My Life in Short Stories: 1. The Beginning

Tehran, Iran
1961

It was a beautiful spring day in Tehran. I was seventeen years old and in the last few weeks of my high school education. We were in recess and I was walking with my friends around the campus.

In  High School

I suddenly noticed that the school guard is approaching us and when he got closer he called me by name and said: You have a visitor. A lady is here to see you.

I looked from a distance to see who that person is and I saw a lady holding the hand of a little girl and waiting. I did not recognize the person but I approached her and introduced myself.

She came one step closer to me and I noticed that she has tears in her eyes. She almost whispered: I am your real mother and she, referring to the small girl standing beside her, is your little sister.

My Mother

I was speechless and almost in shock and disbelief. She had a very kind face but looked very tired and suddenly started to cry. I tried to get closer to her in order to comfort her and I heard her saying that she has suffered all these years because she was forced to stay away from her children, meaning me and my two brothers.

While she was talking the bell rang indicating that the recess is over and I have to go back to the class room. She hurriedly gave me her phone number, we hugged and I left.

The rest of the day I was distracted and anxious. I tried to imagine what it meant to have a mother of my own and how it was going to affect my life. At the same time I was questioning it: why so late?

My Parents and my Eldest Brother

I was born to a middle class military family in Tehran and I have two older brothers from the same parents, one four years and the other two years older than myself. You can see our picture here the only one taken from the three of us when I was two or three years old.

Me and my Brothers

Around the same time when the picture was taken my parents divorced and later each got married. Based on the laws of the land my father, being the man, got the custody of the three of us, and soon after he decided that we should not see our mother any more but we must adopt our step mother instead.

In time four more children were added to the family and we were raised under the rigid discipline of my father and an abusive step mother. As I grew up I learned that my step mother had a tough childhood herself and had suffered the loss of her twin babies in her first marriage at a very young age. I also learned that our father had been placed in a military school at the age of five and had endured tremendous hardship himself. I often comforted myself by thinking that these are the reasons for their behavior and felt sorry for them.

Being the only girl in the house, I was the unpaid maid doing almost all the chores including cooking, washing, and cleaning of the house with no appreciation or acknowledgement from others.

My older brothers found a job and left the house one by one at the age of seventeen or eighteen. I was waiting for and dreaming of doing the same thing when the time was right.

All these years we had not seen our mother but we had heard good things about her from my father’s family members. Apparently my father’s extreme popularity with women had put their marriage at risk. We were told by the family that we should never talk about these issues at home and we must keep it a secret.

One day when I came home from the school my father and my step mother confronted me and told me that they know about my encounter with my mother and they want me to stop seeing her or leave the house. First I denied it but then I realized that they have opened my mail and read the letter sent to me by my best friend who had expressed her happiness for me and my Mother.

My Aunt Dr. F. Parsay and  her Husband

I went out and called my Aunt (my Dad’s sister) from a public telephone and told her what has happened. My aunt was a medical doctor and an educator by profession. I loved her and looked at her as my mother and my role model. She later on became the first woman minister of education in Iran. She was loved and respected by every one in the family including my father and my uncles. When she heard my story she told me to pack a suitcase, catch a taxi, and go to her house right away. I did that and my life changed for ever.

That whole summer my aunt and her family supported me and helped me to attend the English language classes of Iran America Society in Tehran. As a result I was able to pass the test and to get a scholarship from the Ministry of Health to go to the American University of Beirut and to study nursing. I had to come back and serve the country in return for my education.


To be continued….