CH 1:  Uprooted

“Mommy, when can we go to our California home?” my dear Annalisa asked, her small, chocolate-colored hands tugging at my sleeve.

         Delarai, my eldest daughter, tall and beautiful, taking the invitation, “Yes, you promised this year we can build our dream home. And you’ll finally let me have a dog!”

My husband, Antoine, chuckled, and in his thick french accent said, “The real question is where does Mommy want to build that dream home, girls.” He turned to me, smiling knowingly, and added, “Have you decided at last?”

A pit grew in my stomach. The concept of home was all too foreign to me.

Based on the vast and sweeping nature of my life, I am afraid to call just one place my home. My history is a complex kaleidoscope of many houses, many beds, in incidental countries with archaic conventions. To settle somewhere seems to forfeit my nomadic existence. So I stand in proud refusal to lay my heart in any one spot, continually longing for the place in the world prepared to include and accept me and my family, as we are.

My life and career brought me to California, the place that served as my residence for many years and all of my daughters’ lives, but my nomadic tendencies urged me to move again as soon as my husband’s job allowed the possibility. Since I had launched my own business, and was free to operate where I chose, it depended on him and his career. My desire to make a change once more began with the adoption of our black daughter, Annalisa.  Everyone talks about how diverse and open Silicon Valley culture is; that you can be from anywhere and feel at home. But the more I connected to people and had authentic conversations, I realized there were few people who actually felt at home there. Most people regarded Silicon Valley as a temporary stop, to show up, make money, then jump ship. The competitive workaholic culture, unfriendly in particular to mothers,  had caused almost every single neighbor I spoke to extreme anxieties.  As far as diversity went, I realized how much progress was needed when I started getting asked questions or pestered by unwarranted advice about my adopted daughter’s race and appearance.

People posed questions about her opportunity to peacefully grow with this community, always identifying her as other. It was the statement of “You’re brave.” Brave to have adopted a black child, implying and reinforcing the idea that blackness brings hardships all their own. Yes, in America and much of the world, these reactions are absolutely valid. My role as a parent comes with many new necessary conversations surrounding race and our place in the world. But she was my daughter, whether by blood or not, and a mother’s job is always to support and love her children with all of her being.

I frequently heard remarks like: “Don’t worry, Layla. You can’t really tell that she’s black.” These offensive words, though reassuring in concept, mimicked my time in America as a young woman. They were reminders of my old identity in North Carolina -- of muttered “Sand Nigger” thrown in my direction. I wasn’t ready to let my daughters experience the same judgement and anger I had and desperately sought out refuge from this mindset to protect my children and my family.

The urgency of this change was emphasized when Annalisa came home and asked, “Mommy, why do people hate me?”

“What do you mean honey, who hates you?

Delarai chimed in,“It was Victor David, I heard him.”

“Victor? Our neighbor? But he is Annalisa’s best friend.”

“He wasn’t saying that he hates her. He said that many people hate black people, and that’s why people are demonstrating outside. They want to tell them not to hate black people.”

“I’m not even black,” I could see the hurt in Annalisa’s eyes, muddled with confusion. “Mommy why would Victor David say such a thing?  I’m brown. Do those people hate brown people too, or just black people?”

“One thing is sure,” Delaria chimes in again, “Victor David loves you, he wants to marry you!”

“Not!!”

The girls ran off giggling and chasing each other, leaving me in shock, trying to understand what had just happened. With the Black Lives Matter movement well underway, these messages were being thrown at my children from every direction and I longed for their protection and happiness. I was still trying to figure out how to explain the state of our world to them and things were evolving faster than I could keep up with.

When the Coronavirus pandemic closed our daughters’ schools, my homelife expanded from mother of two and CEO, to stay at home mom, full time chef, elementary school teacher, and still CEO. So, my husband and I finally decided we needed to uproot again and seek a solution to both our issues of acceptance and opportunity.

Spain seemed the obvious choice, as my daughters and I spoke fluent Spanish. We had a number of friends who happily made the move from California to Spain and were loving it. We identified the perfect school for the girls to attend in a diverse neighborhood. The weather was pleasant, good  enough for us spoiled Californians. So, in a matter of days, we made up our minds, packed our things, and took the first available flight out of San Francisco to Reykjavík, Iceland in August 2020. At this point in the pandemic, Iceland was one of only three countries that accepted flights from America. While we prepared for our final flight to Barcelona, news broke that many cases had peaked there and schools would be closed in the fall.

