True story (1)
In the midst of war, she thinks about her plants.
True story (2)
Her friend phones to say she’s arrived safely at her elder sister’s apartment, which, unlike her younger sister’s, is far enough from Tehran. The bombs drop somewhere between “safely” and “far”, she laughs and says, “Wherever we go, they follow!”
True Story (3)
He heard an ambulance and thought it was the end of the world, “as one does when hearing a siren.” It turned out, his coworkers were throwing a surprise birthday party in the courtyard, which his office overlooks, and the siren, “get this”, was just a balloon. What he finds amusing is his colleagues’ reactions to his face: “I don’t know what I looked like, but their faces were a scene!” He cries and laughs every time he tells this story when someone asks about the 12-day war in Iran after they ask his name.
True Story (4)
She knows she should leave her home, that it is no longer safe. Her friend has a villa north of Iran, which has been spared from the bombs so far. She won’t be alone; her sister will come too. But her cats are here, her piano, and the bed, oh, it looks so comfy. Maybe after she takes a nap.
True Story (5)
She has to remind herself that children died in this war, prisoners were executed without trial, and innocents were imprisoned for noncrimes such as not wearing hijab, to let go of the thought of her recently deceased father’s shirts, which she forgot to pack and bring with her to the shelter.
True Story (6)
She could be from the United States. At this point, she has lived here longer than she has at her country of origin, has celebrated more Christmases than Nowrouzes, and on Trivia Nights, she gets more points on questions about the U.S. than Iran. Since adolescence, her diary has been in English, and apart from the phone calls between her and her mother, which are in Farsi, she speaks every moment in English. Her dreams are either in English or without language. When the war begins, and her daily phone calls to her mother stop, she starts thinking in her native tongue, sometimes writing broken Ghazals, or following her mother’s recipe in preparing Sholeh Zard. She realizes, the language of her grief has remained Farsi.
True Story (7)
On day one, when the internet connection fails almost entirely in their country, the mother and daughter survive the distance by texting through the only application that works. The internet connection is too slow for exchanging any voice mails or images, so they rely on the poetry they can muster to describe a flower or a bird spotted, to keep up each other’s spirits. Day two, through her cousin, who is among the very few people who, at random hours, have access to the internet, the daughter sends her mother the code for buying an international call. On day three, when the cousin no longer has access to the internet, the mother asks the daughter’s friend to give her a direct call and let her know that, though she paid for the plan, it doesn’t work. Neither of them knows how the friend’s call goes through, but the daughter learns, in that minute-long conversation, that her mother is ok. Though it is awkward, every time they reassure each other, through other people, that they are fine and that they love each other. Nine days pass in silence or asynchronous texting. On the tenth day, all failed messages go through at once. They repeat the same stories they have texted and already know. Day after day, they can’t help but call each other as they did before and end every call with “I love you.”
True Story (8)
She’s never had nightmares until recently, and all of them are about war. When she wakes up, she is happy that it was only a dream, then the dream fog goes away, and for the rest of the night, she soothes herself by reading the news, thinking all things must end, even war news, so she keeps refreshing the page.
True story (9)
In an article about the psychological toll of the twelve-day war on Iranians, she learns about psychosomatic pain, which explains why, for a week, she’s been in bed with symptoms of sinusitis in a heat wave with no AC, but it does not explain the thing about her feet. Every night when she goes to bed, only one step away from falling asleep, her feet start moving. It isn’t painful. Though it is annoying, there is something jolly about the movement. She has heard about phantom pain, which is what one feels still in the absence of a body part, as though grieving the loss. Her diagnosis, she decides, like herself, is an in between; related to loss but not of something she owned.
True Story (10)
It was a habit of the mother to buy something for her daughter every time they went on their yearly family trip outside the country, to give her when she’s married. Even though the daughter objects, the mother says she simply wants to gift her something the way her own mother did, “tradition,” says the mother, “a polished word for dowry,” says the daughter. During the war, from her shelter, the mother thinks about the last family trip, two years ago, where she met her daughter in a third-party country. She thinks about her daughter, who tomorrow will have lived outside the country for five years, still without a green card or a permit to leave. She also thinks about the collected souvenirs that are gathering dust.