I was born on the first day of spring. Nowruz. If you are Iranian you know exactly what that means. The biggest day of the year. Everything feels fresh and new, families visit each other, children get money in little envelopes, there is food and laughter everywhere.
And every single year, my birthday quietly disappeared into all of it. Just another Nowruz. No cake with my name on it, no happy birthday, nothing that said this day is yours.
Until I was nine.
That morning my mother called me over and something about her face was different. She had a gift, wrapped in paper with a red ribbon. For me. Actually for me.
Now I want to be clear, my mother had given me things before. She was not a cold woman. But there is a difference between being given something and being given a gift. A real gift. Something wrapped up that says I thought of you, this is yours, happy birthday.
Inside the paper was a white Chador, the traditional Hejab, Soft, with little flowers on it. My size. Made for me.
Finally, I felt seen by her.
And then she sat beside me and began to talk to me about God. She had said these things to me before but that morning it felt different, more serious, like she really needed me to hold onto what she was saying.
She said : God made the sky. God made the earth. God made you. And He always sees you.
Then she gently wrapped the chador around my head and shoulders. I sat very still. I did not want to get it wrong. She placed a small clay seal on the ground in front of us. I had seen it before but now it felt important, like I had just been let into something that mattered.
Now we will pray together, she said. Just repeat after me.
I sat up straight. I was ready.
We started, and I followed her every move and every word as carefully as I could. But even as I repeated the words, questions were quietly forming inside me. I did not understand any of this Arabic. What did these words actually mean? And if God had truly made me, if He could see me at any moment of any day, why couldn't He just understand my own language? Why did I have to speak to Him in words that meant nothing to me? Why couldn't I talk to Him in Farsi, the language I thought in, the language of my heart? I looked at my mother and asked, mama, why are we speaking in Arabic? You always say God made me, so why doesn't He understand Persian?
She smiled, but her voice was serious. This is how we learned it, she said, and this is how my mother taught me, and her mother before her. We don't ask questions. And neither should you. Just do what I tell you.
After my ninth birthday, my mother started waking me up before sunrise every morning to pray. It was now my duty. I was nine years old, a girl, and this was simply what was expected.
But I had a problem.
When I slept, I really slept. Waking me up was like trying to pull someone out of the bottom of a deep dark ocean. My mother would shake me, call my name, pull the blanket clean off me. And I would try, I genuinely tried, to open my eyes before the sun came up.
But most mornings, I just couldn't do it.
And with every missed prayer, the guilt would settle a little deeper. I had already been asking myself why I had to pray in Arabic. Now I wasn't even managing to wake up for it. Was I a bad girl? Was God angry with me? Was the God my mother loved so completely, disappointed in me? I didn't know. I was nine years old and I was trying to reach a God who felt very far away.
And it wasn't just the prayers.
I was the eldest daughter, which came with its own set of unwritten rules. While my mother took care of the younger ones or cooked, I cleaned the house. I did my homework. I helped with the children. I was expected to be responsible, to be helpful, to be good. And on top of all of that, I was expected to understand God, to pray in a language I didn't understand, and also learn how to “fast”.
Because when the month of fasting came, I had to fast. Full fast. From before sunrise to sunset, no food, no water, nothing. Twelve hours of hunger and thirst, sometimes in scorching heat. My brothers didn't have to fast until they were fifteen. But me? I was nine.
Nobody asked me how I felt about any of this. Nobody asked me what I needed. I was just expected to carry it all, quietly and without complaint, the way good girls do. The way my cousins were doing it most of them were a few years older than me.
But my father, in one way at least, was different from most men in our large Families. He loved learning. He loved books. He was curious about the world in a way that not many people around us were, and he believed his children should be educated.
He carried an open mind about education and growth in a place where most men did not. My father never had the chance to continue his education beyond the eighth grade.
And maybe that was exactly why it meant so much to him. He wanted more for us.
More knowledge. More understanding. More opportunities. He had a tough childhood and was determined that we wouldn't suffer like he did. He worked hard to create a safe environment for us. He wanted us to have everything. Good schools, good clothes, good food, two vacations a year. But more than that, he wanted us to be prepared for life. He taught us all to drive. When we were twelve or thirteen, every kid had to learn. He taught us all about survival, independence, and taking care of ourselves. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. He was sick. He knew his body was failing. He knew he might not be there to protect us forever. So he prepared us. He made sure that if something happened to him, we would know how to survive. Apparently, his father died when my father was only 6 months old. That's why they had a very tough childhood. He had to learn how to survive without his father, then he had to go back to his mother and take care of her too. And that's why he gave us the tools to be strong. I know now after having a counselor for 3 years and talking to her sometimes twice a month that I was a rebellious child ….
To be continued ….
