I hadn’t thought about my brother much since I’d left Iran. I assumed he’d found his own way. But one day, when I was on the phone with my folks back home, I asked to speak with him. “Your brother isn’t talking,” my father said. “To me?” “To anyone,” he […]
This summer, I had a conversation with a friend about my writing. “Why do you give away your stories for free on your blog?” she asked. “Why don’t you wait for your book to be published before you share?” I’ve asked myself the same question many times: I’ve written two […]
I didn’t expect that meeting Meha was going to keep me up at night, but it did. In my dreams, those days, I was always on a boat in the middle of a dark ocean, when a bigger boat, full of male guards, stopped mine to arrest me and take […]
I’m really good at ping pong. Or at least, I used to be. Lately, a lot of people have been beating me, again and again. I take it as a sign of my progress. Let me explain. When you are a homeless, undocumented immigrant, you need to be resourceful. Never […]
It wasn’t easy to find the right Ali Mohamedian on Facebook. That name is about as common in Persian as “John Smith” is in English. But I was determined to make amends, after all these years. And to thank the man who was responsible for getting me out of Iran. […]
[Trigger warning: sexual abuse, violence to children] The box-like room was freezing-cold. It had no windows or decorations, aside from an old IBM computer on the desk in front of me. The space around me seemed to be closing in on me. Despite the icy temperature, I felt sweat dripping […]
I lived in a tent for a month. Not a refugee tent, though I am an immigrant from a war-torn country. But no, this was a dark-blue camping tent pitched in the middle of the living room, because I didn’t want to have anything to do with my boyfriend. And […]
