Through the Tides

I’ll never forget the day that I arrived in Iran as a 19-year-old girl, many years after having immigrated to America. Given that 70% of Iran’s population was young, I fancied to reunite with my counterparts and see how different I was from them. It was the break of dawn when I stepped out of the airport and watched Tehran’s buildings and streets light up with daylight. I was already plagued by a 24-hour jet lag, but once in the taxi van, I could not fight the urge to start my exploration. The taxi driver was a young man. Once he dropped off other passengers, I asked him to take me on a ride through the city. The city bustled with cars and people running to work. Shopkeepers stood outside their shops and talked to passersby, university students studied in taxis and housewife mothers took their toddlers for morning grocery shopping.

When we passed by the University of Tehran’s famous gates, images of student protests broadcasted in Western media flashed through my eyes. Almost all of Iran’s demonstrations had started in this university, including Iran’s historic revolution and the ensuing protests against the results of the revolution. As I stared at the gates, searching to understand the youth’s disenchanted soul, the taxi driver disrupted me; “You haven’t been back in a long time, have you?” he asked. “No,” I replied. Hi name was Reza and he was a graduate student of electrical engineering. “I work part time to pay my expenses. I might also go abroad for a Ph.D.,” he said. “Funny, I might move back,” I responded, wondering about his reaction. “Then, you must be out of your mind,” he uttered and pressed the gas pedal. “You know when I was 5, I used to love buying ice cream from that old man right there,” Reza said, pointing to a little ice cream store’s shopkeeper. “He’s still there. If you don’t move from here, you’ll always be the same.”

As the sun beamed more intensely, we reached a big, broken water pipe from which a flood of water was gushing out. Reza rolled up the windows and drove straight beneath the pipe. “This is why I want to move back,” I said and rejoiced in the moment’s thrill of simplicity. “And this is why I want to move away,” Reza said. He turned around and sat back and watched me as an ocean of water kept pouring over the car, almost blacking out the windows. Suddenly, a man knocked on the window on my side. I jumped in surprise. “Can you move up, buddy? I want to give my car a wash, too,” said the man.