Abbas Muzaffar, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj and professor at Tashkent's Webster University, had decided to take his 83-year-old mother on a religious pilgrimage to Iran following months of planning.
Taking special leave from his university, he came to India to accompany his mother to Mashhad and Qom – two of the holiest and most prominent pilgrimage sites for Shia Muslims across the world.
At the end of a "deeply satisfying" pilgrimage, little did he know that on the day he and his mother were to return to Prayagraj, Israeli missiles would rain down on Iran, making their departure from the country a highly precarious task.
Speaking to The Quint from a special bus arranged by the Indian Embassy, Muzaffar described his experience of being stranded in the war zone with his aged mother.