Up until two months ago, my household was proud to own three Iranian flags. One of them is a flag someone gave to me as a gift one Nowruz. It has a lion, a sun, and a sword in the middle of it. This is the way I remember the Iranian flag from my childhood. That sword-wielding lion with the sun behind him has a meaning to me. I’m not sure what, though. In recent years, people whose political opinions I don’t particularly condone have made that their flag of choice. I feel as though if I want to become nostalgic about that flag, I must agree with their way of thinking and I can’t. The flag sits mostly unused somewhere in a closet in my house. I think it’s safe to call this one a closet flag.
One of my flags has three stripes of green, white, and red, without anything in the middle of it. This is the flag I take to gatherings with friends and family when National Iranian Soccer Team has games. It’s not controversial and I don’t have to explain anything to anybody about why my flag looks like that. I put it around my shoulders on top of my white IRAN T-Shirt which I bought from Ali Daei’s himself in Tehran, feeling somewhat patriotic, but all the time aware that this flag is a fake. It’s missing something, but I’m not sure what.
The third flag in our household belongs to my older son. It was given to him by his friends when he left Iran when he was 17. It is an Islamic Republic of Iran flag. He had hung it in his room, covering one whole wall of the room and I didn’t like it. I’m not sure why. For one thing, the colors didn’t match anything else in his room. One time I asked him what he liked about that flag. He looked at me strangely and said: “What do you mean what do I like about it? I like my flag like you like yours. This is the Iranian flag. I have seen it since I was seven and I have watched it be raised at school. I have congregated with other kids around it at morning ceremonies at school, and I have seen it covering the coffins of soldiers. I don’t know the other flags you have. This is the one I know. This is what I love.”
I drove my son to college in Santa Cruz this past September. He had packed his things himself as a 22-year-old is supposed to do. Once in his dorm room, since none of his other roommates had arrived and I guess it was “safe” to be hanging out with his mother, he decided to give me the honor of letting me unpack his suitcases and put his things away in his chest of drawers and closet. This is when I saw the flag in his suitcase. I reached for it thinking, what does he want to do with an Iranian flag in college? He saw me and quickly reached inside the suitcase, removed the flag, opened it, looked at it, kissed it, and put it in a drawer. I didn’t need to ask him any questions. I knew what he wanted to do with an Iranian flag in his dorm room in college.
