July 4th, 2001
Tonight, I met two people
I’ve never met before,
from a country
I’ve never been to.
The Persians of Tucson, Arizona
(aka my relatives),
gathered at the gate
in the airport
in a state
we’ve never
felt before.
My whole family
was beside me
as my family
was made
whole.
Tonight, I met my grandparents.
Baba Joon and Maman Joon
stepped off the plane, stepped out of
the pictures in their frames,
and right into our lives.
Maman Joon cried
and held her two daughters tight, close
like kids, though they’d grown into women
since the last time she’d seen them.
Baba Joon smiled
and greeted us all, shaking hands,
kissing cheeks, making jokes in Farsi
about their terrible flight.
“We were delayed twenty years!”
Then he went to hold his daughters too,
and everyone was still laughing
as everyone started crying.
And just like that,
all my mom’s stories,
about her childhood,
about her parents,
about her past,
caught up
to us.
In the back seat of our car,
I sat between my grandparents
as we drove home and thought
some part of them
is some part of me
and all those fireworks
far off in the sky
might as well
have been
for us.
July 4th, 2001, Part 2
When we got home
and everyone was getting ready for bed,
Baba Joon opened his beat-up briefcase
and handed me a present.
A small journal,
the size of a paperback,
bound in beautiful brown leather,
containing crisp cream pages
with gold-foiled edges.
The cover was embossed with a crest
of what looked like a dog/bird/lion
swinging its feathery tail
and wearing huge,
regal wings.
“I hear you like to write.
This is for you, Omid jan.”
And then he switched to English
and slowly said,
“I love you.”
“Merci. I love you too, Baba Joon.”
A Hard Thing To Say
“I love you”
is a hard thing to say
when you mean it,
but you’re also thinking,
“I don’t know you.”
Suitcases
Maman Joon and Baba Joon moved to America from Iran
and only brought two suitcases with them.
When Mom, Dad, Amir, and I went
on vacation to Hawaii last summer,
we took eight suitcases with us, and it still felt like
it wasn’t enough, like something was missing,
like we had forgotten something important, back home.
It’s how I’ve always felt.
Like I’m forgetting, or I’m disconnected from, something.
Like an island. Not like I’m on an island.
Like I am an island. Waiting to be discovered,
waiting to be claimed, waiting
to be a part of something, bigger.
Waiting to be familiar, with family.
Not just Amir, and Mom, and Dad, but the people
and the place we came from,
the history we once had
a hold on.
I’ve always wanted a history I could handle,
not just hear about.
Maman Joon and Baba Joon moved to America,
their whole lives packed into two taped-up suitcases.
Which must have been hard,
but makes me happy.
Because we’re fast approaching familiar.
Heading toward the handling.
We’re on our way to wonderful,
and I didn’t even have to pack.
Home
Iran was always home.
Until it wasn’t.
Iran was always whole.
Until it wasn’t.
Apparently, Iran used to be really different.
(I’ve lost count of how many times my mom has told me,
“Tehran was the Paris of the Middle East.”)
There was a revolution in Iran in 1979,
and my parents both left right before that.
But their parents stayed behind.
Which sounds harsh now,
but maybe it wasn’t then?
My parents met in the States,
then dated in the States,
then married in the States.
In Iran, my parents might have never met,
might have never dated, and definitely
would have never married.
It’s against the law there for a Muslim to marry a Bahá’í.
(It’s against the law for a Muslim
to anything a Bahá’í, really . . .
except kill? I mean, I don’t really know.
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to even be a Bahá’í in Iran.
But I don’t want to ask Mom.
Enough of her relatives
have died
that it’s too embarrassing to admit to her
that I still don’t quite understand why.)
Mom’s family is Bahá’í,
Dad’s family is Muslim,
but that’s easy to forget,
because our family is lucky.
Dad hasn’t ever seemed to care about the “politics” of it.
I asked him once: How is all that even possible?
How can a belief
be illegal?
He shrugged, at first. Then he explained it like this:
All the religions of the world
seem to be waiting around
for some guy to come back
and save us or take us
to a better place.
Bahá’ís believe that guy already came,
pretty recently, actually, and told us
that all the prophets of the past were right,
but that it was time for us to come together
and follow him, to move forward as one.
When Muslims took over Iran
in 1979, they made their church the state.
Claimed their God was calling all the shots.
They gave God a say in everything
from speeding tickets
to executions.
But if the Bahá’í prophet and his believers were right,
that would mean all those Muslims were listening
to the wrong God.
A false God — overseeing absolutely everything.
Could you imagine?
