5. Courage

When she told me she had bought Matcha, I wasn’t surprised at the fact that she found it on the shelves in Tehran during a war. Tehran was an amazing and lively city, filled with life, shops, hip restaurants and bazaars everywhere and long into the night. A city of 10 million people, 70 percent of which were under the age of 30. What I was surprised at was her will to go and look for it in the first place during such horrific times. But I should have known better.

My mom has reached the summit of Alborz in Tehran that is 5,610 meters (18,402 feet). She has worked every day of her life as a hygienist in Tehran for more than 45 years taking pain away from people and providing her family with opportunities to live in freedom and live the actual lives they want. She has created centers of caring for children who are unprivileged in Tehran for free and is running them herself. She has survived a long war in the 80s when me and my brother were growing up in Tehran and spent one year of it away from my dad during the scariest time. Of course she would stay and go out on her hike even in the smoke of war, instead of leaving Tehran. Of course. My mom who tears up fifty percent of the times when we just talk on Facetime for living so many miles away from me. I can stay here and make a difference, she always says. Of course she did.

Matcha just took on a whole new dimension in my life.

4. Matcha

 

I called my parents on the Monday after we came back from LA. I had to go to LA. As hard as it was to pack. As hard as it was to think of having a vacation and trying to relax and enjoy myself when bombs are falling around my childhood streets, parks, cafes and bookstores.

I had to do it for my daughter. Why should she be punished and have her trip cancelled when she has done nothing wrong? Her view about Iran was already shattered by the news. She was looking forward to seeing her grandma and her newly born cousin.

I did it also for my husband who wanted to see his friend, take a day or two off work and maybe even enjoy the fact that his parents and brother’s family were all in LA and not Tehran. I couldn’t deny him that.

I did it for myself because I needed to stay away from my phone and the horrific images. I was falling apart. I couldn’t eat much. I had thrown up a couple times. I was crying everyday by myself and sometimes in front of my family. I needed to regain my strength and stay strong for my family and especially my parents. 

When we came back to Palo Alto the situation seemed like it had gotten worse. How long will this go on? How long can people survive like this? How long can I go on like this, trying to live and go on in my world, the world before the war started, as if nothing had happened? How long? 

I called my parents on Facetime knowing too well that it won’t connect. I started dialing their number staring into nothingness feeling numb from tears and worry. It connected. My parents picked up after days of me trying to reach them through my friends who lived in California but their parents live in Iran, just like me. Torn between two worlds. My friends’ parents would call my parents in Tehran and ask them to call me. 

It connected. They looked hopeful and in control as usual. I was worried and shattered as a broken mirror. My dad was still hopeful and assuring me that they are fine and everything will be fine. Then my mom told me something that I will forever be grateful for.

Just as summer had started I had discovered Matcha. A Japanese green powder that had completely transformed my life. I was suffering from so many migraines and digestive problems and then I came upon a video talking about the health benefits of Matcha. People were lining up in Palo Alto at a Matcha place that had recently opened and it seemed crazy to me to stand in such a long line because I actually tried it once and hadn’t liked it. Too bitter for ice cream. But I thought now that I knew about the benefits, I should give it another try. 

Before the war started, I had shared in a phone call with my parents about Matcha. I knew it could help my mom too. I had shared pictures of it and how I make it at home and how it had transformed my life to a life without pain along with Iron supplements, that my mom had actually always asked me to take. You and I are both anemic, she always said. 

That day in the fog of war, confusion and worry my mom shared that today she had gone to get groceries in Tehran and found Matcha. This was not bread or eggs or even chicken. It was Matcha. She showed me the package she had bought. I was almost in tears again but I held it together this time. 

As the bombs were falling and the number of dead and injured rising, I was still trying to drink Matcha. Now I thought of it as the elixir for a pain free life, the magic green potion. I needed to keep the pain away, especially now. I needed to hold onto something that was unchanged. There was no way I could take on the pain of migraines and the war at the same time. I would crumble. But I kept thinking about the fact that the thought of my mom finding Matcha is now such a farfetched and an unachievable thought in the midst of an actual war.

3. Paralyzed

 

I feel paralyzed. The last time I felt this broken was when I got Covid. I realized then, that to even speak, I needed energy. Now I realize that to cry, I need energy. Energy that I don’t always have. My fear then was losing my life. I was mostly afraid for my daughter growing up without her mother. But I am more afraid now. Not knowing if I will ever see my parents again. If I will be able to go on without them.

This has got to be the hardest trip of my life. I feel like a hostage waiting to be forced onto a plane going to Los Angeles. My body is sitting at gate 25 at San Jose International airport. My mind is in Tehran fearing bombs. My heart is beating beside my parents, my uncles and aunts, beside the innocent people of Iran, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine and many corners of the world worried about their safety.

