By Arshak Makichyan

It was the summer of 2026. The first thing I detected was the scent.

It drifted across the street before I saw the man behind it, arranging bundles of handmade incense on a small table in central Yerevan. He didn’t speak Armenian and mentioned that he was from Hormuz Island in southern Iran.

Only months earlier, the name Hormuz had dominated news headlines around the world. As fighting escalated between Iran and the United States, the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important oil shipping routes, became the focus of fears over a wider regional conflict, sending shockwaves through global markets.

For Lou, however, Hormuz was not a geopolitical flashpoint. It was simply home.(Ed. Lou is not his real name.)

While governments exchange missiles, negotiate ceasefires and argue over Iran's future, thousands of ordinary Iranians are making quieter decisions: whether to stay, flee or begin again somewhere else. Armenia, sharing a border and centuries of intertwined history with Iran, has become one of those places where people arrive carrying little more than hope that tomorrow will be calmer than yesterday.

Lou's story is about much more than escaping war. It is about trying to build a future in a country where planning for one has become almost impossible. For him, it has become a philosophy of survival.

"I started traveling when I was seventeen," he told me. "I wanted to understand who I was."

For years, he hitchhiked across Iran with little more than a backpack. He worked wherever he could to finance his journeys: washing dishes, serving coffee, eventually managing a restaurant. Hitchhiking became more than cheap transportation. It became a way of understanding his country.

"When people know they'll never see you again, they tell you everything," he said. "You hear stories they've never told anyone."

His travels eventually led him to the mountains, where he became fascinated by wild herbs and flowers. What began as collecting plants turned into studying their medicinal properties. Later he discovered traditional incense making and co-founded what he says became one of Iran's first companies producing handmade incense. His products eventually reached shops across the country.

It was the kind of small business he had dreamed of building. But building something in Iran, he said, never meant knowing whether it could last.

"You work hard, you save money, you make plans," he said. "Then you wake up the next morning and everything costs more. The plan is suddenly much further away. It's like you're running toward something that is running faster than you."

For him, the country's economic crisis was as exhausting as the political one. Saving money often meant watching it lose value before you could spend it. Long term plans felt almost impossible.

Eventually he settled on Hormuz Island in southern Iran, a place famous for its landscapes and tourism. When fighting reached the region, tourists disappeared almost overnight.

The first escalation forced him to leave the island. His family called in panic, urging him to escape before it was too late. "It was different from what people saw on the news," he recalled. "I wasn't hiding from explosions. But I was trapped."

For three days, there were no buses, no flights and no way off the island. He worried less about his belongings than about his pets.

"I didn't care much about my belongings," he said. "Mostly I cared about my pets."

Eventually, a friend with a car offered him a seat. They packed what they could and began driving nearly the entire length of Iran, from the country's southern coast toward his parents' village in the north.

The journey lasted more than a day in the summer heat. Near Kashan, traffic suddenly came to a standstill. Once they finally got through, they saw the aftermath of a strike.

"There was a truck carrying a missile," he said. "It had been hit only minutes after we passed."

Later, scrolling through Instagram, he found videos of the same attack. Had they been delayed by only a few minutes, he believes they might have been caught in it.

His parents' village was safer, but the war had followed them in another form. Prices continued to rise, savings kept losing value, and uncertainty remained. His father, he said, tried to reassure the family that everything would be fine, even as the country's economy deteriorated.

Twelve days after the fighting subsided, Lou went to Armenia, a country that shares a border with Iran and where people can travel back and forth. He spent the summer there, both to escape the uncertainty and because Hormuz Island, where he had been living, becomes unbearably hot during the season. After the ceasefire, he returned to Iran.

But the ceasefire did not convince him that the danger had passed.

"We knew it wasn't over," he said. "People hoped the negotiations would work, but many of us believed they were only temporary."

Months later, another round of fighting erupted in Iran. For him, this war began with a moment that revealed how complicated the situation was. The first major event he remembers was the killing of Iran’s political leader. Many people around him celebrated, because for years they had suffered under the government and blamed its leadership for repression, economic hardship, and violence.

“Everyone was happy, everyone was dancing. People were celebrating because, two months before that, 40,000 Iranian people had been killed. They were ordinary people, without guns, without anything. They were children, mothers, everyone. Some people were just standing behind their doors, looking at what was happening, and they were shot. For years, many people hated the leader and the government. So when he died, people thought maybe this was the end.”

