Migration Means…

Migration means… (Forgive the weight of grief in this piece, but it is the truth.) “Hello… can you hear me?” “Yeah, I can. How are you? What’s new? How’s Iran?” “Iran is the same, brother… worse than yesterday. How are you?” “I’m fine, thanks.” “You did the right thing leaving. Nothing works here anymore. Enjoy yourself over there. You’re free, you have a job and a life. Things must be great for you…” (Silence.) “A fancy car… What concert have you been to lately?” “Why are you so quiet? Everything all right?” With a lump in my throat, I said, “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just a little homesick.” “Come on, what’s there to miss? Enjoy yourself…” For me, and for many others, migration means this: Every phone call makes your body shake, afraid something has happened to someone you love and you are not beside them. It means the people you counted the days to see, even for a moment, grow fewer, and you realize it is too late. It means a Nowruz without Amu Firuz, without a sabzeh, without an elder whose hand you can kiss. It means sitting by a pond on Sizdah Bedar and imagining your family spreading a picnic mat, one person grilling kebabs, another putting rice on, while others play dodgeball. Migration means crying silently at an airplane window above your own land, Iran. Migration means calling a mother whose embrace you cannot reach. It means hearing your child’s voice without being able to smell their hair and skin. Migration means being told, “You have mullahs; you’re terrorists,” and shouting that those people are not us. Damn migration means making appointments, buying tickets, taking leave, just to see the people you love. Migration means begging both your own country and the one you live in to let your father come for a few days, as if they were doing you a favor. Migration means the journey is so long and hard that you know Grandma will never visit your home… I said “home.” What home? Can you call it a home when, instead of the heroes of your life, only a few silent framed photographs are there to wish you a happy birthday? Migration means seeing the working children of your homeland in your mind while happy children from another country play before your eyes. It means hearing women sing beautifully while the silenced cries of the women in your own land sound louder still. It means watching young people laugh and talk together on a university lawn while the young people of your homeland are killed and hanged before they ever make it to university. Help me… Help me so that together we can free our home and rebuild it, and live without having to beg for favors… Help me so that one day we can be ourselves. Help me so that I can kiss my soil again and our Iran can be without wounds. Long live Iran. Long live the Shah.