2. The Nightmare, The Contrast

The nightmare. I have experienced it as a dream before. But I can’t seem to wake up from this one. It still felt like maybe just a nightmare every time I woke up in the middle of the night in the past week. I open my eyes. I am still in Palo Alto. I can hear the birds chirping so early in the morning. I can hear Rouin snoring next to me. I can feel Gracie’s soft warm furry body bundled up under my arm. I am awake. I am home.  Then my kick drum heart starts pounding. The coldest sweat starts dripping down my arm. My stomach starts twitching as if I just untangled my body from a net. My throat is knotted up so tightly I feel as though it has shrunk in half.

I am terrified of my phone. It has become a torture device. It is sitting right next to me waiting to show me what horror has happened on the other side of the world, in that parallel universe that is ahead of us by half a day. A world that used to be my home as a child. A world turned upside down in just a few days. The images are unfortunately familiar. It has happened to many other homes. It has happened to many other families. The contrast has always been surreal and disturbing.

I am a teacher. The children I care for get dropped off at preschool sometimes with both parents. Their parents or nannies pack them a nutritious snack of a variety of fresh fruits and veggies. A hearty and sometimes warm lunch packed in a thermos. A tube of sunscreen for the teachers to reapply after a couple of hours. Extra sets of clothes in a bag. They come in with wings and crowns. They can choose what to play and when to play. They have so many options to choose from. So many tables setup with colorful toys, play dough, sensory bins, puzzles and art material. Each activity designed new and fresh every day to enhance or satisfy a particular skill or need. Each interaction monitored and aided if needed. So much imagination. So much curiosity. So much purity. Experiencing the wonders of the world, nature and science for the first time. Is this world real? World of bubbles and colors, ladybugs and butterflies. A garden with yellow flowers?

The images rush to my mind from the other side of the world but I swallow what tastes like guilt and helplessness for not being able to offer even the smallest fraction of this kind of care to the children that need it the most. Am I in the wrong place? Am I on the wrong side of the ocean?

Now it has hit home. The images are happening in the streets that I used to bike as a child. The fires are rising from the top of a mountain that I used to hike as a teenager. So many memories rushing to my mind and passing too quickly.

1. Resorption

It happened on a Thursday afternoon of the first week of a long awaited summer, when my biggest worry was my cat’s teeth. I opened Youtube.

I opened Youtube to maybe find ways to save Gracie’s teeth from what the vet had called the irreversible “tooth resorption”, the day before, when Taran and I took her for her first checkup. I had postponed the checkup so many times, fearing that they might find something wrong with her. The only option to relieve her from the pain would be to pull out the affected teeth.

I remember the chilling wave that had traveled through my body when she said we would have to put her under anesthesia and pull the teeth out. How eerily calm the vet looked when she said it. How terrified Gracie looked, crawled to a corner under the vet’s computer monitor, not knowing why we had brought her to this nauseatingly yellow, empty and strange room and what was going to happen to her. But isn’t there any other way, I asked, to save those teeth? Nope. There isn’t. So is she in pain right now? I asked. Yes, she said again so indifferently. She could very well be in pain, silently.

I opened YouTube, and the video popped up.   The video you would never want to see. The video you wish was made by AI. The video that would hopefully be blocked on a child’s Youtube. Usually what would pop up would be videos on diet or nutrition similar to what I had been watching before or makeup tutorials or Katseye similar to what Taran had been watching. But not this afternoon.

Multiple blasts across Tehran. Tehran. The city where I was born. Thick black smoke rising with the sun from different corners of it. I looked at the time. I wasn’t able to think straight, as my mind seemed frozen like a page on a screen waiting to reload. I opened the Clock app on my phone and it was 4:30 am in Tehran. People were asleep when the bombs hit. I have to wait. Yes, I have to wait before making one of hardest phone calls I have ever made. I suddenly felt very aware of the cold air in my mouth. How dry and difficult it felt when I swallowed the thick saliva in my mouth. My heart was beating like a kick drum, heavy and strong. My fingertips were starting to tingle as I opened BBC. I felt like the air around me was getting so constricted. My chest felt tight like a dark solitary cell in Evin prison in Tehran, the city where I grew up. The name Tehran kept repeating in my head, scratchy, as if stuck on an old scratched record. I started thinking of my daughter’s name, Taran, and how a teacher in her elementary school had once thought she was named after the city of Tehran. How bothered she is and has been by the fact no one can really pronounce her name correctly. How many other, easier or more pronounceable names she has tried on since she was 9 years old and none has really fit. 

Multiple “targets” hit in Tehran. Bombs falling right out of the sky. So many horrific scenes flashing so quickly before my eyes I could hardly recognize the difference. Could this be a nightmare?