But his own reaction was different. Having spent two years in the army, he believed he understood that the problem was not only one person.

“I wasn’t that happy, because I knew it was not about only one person. A person can change, but the system stays alive. When I was in the army, I was deeply inside that system. I saw different parts of it. The leader is only the face of something much bigger. He is like a symbol, but the system itself is much stronger.”

He said many people believed the death of the leader would bring the collapse of the government, but he did not share this hope.

“Everyone thought it was the end of the Islamic Republic. But I was thinking differently. I knew that removing one person does not remove the whole structure. And we saw that later. They replaced the leader, and the system continued. The person changed, but nothing really changed.”

During the war, he also remembered how many people placed their hopes in outside intervention.

“People thought someone was coming to save us. They heard promises that they would help the people, that they would bring freedom. But I knew it was not so simple. A country does not changed just because another country comes. In the end, ordinary people suffered. Prices became higher, people’s lives became harder, but the system survived.”

This experience changed the way he understood resistance and survival. He realized that sometimes people cannot immediately change the conditions around them, and that survival can also mean choosing a different path.

“I learned that when I cannot change the situation around me, I have to move. I have to try my best, but if nothing changes, I need to change my own situation. Because if you don’t change your situation, your situation changes you. You become part of it.”

After leaving Iran and arriving in Armenia, he began noticing everyday freedoms that he had never considered before. He described simple things that represented a completely different way of living: being able to plan for the future, speak openly, interact with strangers, and feel less fear.

“In Iran, I couldn’t plan anything. Here, I can think: if I work every day, maybe in two or three months I can buy a motorcycle. I can make a plan. In Iran, this was impossible.”

He also described how his perception of social relationships changed, especially regarding women’s lives and interactions between men and women.

“In Armenia, I learned that women can simply be human beings. They can be beautiful, they can express themselves, they can talk, they can exist freely. In Iran, from childhood, there is always a distance created between men and women. When you are seven years old, suddenly everything changes. You cannot even shake hands with some relatives because of the ideology imposed by the government.”

The contrast was not only political but deeply personal for Lou. Armenia represented a place where ordinary experiences, which had seemed impossible before, became normal.

“Here, people smile. People talk to each other. People enjoy simple things. They are not necessarily rich, but they have life. In Iran, people are always afraid, angry, or depressed. You cannot feel normal life there.”

"I love my country," he said. "It's beautiful. I hope my family, my friends and my people stay safe."

Despite everything, he refuses to surrender to hopelessness.

"When I can't change the situation around me," he said, "I move."

That philosophy brought him to Armenia, where he has begun rebuilding the handmade incense business he started in Iran. Here, he says, he can once again plan for the future, something he had almost forgotten was possible.

What surprised him most was not the absence of war. It was the return to ordinary life.

"In Armenia I can make plans," he said.

The differences appeared in unexpected places.

"In Iran, when you see police, you avoid them," he said. "Here I can say hello. People here enjoy simple things," he said. "They are not all rich, but they live."

Despite everything, he refuses to let despair define him.

He hopes he may one day return to Iran. His family is still there. His memories are there.

For now, Armenia is where he is trying to rebuild his life.

"Our hearts belong to one place," he told me. "Of course, our main home is Iran. But for travelers like us, everywhere can be our home. We have one Earth; we do not live by borders that much. Our hearts belong to a geography called Iran, to my home called Hormoz Island. But for people like us, everywhere can become home."

While talking to him, I thought about the moment when Pashinyan posted a photo of himself eating pirozhki as the last escalation with Iran began. While the situation might have appeared calm from the outside, the reality was more complicated. There are few, if any, organizations in Armenia working to support refugees. A war was unfolding in a country with close historical ties to Armenia. We share cultural and religious connections, and even our landscapes feel familiar to each other.

But the next day, another Iranian refugee texted me that he had been beaten and that instead of receiving help from the police he had been threatened, I did not know what to tell him.

 If Armenia wants to become a European country, it must start building programs and institutions that ensure the rights and dignity of everyone are respected.

Arshak Makichyan is an activist and political scientist, currently based in Berlin.