How quickly a country built on false beliefs
could crumble?
The folks in charge had to keep that from happening . . .
So they started silencing the Bahá’í crowd real quick.
Long Distance
We still have family in Iran.
Mostly Dad’s.
Most of Mom’s got out.
I was born here.
When my parents call Iran to talk to their relatives,
I listen. I try to keep track of all the names,
imagining faces in my mind for each.
I can understand Farsi
much better than I can speak it.
Farsi is all about the vowels. Round sounds
that travel long distance with ease.
Mom speaks swift and smooth.
Like language was something no one ever struggled to learn.
Dad speaks loudly whenever he speaks,
but especially when he’s on the phone with Iran.
Like he can’t trust the microphone to do its only job.
I Keep Thinking How Lucky We Are To Be Americans
because the revolution in America happened so long ago
that the ground has stopped shaking.
We can try to build something nice here,
without worrying about the country
falling right back down.
When Muslims took over Iran,
they killed Baba Joon’s sister.
She was Bahá’í.
So they hung her.
That was right around the time
Maman Joon and Baba Joon sent
their two teen daughters
to live in the States.
A journal is a safe place for secrets,
so here’s mine:
I’m glad they left.
Because if they hadn’t,
I wouldn’t exist.
Brothers
I’m sleeping with Amir in his room.
Because Mom and Dad are in my room.
Because Maman Joon and Baba Joon are in their room.
Amir’s room
used to be mine.
Then it was ours.
Now it’s his.
I moved out.
Just a few weeks ago.
Just down the hall
into the balconied bedroom
that used to be Mom’s office.
She hasn’t needed it lately.
She hasn’t been showing listings
or holding open houses much. She’s been busy
helping Dad with paperwork and hiring new staff
ever since he started building the new store.
So with Mom’s real estate career on hold
and a perfectly good balcony barely being used . . .
it only made sense that I move in, right?
Mom and Dad didn’t think so at first,
but I begged (Mom has a soft spot
for putting your heart into anything),
and I bartered (Dad’s a tough negotiator, but I offered to help
move rugs into the new store) until they finally came around.
That’s how the balconied bedroom became mine.
But tonight, I’m back in my old room,
trying to fall asleep in a sleeping bag on the floor.
The moonlight is glinting
off dozens of golden statues where my bed used to be.
Amir’s trophies. Soccer. Basketball. Karate. Flag football.
There’s probably a trophy for rock-paper-scissors
in there somewhere.
My little brother is good at everything.
If I’m being honest,
that’s one of the reasons I asked for my own room. I wanted,
needed, to not be reminded of Amir’s amazingness
every single day. I only have one more year before
he finishes the eighth grade,
and we’re back together
in the same school.
I want to live in a world where
we aren’t being constantly compared
by everyone, every day.
And maybe if we didn’t sleep in the same room every night,
I could stop comparing us too.
The Only Real Real
Amir’s been helping Mom
move Maman Joon and Baba Joon into their new house
while I’ve been helping Dad move his rugs
into the new store.
Correction: trying to help.
Turns out, Dad doesn’t really need my help —
he just wanted me around the store more often.
Our new store is in the fancy part of Tucson
(next to my favorite gelato shop),
and it’s really, really big.
So big it can fit a few thousand rugs inside
without smelling like wool, or dust, or mothballs,
without smelling like the old store.
The new store smells clean.
And looks clean too. Pristine, like the marble staircase
that leads from the showroom floor to Dad’s office.
That marble is imported from Italy. Or Greece?
Somewhere far away, across an ocean,
which adds to the almost overwhelming sense
that this is a special place, more museum
than market. Upstairs is lit like a gallery,
with artificial light shining on tiny tapestries
hanging on the walls. Downstairs is lit naturally,
with sunlight flowing through the massive glass windows
on the side of the building.
I’m not strong enough to help move the big rugs
(most of the men moving those ones are in the military
when they’re not working at my dad’s store), but I can unroll
the smaller ones in the antique gallery
upstairs and out of the way.
I see the price tag on a 6x9
and it stops me for a second.
Fifty-five thousand dollars for the rug
I’m unrolling.
Why would anyone pay that much
for something they are supposed to walk all over?
And Dad is adamant about that, by the way.
He tells all his clients they need to feel comfortable
stepping on their rugs. It’s what they were made for, after all.
I walk over to his office,
where he’s washing his face
in his private bathroom,
and that’s when it starts . . .
That feeling I get
when I have something to say
but I don’t know how.
When I want to express a thought or impulse or emotion,
but instead I can only stumble or stammer or sweat. ...
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