Although my great-grandmother Aveji and my grandmother Bozorg had both been travelers of sorts early on in their life, my mother Maryam had not known anything other than her familiar Tehran neighborhood for most of her young life. This was not a conscious choice she had made. To the contrary, ever since her earliest childhood, my mother was tortured by a burning desire, an intangible dream: The dream of “abroad.”
It was a concept she had been surrounded with all her life. “Farang” was that mysterious “other”, infinitely cooler, richer, prettier, better than the reality of home. It was a dream sold on the cinema screens in Tehran, in the British rock'n'roll records my mother and her siblings listened to.
It was on the lips of all of Maman's classmates who had the privilege of being sent abroad for holidays or studies. Then they would come back a few weeks later affecting a foreign accent on their native Farsi, as if a handful of days was enough to erase any trace of Iranien-ness from their tongue, their minds, their hearts. My mother wanted so much to belong to that coveted elite: She hadn't even seen the ocean!
So, when Maman married my father years later, she immediately set off on a frenzy of numerous trips that took her everywhere from the top of Scandinavia down to the tip of Spain; From the most eastern Japan to the wild wild West of America. Unquenchable was her thirst to explore the boundaries, see as many exotic locales as she could, run through the world as if on a marathon race, without stopping for a breath.
Perhaps her spirit was possessed by the generations of women who came before her, my grandmother Bozorg, and her mother before her, stuck behind the four walls of their golden cage, little sparrows dying to get out and fly up in the sky, to freedom.
During my mother's hectic traveling schedule, I was left with Bozorg of course, given that a baby was not the most necessary travel accessory. My sharpest memory of my childhood in Iran remains to this day the color of my grandmother's kitchen tiles. They were a dark burgundy, like wine, a warm, comforting color.
I spent most of my time there, sitting on my high chair while Bozorg tended to her various kitchen duties. Enveloped by the sweet smell of cooking rice, warmed up by the heat generated by countless boiling pots and pans, it was not a bad place to be!
I remember Bozorg's face like in a dream, a luminescent oval surrounded by dark, wavy curls. Her face was so beautiful, all white and soft, like cotton. Her smile was so reassuring. She was the unwavering, constant maternal presence in my early life.
When my mother came back to Iran, on a temporary break from her world tour, I did not recognize her when she tried to hold me in her arms. Crying and screaming, I wanted to be let back into Bozorg's familiar bosom.
My mother was crushed and decided that the next time she would pack her bags for travel, she would take me with her, baby or no baby. So at the age of three, I embarked on my first journey outside of the comfortable cocoon of Bozorg's kitchen.
I was probably around the same age that Bozorg was when she engaged in the first decisive journey of her life, from her native Hamedan to the Iranian capital Tehran. What I could not realize at the time is that, like Bozorg, I would never sail back again to my native abode. What was supposed to be a temporary trip turned out to be the beginning of an endless exile for my family. The year was 1979.
To be continued
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