Nawal Qcasiano
When I was 11, my mother sewed cash into the pocket of my pants and steeled herself against tears as she and my father prepared me to fly alone across the world for the summer. They didn’t have the money or the time off work, but they wanted me to know myself. So with two suitcases full of soqaty for relatives I hadn’t seen since I was two, I boarded the plane, remembering to be brave.
I don’t recall being nervous on the flights, though I was alone from Pittsburgh all the way to Shiraz. I know we stopped in Europe and Tehran, maybe switched planes, and I had one of those badges around my neck denoting unaccompanied minor. Those parts are blurry.
But here’s the scene that’s crystal clear.
The plane landed on the tarmac amid the dusty Zagros Mountains. I laid a thin white scarf over my head and hair and tied it under my chin. I moved with the group of travelers towards the doors of the airport and suddenly, I am squeezed.
Suffocated among relatives pushing and shouting and crying, screaming Nawal, Nawal, Nawal. I recognize my grandparents. My big red glasses are knocked off my face in the bustle of chetoris and khoobis and vaaaay cheqad bozorg shodis. There are so many bouquets of flowers, and cousins my age, and cousins younger than me, and my great-aunts in chadors and honestly? I had never felt so adored. Click, click, click- who even took those photos?
Grateful to whoever did. All that for me? My Maman Ezzy just cried and cried.
My heart became whole in Iran.
That summer in July I turned 12, and my cousins bought me a very cool doll birthday cake. That summer I learned to dance to Andy and Kouros with my cousins. I learned my grandmother made the best albaloo polo. And I learned the courtyard behind the house where my mother grew up was the perfect place to watch my grandfather climb a small ladder to trim the fruit trees.
I visited Persepolis and the tomb of the poet Hafez and fell even more deeply in love with the poetic sounds of Farsi. I wondered on repeat why my parents left this beautiful place anyway.
In my 20s, when I reported a series on everyday life in Iran for the Star-Ledger newspaper, I saw the country through an American lens. Through the lenses that needed to be sliced in various directions for Americans to understand why women had to cover their hair, what the culture of beauty was like, why intergenerational living spaces were crafted purposefully that way. I interviewed then-President Ahmadinejad (twice) and I remember my paternal grandfather wanting to frame that photo of me, flanked by the Iranian President. None of those memories really stick.
I woke up this morning with Iran on my mind. That happens sometimes and I wonder if my relatives came to me in my dreams. I could hear my grandfather’s voice over a static-y phone line telling me he’s proud of the scholarship I won. Then I start noticing.
There are pieces of Iran scattered across our Chicago home. On my bedside table, there’s a black and white image of my grandmother with my mother as a toddler, in the same courtyard where I read the Babysitter’s Club books. I walk across my grandparents’ rug, lugged across the world by multiple relatives.
As I descend the stairs, I step over a doll with traditional Persian village attire that our girls love, given to us as a gift by my Khaleh Zahra. In the living room, I set my coffee mug on a handmade Persian tile that my cousin Neda scoured for at Bazar Vakil, that she passed off along with 11 other beauties like it, to my cousin Sina, who carried them to my father when he visited, who carried them onto multiple planes to eventually, get them into my hands.
I move to the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee, and I see the framed vintage postcards of Shirazi art, touting new exhibits in the 60s, that my uncle Hossain collected when he was a teenager.
The artifacts we keep tell a story.
My heart became whole in Iran.
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Nawal Qarooni Casiano is an award-winning journalist and educator with experience in New York City and Chicago schools. Forever passionate about growing readers , writers and thinkers, Nawal was a classroom teacher, curriculum developer and literacy coach before launching NQC Literacy in 2014.
She and her team design professional learning experiences in dozens of schools and education spaces, and mothering her four young multilingual, multiethnic kids very much shapes the way she views education.
You can find her at the park in Chicago’s Logan Square, at NQCLiteracy.com or on Twitter @NQCLiteracy