12. Mona
MONA
“ W hat changed?” Ari asks, genuinely curious.
I like Ari. She’s a steadfast friend and truly listens without judgment. I never thought I’d be friends with someone religious. My family ran away from overtly religious people.
But Ari has shown me that not all religious people are overbearing zealots desperate to force everyone to adhere to their beliefs.
Ari’s belief in God is personal, something she holds dear.
The way she talks about God and faith is beautiful.
She’s never forced me to accept her beliefs or judged me for being different.
If Jesus were real, he’d be proud of Ari.
We met in the first year of college. We both studied criminology, but over time, our academic interests shifted. Ari went on to law school while I leaned toward social work and outreach. But one thing that never fluctuated was our friendship.
I consider her question, unsure how to answer it.
Being Iranian in the West is a complex balancing act.
It’s hard to explain the various emotions that plague Iranians because Western media’s bias and limited portrayal fail to capture the full complexity of Iranian experiences and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
People use us to propagate information depending on the demographic they want to sensationalize.
We’re victims of persecution by a religion they hate, or we’re extremists they despise.
Iranians are ambiguous, especially those of us who aren’t religious.
An Iranian without an accent can truly be anything they want within the Western world.
Speak English with the accent of the locals, and you become a chameleon.
We claim Portuguese, Italian, Greek, and Spanish descent—an array of relatively safe people with an olive complexion.
Laughter bubbles out of me as I remember a trip to Greece a few years ago.
I looked across the Mediterranean Sea and contemplated how artificial borders and differences in faith labeled one group human and the other not to so many in the West. I felt a sense of shame for all the years I denied my identity and avoided having friends at my house so they wouldn’t hear my mother’s accent.
All those times I refused to take her delicious homemade Persian food for lunch for fear of the taunts.
Now my mother is gone, I’d do anything to go back and show everyone how lucky I was to have that woman as a parent.
A woman who sacrificed for me. A parent who loved my siblings and me unconditionally.
“I grew up. I spent years turning my back on a culture and the people who formed me because I wanted to belong with people who would never accept me.”
Ari places her hand on her heart and exclaims in shock, “You’ve always been accepted.”
I laugh nervously. “I don’t mean to sound so dramatic. Many non-Iranian people have been welcome and loving additions to my life. I mean, look at my large, unconventional extended family.”
“I know. Girl, you have five smokin’ hot brothers-in-law. How did both your siblings end up in polyamorous relationships with the most attractive people? Even Cyrus is an exquisite man despite his scars.”
My lips turn up at Ari’s comment. It’s so rare to see religious people being okay with my siblings’ lifestyles. Ari talks about it like it’s a beautiful thing. And it is. The amount of love I have in my life because of these unions is a true blessing.
“What I mean is, you can’t deny who you are forever,” I clarify. “Eventually, it all catches up with you. I don’t think we can truly know who we are if we oppose the things that form us. Iran molded me. Iranians nurtured me. What I do now is because of the brand that country left on my soul.”
“How so?” Ari asks.
“My oldest memory is of a young boy, no older than four or five, with pleading eyes and dirt-smudged cheeks, begging for money on the bustling streets of Tehran. At the time, I was unaware of the country’s destitution, nor did I care.
I was a six-year-old girl, not yet familiar with the true brutality my country hid.
Little did I know that those careless years would soon end abruptly. ”
“Yek toman, dari?” the boy asked.
He only wanted a dollar, but my Baba gave me that money to buy myself a sweet. To a six-year-old girl who was in the habit of being treated like a princess and had everything she wanted, giving up my sweets to this boy seemed like the worst travesty to have befallen me.
My gaze moved from the money in my palm to the boy’s outstretched hand to his thin frame.
His body was the most haunting. Thin arms and legs covered by skin. His clothes were tattered, and he smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a while.
I’d heard my parents whisper about the beggar children and how they were beaten if they didn’t meet their quota. I blinked back the tears that threatened, unsure if they were for the boy or the pending loss of returning home without the sugar I craved.
“Mona!” my mother shouted as she barreled toward me. She appeared angry. She was frowning, and her hands trembled. My mother was seldom angry unless she was frightened.
At that moment, I had to decide what to do before my mother reached us. I hurriedly placed the money in the boy’s hand and ran toward her.
My parents didn’t ask me questions that day or even that night when they tucked me in. But as I closed my eyes in the safety of my bed, under a warm blanket with a full stomach, the image of the boy’s face lingered in my mind.
I didn’t understand how I could be so comfortable while he suffered. That was the day I realized the brutality of the world and its callous, unjust nature.
“Damn, Mona. That’s intense.”
“Yeah. I’ve never forgotten that little boy’s eyes, and I don’t think I ever will.
There’s something haunting about eyes consumed by hunger.
They have a way of pulling you under until you suffocate in the depths of their sadness.
Don’t get me wrong, there were times when I was a selfish little shit.
I took everything for granted and thought life was so unfair because I had to wear Azadeh’s hand-me-downs instead of getting the trendiest outfits.
When I think back on it now, I can’t help but feel shame about it. ”
“You were a kid. That’s normal. Teenagers are little shits. Hormones, you know?”
“I’d like to blame it on that, but I was ungrateful.
An extreme brat. I didn’t even realize how good I had it until my mother died.
Looking back now, I’d give anything to have been a little kinder.
It couldn’t have been easy for my mom. A new country, a single mom, three kids.
While she struggled to keep us healthy and fed, I was upset about not having new shoes. ”
We fall quiet for a moment before Ari asks, “How is it going at the shelter?”
I welcome the shift in conversation. Discussing my feelings about Iran is both freeing and depressing.