Antoine and I scrambled to find a solution, now halfway across the world with nowhere to go, we were desperate to figure something out. My husband is a citizen of Belgium who left Brussels at age nine. I suggested we move there, since the schools were rumored to be remaining open in the fall. This way our daughters would also learn about their father’s culture and practice their French while we waited for the world to assume some type of normality. We were trying to think of a permanent solution about where to live, but the question of our future still haunted me, mirroring the anxiety of ‘home’ my childhood had induced.

Antoine’s question stuck in my ears like molasses. I had no idea what home really was and certainly no clue where I might like it to be. Iran was my home, California, Mexico in many ways, even Paris. The idea of permanence was terrifying. In all of these places, I allowed myself to rehearse my future there, but my past was a constant reminder of the inescapability of circumstance.

My mother abandoned me at age four in the first house I lived in. Memories of this place solidified in my mind; a beautiful apartment located under the Shahyad Quarter, in Tehran, Iran.; a breathtaking 50-meter tower in the middle of a lush green square surrounded by a colossal roundabout within the main confines.

The site hosted the beginning and end of many demonstrations leading up to Iran’s Revolution. My mother used to carry me to the roof and we’d howl along with the crowds below. Those moments of freely expressing my inner tensions were treasures for me. Long after I moved to Niroo Havayi, the revolution finally ended on December 12th, 1979. With the victory of the revolutionaries, the site I knew became Azadi square, symbolizing the birthplace of the revolution: The Center of Freedom. I wonder if with that change, I too am destined to have perpetual freedom from connection to one particular home ever again.  

My father was a commercial pilot, often zipping off on long trips. He was away that day, leaving myself, my mother, and brother to busy ourselves in the house.

My mother often behaved erratically; I know now she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, despite my grandparents’ efforts to contain this ‘secret.’ 

On one particular day, her behavior was especially turbulent; I could see something in her eyes I didn’t recognize, something wild. She burst into mine and Soheil’s shared bedroom surrounded by a field of chaotic energy.

“Hi Maman!” I sang out, hoping she was here to be with me. She didn’t respond. She started hurrying around, grabbing things in a frenzy.

“Do you need help, Maman? What are you doing?” I pried. She scooped me up from the floor where I was playing with my brother.  She lifted me haphazardly on the top bunk.

“Are you going to read us a story?” Still, no response. I was starting to get anxious.

 I waited for her to lift my brother into bed as well, but instead, I watched as she removed the ladder from the bunk bed, trapping me in place.

“Maman?” She ignored me again and grabbed my brother’s hand.

“Be good,” she said. She often snapped this at me, emphasizing the difficulties I posed for her. She pulled my brother out of the room with her. I heard the front door open, then close. Then silence.

“Maman?”

I sat there for a long time, calling out to her, waiting for her return. She usually only left me alone for a little while before arriving with necessities for wartime survival.

After what felt like hours, I called out.

“Maman?”

Silence. Tears brewed in my eyes. I called again.

“Maman!”

Silence. I tried to get down from my bunk bed, but it was too high for me to climb off.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that the neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Haszouyi would find me, dehydrated and almost dead. My father worked for Mr. Haszouyi and the two of them were very close with the family. When my mother left, Mrs. Haszouyi noticed I wasn’t with her and heard my calls the next day, using her spare key to rescue me.

I never went back to that place.

I think I knew right away she wasn’t coming back, but even into my adulthood, I never gave up hope that she might look for me someday.

I didn’t blame her for leaving. We were in the center of chaos. Below our windows, the revolutionaries shouted and the Shah’s regime opened fire on them. But I never understood why she took only my brother, relying solely on what others have told me. Some have said that since I was a Daddy’s girl, she knew it would be more kind to leave me behind for him. Few insisted that, as a girl, I was simply not as important. Others claimed it was my maternal grandparents who forced her to leave me behind. But her last words, “Be Good,” led me to believe that being bad was the real reason she left.