Resorption: A process in which a substance, such as tissue, is lost by being destroyed and then absorbed by its own body. One possible cause: trauma. 

Note: In nature, an animal in pain or distress runs the risk of being chosen as prey. Therefore, animals instinctually hide pain and continue eating and acting as if nothing is wrong even though they may be experiencing significant discomfort.

Pink Twirly Flower Dress

It’s 4th of July 1987. She’s a seven year old girl in a pink short twirly flower dress with a bow tied in the back. She is thin, and tall for her age, with short black hair reaching under her ears. She is so overwhelmingly excited she keeps twirling in her mind while she actually sits impatiently on a metal bench feeling the cold bars under her bare legs, looking at her white socks with a lace trim and the fading marks of chicken pox.

She has been waiting for this moment for a year; the longest year of her life. She is waiting to see her dad at an airport in New York. She keeps running towards him in her mind. Before this moment, she was in Switzerland with her mother and brother for more than a week trying to get visas. Three train rides from Zurich to Bern. Nutella sandwiches for lunch on the train rides. There were seven blue cloth suitcases with silver masking tape around them. There was a fountain at the hotel where her brother found an ant farm and removed some stones around it and got yelled at by the angry hotel lady in French. She keeps scribbling in her notebook in what she calls cursive.

What did she leave behind? What did she pack? There is a year of memories without her father in Tehran, during a war. There are many letters. Waiting at night at a phone booth to make an international call from Tehran to Pennsylvania. Seven English workbooks that she completed to reach the eight one which is brown. The only one she packed with her. There is a photo of her dad in the back side of her pink Japanese pencil case she took to school with her all year. He was with her all along.

She is getting restless. She is not sure what life would be like in America but she knows whatever it is, it’s going to be ok because her father will be there and their family will be back together again. 

She replays running to her father to hug him in her mind over and over again, in the car ride from the airport to a hotel room, her pink dress dancing around her. She tries not to replay her father passing out from exhaustion and excitement when they reached his car in the parking lot of the airport. His eyes turning completely white, and her mother stuffing green grapes in his mouth to bring him back to consciousness. He had been driving without a stop for days. 

She looks at the fireworks lighting up the night sky and the very tall buildings passing by so quickly. There is a new life waiting for her in this awaited new big country and everything is alright now. Yes, everything is alright. 
#Fathersday 

It came in waves (a Covid memoir)

It came in waves..

crashing over my body

hitting it with thousands of needles

piercing my skin all over

numbing my limbs, my fingertips, my toes

when the life washing waves would recede 

the sharp pins would be left in me

like metals holding strong in hot lava

sweat washing over me 

the feeling of fire mixed with ice

a bittersweet reminder

that I could still feel

even when my numb limbs

couldn’t walk

or even sit

even when my cracked cold lips

couldn’t gather enough strength

to form a word, let alone talk

or even chew at times

breathing freely

came only as a luxury

tears came rolling down 

each one attempting to release

a bit of the pain and fear

the dark heavy kind that I had

never experienced before

When the waves calmed..

my body..

felt like a sack of potatoes

crushed under passing trucks

on a never ending highway

I could feel the weight of their tires

all over my neck and back

I was sinking

in a bed of quicksand

holding on to a branch 

of foggy memories and dreams

flashing before my eyes

my head..

not the usual heaviest migraine bowling ball

but a cracked open version

one that just rolls into the gutter

without hitting a single pin

feeling my pulse

like hammers on the sides of my head

numbed momentarily by the flow of

cold ice packs and wet towels

thinking, was a luxury

I didn’t have

I knew that this pain 

was one that I had to endure

for days to come

my heart..

swollen and constrained in a small chamber

beating as bold as a kick drum

as fast as a sprint runner at the finishing line

fighting with each beat

against a well known intruder

held at the gates

for more than three years

now finally breaking the gate

and entering with revenge

shattering every defensive wall built by

what I thought of as good nutrition

five vaccines

and a good lifestyle

and taking my independence

and my pride

as war souvenirs

he kept saying:

“The first day was the hardest..”

then I remember she said to me: 

“Mommy hang in there!

The day is almost over!”

I turned my neck slowly

enough to the left

to take a glance at the clock

it was only 4:15

time was as blurry

as my vision 

aside from nature

giving me another chance

my family saved me

even though some

weren’t physically present

from drowning in my own tears 

from letting go of that branch

which was much stronger

than I could have ever understood

in my lowest blood pressure

threatening to collapse me

to the ground

I thought I was invincible

that I had an invisible, protective

motherly shield

but now I know..

that shield can break into pieces

right before my eyes

and I would have to 

crawl over the floor

without my glasses

without my strength

or even hope at times

to look for

every little piece

to put it together again

in some shape or form..

..feels good to be born again.