“I love it. It’s great to make a difference in people’s lives.
Switching from policy to outreach is the best decision I’ve made.
I feel like I’m making tangible changes now and positively affecting lives.
Those who come into the shelter seem to trust me, and I never want them to regret that decision.
The people I work with say I’ll eventually become hardened to it, but I don’t see that happening.
If I can help one person, it’s all worth it. ”
Ari smiles. “That’s great, Mona.” She shifts in her seat, leaning toward me to whisper, “Why does that guy in the glasses keep looking over here?”
Ari’s words are heavy punches to my gut because sometimes I feel like someone is watching me.
My therapist thinks it’s PTSD, but it’s more than that.
When I attempt to discuss my trauma with anyone, even my sister, an icy dread seeps into my bones, leaving me speechless.
I think people are staring at me, seeing a paranoid, irrational woman.
Yet even when I try to shake it all off as a residual effect of being held captive, I can’t ignore the twist in my gut.
It’s hard to explain. It’s like the soft brush of a palm against my flesh or a warm breath teasing the back of my neck.
It’s a lingering scent in the air: clean, sharp, and familiar. A warm wind carrying a memory.
It’s not constant. I don’t go through my day in a state of paranoia. It’s fleeting moments when I swear someone is watching me.
At times I even pondered if it was paranoia, but then the deliveries started coming.
Random grocery orders or food delivery. Initially, I was hesitant to eat anything, but the reputation of the delivery company put my mind at ease.
I should have been fearful, but the first order, containing Iranian items like saffron, cardamom tea, rose water, basmati rice, and herbs, made me feel warm and nurtured. Whoever sent it knew I was Persian.
Each package since has felt like a ghost of my mother wrapping me in comfort, feeding parts of me I didn’t know were starving.
What truly unsettled me, though, wasn’t the memories of her. It was the echo of them —two men whose names I haven’t dared speak aloud in two years. Two men I once believed could see every fractured part of me… and maybe still do.
Two men I miss more than I care to admit.
“Why is he wearing sunglasses inside a coffee shop?” Ari's question pulls me from my thoughts.
I shrug. “I’m sure he has his reasons. Maybe he just had eye surgery.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “Maybe he’s checking you out?”
Ari snort-laughs. “That’s instant serial killer behavior.
Oh, my god, what if he wants to kidnap you?
Or me? I love the whole Stockholm Syndrome trope in books, but I don’t want to live that fantasy.
With my luck, Mr. Hotstuff over there would take me to a seventy-year-old Hugh Heffner type who would chain me up in his basement and force me to do disgusting things to his shriveled penis. ”
Laughter bursts out of me. “The issue isn’t the kidnapping, but that the penis could be of the geriatric variety?”
Ari slaps her palm to her face and lets out an audible grasp. “I’m so sorry. I’m such a lousy friend.”
My lips tip up in a reassuring smile. It’s interesting how people react to what I went through two years ago. Apparently, being kidnapped by a money-hungry cult leader is a taboo subject for those who’ve never experienced it. “It’s not a big deal. It was years ago. We can be normal about it all.”
Ari sips her iced coffee while she studies me.
Silence is something that’s always bothered me.
I hate it. There has never been a moment of comfortable silence in my life.
I sit with my discomfort, fighting the sudden urge to crack open her head to figure out what she’s thinking.
I wish people would ask what they want to know instead of being so damn weird.
“You never talk about it, so I assumed something bad happened, you know?” Ari finally says. “In my experience, avoidance is usually due to trauma.”
Ari isn’t wrong. I have trauma. A shit load of trauma.
The healthy thing would be to tell my therapist and work it out, but I’m Persian, and we don’t like people to know our secrets.
Oh, the way of Persian people? Bottle it up, swallow it, put it under the rug, cover it with a blanket—anything other than revealing the chips and cracks in your armor.
I always thought it was stupid to feel that way.
But the thought processes are lodged in my DNA.
My mother tried so hard to break us of it.
Growing up, nothing was too shameful or taboo to discuss.
My mother’s only rule was to not lie to her.
She promised we wouldn’t get in trouble as long as we told the truth.
That woman even accepted my sister having three boyfriends.
Even with a mother like mine, I wanted to pretend it was all okay, and if it weren’t, I’d fabricate a story to convince myself it was.
This moment feels perfect to shed the heavy burden of those few weeks when I was kidnapped. But a nagging doubt creeps into my mind, whispering that my struggles were insignificant compared to the other women.
Those women were abused in violent ways I don’t think I would ever recover from.
Those memories keep me silent about my suffering, which was nothing in the grand scheme of things.
So what if I fucked two hot guys to keep myself safe?
Two hot guys who were kind to me for the most part. Two hot guys who saved me.
I glance at the man in the glasses briefly before lifting my gaze to the clock on the wall above his head. “Oh, crap. I’ve got to get going. I have a shift at the shelter.”
“So, I guess you won’t be coming out with us tonight?”
“No.” I shake my head.
“You never come out.”
I laugh. “It’s just not my scene.”
“Dinner with people your age isn’t your scene?”
I close my eyes momentarily. “I just need to focus on work for now.”
It’s hard to explain to Ari that I’m not the same person I was two years ago.
Back then, I was out until all hours of the night, usually drunk.
I was soaking in life as if I had nothing to lose.
Two years ago, I didn’t know what I know now.
I was still living in denial. I was oblivious to the world’s harshness despite being my mother’s daughter and having a sister who risked her life for years to save the very women I witnessed being brutalized and did nothing to help.
Ari nods and gives me a quick hug before I head out the door.
I didn’t help those women back then, but I’m determined to help anyone I can now.