My father and I moved temporarily to my grandmother’s house in  Niroo Havayi, now called Piroozi (Victory) Square. I loved that house and the neighborhood. We had a huge rooftop that connected to the residents around us and I would meet with the neighboring kids. We would gather on the roof and play tag or cards from sunrise to sunset. All of the children played together; no one cared where anyone came from or who their family was, we just had fun. I felt accepted by the people there, and it became my new home.

I remember every corner of my grandmother’s house. There was a pond in the middle of the yard with goldfish in it. The architecture was exquisite -- rich, even -- and displayed massively tall archways. Such a magnificent, calm space that stood in stark contrast to the chaos that erupted outside. I remember the constant chanting of revolutionaries and the gunshots that echoed through the empty halls.

One particular day, my father’s cousin came to visit. I was so excited for his visit, and I rushed to let him in. I threw the door open, and there he was, walking up to our home, smiling. Just as he was getting to me, I heard two loud bangs and saw his hands drop to his stomach as two blossoming red stains grew across his pale shirt. He fell to his knees, collapsing on the ground. Blood hemorrhaged from his torso leaving a massive puddle around his body. My grandmother shouted, racing for the door. She took sight of his fallen form and screamed a blood curdling cry of desperation. I too began to scream, starting to run to my cousin as he reached for the entryway, eyes wide with fear, but my father pulled me inside and shut the door.

“It’s not safe,” he told me, trying to remain calm. I wept in his arms, only hearing my grandmother’s sobs and my own.

His death was needless. He was neither fighting for the Shah nor Komeini; just a neutral passerby.  

After only a few months living with my grandmother, my father decided it was time to leave. He fell in love again soon after my mother left, and, only a year thereafter, packed his bags and moved to America with his new wife. I circled around his suitcase crying, begging him not to go, but he assured me that he was going to America to build us a home; a beautiful, big, white home in front of the ocean. He promised there would be no war and certainly no bunk beds would ever find their way in. A white piano would face the window, staring out at the ocean, and I would have the right to learn music, something forbidden to women in Iran at the time.

That was the last time I ever saw my father, with the exception of my dreams. He visited me in my dreams three years later to bid me farewell, three months before my family officially received notice of his death. Somehow, despite his reassuring words, I knew in my heart, that would indeed be the last time my father held me in his arms.

It is in the small moments that I will remember home, or the feeling of it. There is something arduous about returning to a place I once belonged to, always reminded of the hardships faced before, and of the people I lost. Sometimes these places come to ruin and reliving the memories of a place lost is shattering. Forced to change location after location, family after family during my childhood and youth, there was one thing that remained for me, and that was my country. At least I knew Iran loved me and I belonged to Iran. There was no way that Iran would also abandon me. I would forever remain an Iranian, no matter what.

At age 25, as soon as I could go back to Iran, I went to Shahrak Gharb (now called Shahrak Gods). I visited my childhood friends who still lived there, but I could not bring myself to go to the seventh floor where I lived with my aunt, uncle, and two cousins. Now, one of my cousins and my aunt were dead, long gone. Today, my uncle is in a hospital in Canada, in a vegetative state due to a stroke. I stood in the elevator, staring down the control panel, begging my hand to move and to press the number seven but it stayed glued to my side.

         I still dreamt of one day joining my father in the beautiful white house he had built in America. I lived with a huge uncertainty: should I trust my intuition that I would never see my father again? Or should I give in, clinging to faith and hope that somewhere in this universe-- far greater than the depths of my knowing-- stood a tall, big, beautiful white house waiting for me to start my new life? In turn, I felt a deep disdain for my new life in America -- the place that had taken from me my mother, my father, and my precious Iran. No, calling America home would be the fiercest of punishments.

My uncertainty, though excruciating, gave me emotional intelligence and resilience. This suffering enabled me to embrace my future, allowing me to follow my wanderlust in search of a true home.

Given how many residences I parted with, sans notice or choice, I developed a deep rooted fear of building my dream home in one place and leaving it at that. Maybe it’s a final betrayal to my father: giving up on our dream, admitting that I have lost faith. Perhaps, for me, home will always remain a place to aspire to. As my family determines its attributes along the way, arriving there may simply not be a literal physical destination. It is possible that ‘home’ won’t ever be a place for me, but a feeling—a magnificent sensation of being loved, alive and welcome; of being able to love and protect that four-year-old child that was abandoned in me so many years ago.

