Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora

1979

1979 H PAZ Nineteen seventy-nine was the year that was the beginning of the end and the beginning of a new beginning.The Democrats were about to lose their hold on the White House and Reaganomics would soon become an unavoidable reality.Nightline was born that year.It was created as a means to keep the American public glued to their TV sets as daily countdowns were broadcast of the Iranian hostage crisis: day , day , day ! Ratings skyrocketed as repeating images of the wildeyed , flag-burning natives of Iran with their barbaric black beards and their black-veiled, machine-gun-toting women became a common, almost expected sight on the nightly news. It was the year my parents had to make a painful decision: return to Iran, return to their families, return to the upper-class wealth and property that was rightly theirs, or stay in the United States, give up all their wealth, give up their families,but avoid the war with Iraq,avoid the political upheaval,avoid Khomeini.This was also the year that the golden age of my childhood was tarnished, the year I lost my innocence on many levels, the year I experienced hatred for the first time, and the year that my blossoming queer sexuality was effectively extinguished for a very long time. I was seven going on thirty when my world shifted dramatically. I had worked hard to establish myself socially and academically within the microcosm of my little world in Arizona. Earlier that year, I had victoriously won the award for being the top student in reading/writing and subsequently won the love and respect (not to mention a box of chocolates) of my sweet, redheaded teacher, Mrs. Cope. Not a bad feat for an immigrant child who had just three years prior rolled into the dusty town of Phoenix, Arizona, squashed in the back of her parents ’ rust orange Camaro. I didn’t have a clue that my life was about to change. After my first traumatic day in kindergarten, I was determined to conquer my surroundings and take control of my murky destiny. I spent what felt like eternity that first day, looking in horror at all the pale, fair-haired aliens surrounding me, muttering gibberish and eating  65 what looked like dry cardboard squares dipped in milk. I wasn’t sure if they were the freaks or if I was ...but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Immediately, I began assimilating to my new surroundings. With an almost obsessive frenzy, I read everything around me: shampoo bottles, Pennysavers,cracker boxes,junk mail,my mother’s secret hair-dye containers (that none of us were supposed to know about),anything at all. Subsequently, I became the eyes and ears of my parents. Even though I was only five or six years old,it was I who would go up to store clerks to ask where the frozen lima beans were kept;I who would be the interpreter in the emergency room when my baby brother’s appendix burst; I who would order everyone’s meals at McDonald’s. My parents had not yet accepted the fact that fate had landed them indefinitely in a country where they did not speak the language,understand the culture, or abide by the Christian laws of the land. This denial of the fact that they might never again return to or live in their beautiful homeland bore deep into their psyches and crippled their ability to adjust and acclimate to their new surroundings. It also, unfortunately, spilled over into how they chose to raise me. They were blind to the fact that I was desperately trying to belong, assimilate, and become one with the new world they had thrust me into. But despite the obstacles that their old world values and rules created for me, I was determined to thrive in the rich land of opportunity that had been opened up in front of me. My parents had set up what would be one of a series of temporary housing situations for us in low-income, predominately white neighborhoods. Within weeks of our frequent moves, I would have generally made my rounds of the community playgrounds and would have established myself as the wild-eyed gypsy-child who got everyone to pull down their pants in the sandbox to compare notes, so to speak. I always tried to hide my “foreignness” by attempting to mask it, though sometimes the English language would...