iran had concert tickets and doctor’s appointments, vacations and birthday parties planned. They were starting new jobs or looking forward to retirement, taking final exams and pregnancy tests, but now the bottom has dropped out of their lives. Meanwhile, the plans of three despicable old men grind on. The Ayatollah lived to a great old age oppressing and brutalizing his people so he could be the god of his own private universe, and the line of succession is well established to carry on that vision. Netanyahu has tortured and genocided an entire population in an effort to keep himself in power and avoid prosecution for his own crimes. And Donald Trump is engaged in a quest to dismantle and degrade the most powerful nation on earth, simply to enrich himself and his family, and fill the gaping emptiness at his center. All three of these men, blessed with long lives and wealth, the trappings of power, children to succeed them. Each a self-styled representative of their particular Abrahamic religion, but versions twisted and poisoned beyond recognition. For all that American bigots love to stereotype Islam as a religion of terrorism, Christianity in the US has been warped into a cruel parody of itself that delights in the suffering of the vulnerable. These days we hear “Christian” influencers and pastors warning of something they call “toxic empathy,” a concept manufactured to justify supporting a leader congenitally devoid of empathy, whose actions would enrage their savior far beyond his outburst in the temple.

Obviously, there are no guarantees of safety anywhere–certainly not in the United States–but I’ll feel better when my baby’s not under the path of those missiles. I recognize how fortunate I am that my daughter has the freedom, the support, and the resources to get out of harm’s way at the first opportunity…but I’ll breathe easier when she’s actually done it.