As I write this, I sit at my computer staring out a window facing a lake in the small village of La Hulpe in Belgium. We rent a small house, not white, in front of a lake surrounded by stunning 30-foot trees with golden leaves that glisten and sparkle in the sun as the wind rattles their branches. I keep building this home into something more and more familiar, but for the very first time, I have decided to no longer display the Iranian objects I have dragged from one house to another. The Iranian rugs, the gold samovar my grandmother gave me, the tea cups with Shah Abbas prints. I cannot bring myself to give them away or sell, but at least I have stored them away to embrace my new self and my life, and perhaps admitting at last that I may never live in Iran again.

And that’s just it. I bought brand new items and furniture seeking out hope in every trinket. I got rid of all old objects and things that I felt obligated to hold onto to remind me of my past. I now break my last sense of home and decide to part ways with them.

They say home is where the heart is, and I believe it. I admit that home doesn’t have to be a place. People can also feel like home, and make the unknown places that much better. But for me, home is a place where things are open and spacious, inspire awe, and make me joyful to be alive. It is a place where there is community. When I lived in Shahrak Gharb, I found this family of friends that made that place home. Here in Belgium, I feel that same sense of community. It feels like home because I can be myself and I don’t have to hide who I am or pretend to be someone I’m not. I can live in jeans and a t-shirt, forgo almost all makeup, and not worry about having the latest hairstyle or how much money I make. I’ve lived most of my life trying to get away from myself and from my past, being chased by my parents’ legacy, always feeling like I had to prove I wasn’t the same as their bad blood. Now I realize, I must come back to myself, and revisit my childhood narrative, in order to embrace my new self.   I find peace just looking out my window, watching swans swim and fisherman fish, kissing my daughters when they get home from school and catching Antoine’s eye when he looks at me, and I know for certain that he loves me. Even though we are in quarantine, my closest friends and family aren’t here, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel lonely; I feel perfectly at home and content.

The first time we drove to La Hulpe was to visit my husband’s aunt. I felt like I relaxed for the first time in my life, surprised to realize I’d been holding my breath and tightening my shoulders. All that melted away when I saw the beautiful, sweeping grandeur of the forest and the stillness of the lake. At first I thought it was just the landscape that made it feel like home, like finally being somewhere I could explore the outdoors and connect with nature and run in beauty. But it was more than that. I lived in California for the past 15 years and, before that, during my highschool years, in North Carolina. Despite their breathtaking scenery, I never felt the peace I do here. I often felt like an outsider, both to the Iranian community and the Chinese and Indian populations that dominated the area. I was the stranger next door peeking in, asking to be welcomed, but hearing only silence.

There is something about being in this home that speaks to my soul. It’s almost ironic that the move here was such a last minute decision of happenstance. It feels sacred, almost. There’s just something electric about the energy I can feel buzzing in the wind and dancing through the trees. It’s almost an unnameable mystery that makes me want to be here for now. I think of exploring, trail running, or meditating, of vision quests and creative epiphanies, and finally writing in the place that urges me to tell my story.

It feels like home here because, for the first time in my life, I have the courage not to care what others think of me. Regardless, it feels as if most of the people around me think the same. We might not speak the same language, but it doesn’t matter, it is like we speak a universal language of kindness. Nothing that was so important in California matters here. My neighbors don’t quietly judge the car I drive or exile me for my political views or religion. When I’m on the street, I feel like a permanent fixture of this town -- like I’ve lived here all my life.

Somehow, this rental house has become the closest thing to a home I think I’ve ever encountered, even though it is a temporary one. The first thing I bought was a beautiful white piano that faces the lake. My daughters are learning to play it from an amazing teacher that we met by accident. There is this strong neighborly feeling that I’d only ever dreamt of -- people even welcomed us as we moved in. Now, their children are welcomed into our home and play with my daughters, sharing food and ghost stories, and putting on fantastical performances. An old retired man created a huge greenhouse right in front of our house, and offers me all of the home grown vegetables a mother and chef could dream of. This is the place where we live now, but it’s still not something that I can take ownership of yet. I am not ready to commit to this place as the ultimate home, but a beautiful rest stop, for making new happy memories, with my children and loving husband, and writing at last, the story of my life.