My Iran, and the Iran of my family
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The Iranian diaspora loved it when a cardboard cutout of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was paraded last week to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution. Photoshopped images spread all over the Internet, showing the cardboard Khomeini turning up everywhere, including on the moon.
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I was 9 years old when I first visited Iran, the country where my parents were raised and ultimately fled in pursuit of greater opportunity. On a hot night in June, we arrived at the Tehran International Airport, ambushed by relatives, their faces stained with tears, kissing our cheeks and embracing us so tightly we could barely breathe.
For me, growing up surrounded by my parents' stories and photographs of their beloved homeland, Iran came to life in a grand revelation. That summer, I walked the streets of Tehran hand-in-hand with my mother and father and looked up at their faces to see if I, too, could vicariously feel their nostalgia. It was important to me, for some reason, to assume the identity I would have had if my parents had chosen to stay.
Sixteen years later, I suppose I'm still trying to assume that identity. Yesterday marked the 33rd anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, an event that shaped my life, even though I was born years after and miles removed from it.
My parents grew up in Tehran during the height of the revolution. They, like millions of other Iranians, became part of the movement with the hope of freeing their country from the bonds of Western control. They tell me stories of rallies and protests, of impatience for an independent Iran. My father said that when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran on Feb. 1, 1979, after years of exile, his arrival was a sign that oppression would soon be a thing of the past.
Ten days after Khomeini's arrival, the shah's government collapsed as revolutionaries overtook government buildings and royal palaces. This period, celebrated annually in Iran, is known as Dahiye Fajr or "Ten Days of Dawn."
Several years after the revolution, my parents boarded a plane bound for the United States. I was born as the first American in my family, but an invisible thread tied me to Iran and I could never cut myself loose.
During subsequent trips to Iran, I eagerly tried to prove myself to my relatives, who couldn't see me as anything but American. Dokhtar Amrikayi (American girl), my uncles teased me for speaking Farsi with an American accent. I tried desperately to insert myself into Iranian society, to find a place in my parents' past. But I was an impostor. And I couldn't claim their stories as my own.
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First Published February 12, 2012 12:00 am
