Childhood

When you sit on a swing, you can’t help but wonder what it’d feel like if you were a child again. A child who doesn’t know right from wrong, who doesn’t need to be responsible and doesn’t live by expectations.
I miss being that child. I miss being careless and untangled. I miss the swings and the merry-go-rounds and the cotton candies. I miss the ignorance and the naïve nature of a child. I want to be a child just one more time, just one last time.
“Mommy, I’m lost,” the child inside me whispers.
I sit on the swing and I want to pretend that I don’t know all the things I know. I want to remember what it feels like to be ignorant and incognizant of corruption, discrimination, hatred, racism and …
I’m a child. I’m on a swing, my feet going up and down, my eyes closed, my hair floating. I’m not aware of my mother calling me to get down, I’m unaware of the wind, the rain, the passage of time and all the ifs and buts that stand in my way.
I’m a child and nothing matters to me, but the joy of being on this swing…

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R and I were eating breakfast and I thought of our childhood wishes. The little girl inside of me always wanted a Barbie doll house. She wanted Barbie, Ken, and their son to have their own home. That was her biggest wish. Now, after 18 years, I want an airplane ticket, and I don’t care about the destination.
When we’re older, is it possible to let go of our dreams the way we let them go as children?
We finish our breakfast and laugh. I’m thinking of the little girl who never got the Barbie doll house…

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Rain often times makes me gloomy. I feel trapped and the atmosphere automatically becomes depressing. I loved rainy days when I was a child. I loved it because we almost never had rain in Tehran. Summer days were blazing hot; winters were just cold. Rain was something people had to pray for, especially those who lived in Southern Iran. For them rain is pleasure, fun, different, even freedom to some extent. I remember how I used to look out the window and reach out to feel the raindrops on my fingertips. Sometimes it would be pouring immensely and I would feel a sudden rush of excitement. Those days I loved rain; I wanted so much to walk in the rain. But now, here in America, the excitement I used to feel for rain is gone.

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I always wanted to believe I was missing Iran. But I knew damn well it wasn’t Iran I missed. What I actually missed were the memories of a life I once knew, belonging, childhood, and a picture-perfect family.
It’s hard for me to admit it after all this time. I thought about it a lot. In fact, for six years I’ve been trying to figure out how to escape from the constant thoughts of Iran. I wanted to stop feeling guilty for leaving because I knew it wasn’t a choice I made. I’d been trying hard to focus on my own life rather than the life they live. I love them, my people; they’re part of me and always will be. But, I can’t live everyday thinking about what they don’t have. I want to live my life and just appreciate what I’ve been given.
I’m not sure if I’ve escaped completely, from the guilt and well, the depressing thoughts, but I do feel free for the most part. The hardest thing now is knowing I can never have that life back. Iran will be on the news and will be talked about on the radio, but it will be a memory for me. A nice memory of childhood…it will be a beautiful past that made me who I am today…but it will remain as the past…

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Iranians are experts at going to airports and saying good-bye. It has become a normal procedure for most families. Iranian women especially are good at crying. They cry incessantly and can’t stop hugging each other, while the men watch and seem to have it under control, although underneath, they’re probably hurting just as much. In a way, Iran has become an airport itself. These days, almost every 20 year-old’s dream is to find a way to leave the country with America as the destination in mind. Smart and ambitious, these young adults leave their heart-broken families so they can have a real life. Freedom for them means everything.
So this airport, this country, this nation, this Iran that has so much beauty, love, history, tradition and culture, continues to hide them until no one will remember what it once was, maybe not even the historians. The once great Persia is now a land of prisoners, from children to teens to young adults who are caught in the middle of political entanglements. Childhood memories are now the memories of departures and flight numbers and planes headed to somewhere across the Atlantic. Photo albums now have entire sections dedicated to snap shots of good-bye parties and airport get-togethers, where every member is either red-eyed from crying or is forcing a smile for that one last picture where they’re all together.
…
The nine-year old girl who looked up to her older siblings, didn’t get the chance to know them while they were still there. Her trips to the airport were too many for a child her age. Her childhood ended too soon. Her memories of the past are now bittersweet. She is now in America, watching, waiting…Will things change? Will families ever get to live in their own country, or will they always continue to pray for an American visa right before they go to bed and dream the American dream?

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