by Sara Saedi
The answer was simple. The answer was my parents. Most of my friends’ parents had come of age in the era of free love, but my maman and baba had totally missed out on the sexual revolution. While they grew up in a more progressive Iran before the Islamic Revolution, the country was still conservative when it came to matters of sex, and Persian women were especially modest on the topic of sexuality. Before my mom was married, she was strolling around Tehran with her female cousin. A convertible full of handsome young men slowed down next to them, and a flirtation ensued. The guys got out of the car and exchanged phone numbers with my mom and her cousin. But unbeknownst to them, the entire interaction was witnessed by one of my dayee Shahrdad’s friends. When my uncle heard secondhand that my mom was flirting with guys in the neighborhood, he was quick to confront her. She admitted it was true, and he reacted by promptly slapping her across the face, which is almost comical, because my whole life I’d describe my uncle as a total softie who wouldn’t hurt a fly. After that experience, she wasn’t all that interested in pursuing any secret relationships, which was why marriage was her first real attempt at dating.
My mom’s upbringing in Iran seemed to permeate other areas of her life in America. Even when my sister and I were teenagers, she seemed shy about changing her clothes in front of us. Her modesty totally rubbed off on me. I became quite the ninja when it came to undressing in our high school locker room, developing strategies to change my clothes so that no one would actually have to see me naked. My underwear always came on and off beneath the shield of a towel. I’d often clasp my bra on over my towel, and then pull the towel down so that no one could get a good look at my tiny boobs.
My parents didn’t talk to us in depth about sex, except to tell us that we were too young to be having it and that it was all boys wanted. I knew that my dad was a lothario before he met my mother, and that my mom had never had sex with anyone besides him. I also sensed that she resented this detail about their past. If the present could remain unchanged, then she would have gladly gone back in time to get more action. My mom even told me that she was a believer in premarital sex. Even though she couldn’t actually fathom the idea of her daughters having sex until we were well into our twenties, she did not want us to wait until we were married to do it. That didn’t mean she wanted us to throw ourselves at random men, but she hoped we’d test-drive a few before settling down. It was a truly feminist approach to sex, and when my mom explained it to me, I thought she was the coolest person ever.
Slash and I continued to date, off and on, for the next year. And we finally had sex, the summer after my freshman year in college. I’d made plans to stay over at his apartment and told my parents that I was staying the night with Izzy. I wore matching undergarments and slathered my legs in shimmery lotion. I was ready to throw my hymen an epic good-bye party. We started the night off by going to the movies, and when we got back to his place, I implied that I was “tired” so Slash and I could say good night to his roommates and retire to his bedroom. But instead of joining me, he opted to stay up and play video games with his buddies. I remember lying in his bed, tossing and turning, wondering why he’d lacked the ability to read my mind. A couple hours later, he returned to his room and complained that his stomach hurt. I was furious. We got into a huge argument, and he admitted that there’d been too much buildup to consummating our relationship. He was even more nervous than I was at this point. Naturally, I found his fears and insecurities totally irresistible, and the night ended in careful, slow, and awkward sex. I was glad I was with someone I loved, but it turned out that nothing about it was as scary as I’d imagined. All I could think after it was over was that sex was wildly overrated.
But I was still afraid that my parents would be angry or ashamed of me if they found out I was no longer a virgin. I didn’t have any intention of telling them, but keeping it from them also felt weirdly dishonest. About a month later, my mom found out anyway. My parents, Kia, and I had taken a weekend trip to Carmel, a quaint beach town about ninety minutes away from our house. We sat down for lunch, and my brother and dad left the table to use the bathroom. It was during this five-minute window that my mom asked me if there was anything Slash and I had done that she should know about.
I was so stunned that I didn’t know how to respond, but the answer was written all over my face. My mom went pale. She had brought it up so casually because she never expected the answer to be yes. What followed was the most uncomfortable lunch of my entire life. My dad and brother had no idea what had happened, but my mom and I were both on the verge of passing out.
The next day, my mom gave me a stern lecture that confirmed my fears that she was ashamed of me. She wanted to make sure that Slash and I were using condoms, and that I was being careful. Not just about pregnancy, but about my feelings, too. Sex wasn’t something to be taken lightly. She made it clear that she thought I was too young, and that she wasn’t happy about this new development in my love life. Though I knew my parents were generally more traditional about sex, I was still surprised by how distraught she seemed during this conversation. She was the same woman who had condoned premarital sex. Not to mention, I was two months shy of turning nineteen—the age she was when she married my dad. What happened to her empathy?
September 5, 1999
Kia and Baba went to the bathroom and Maman picked that moment to ask if Slash and I had had sex. Of course like I knew I would, I turned beet red. I was so mortified that it was obvious what the answer to her question was. I could tell she was extremely disturbed although she tried not to show it. She was mostly upset that I hadn’t told her, but I still wish she hadn’t found out. She looks at me different now. She thinks I’m too young and the whole pregnancy issue makes her nervous. I understand where she’s coming from, but the way she acted nearly devalued the experience of not sex, but making love.*1
Two months later, when I was back at college, our relationship hit a wall. I didn’t want to admit it at first, but I could sense that Slash was acting distant. “Are you going to break up with me?” I asked one night, over the phone.
“I don’t know…,” he said.
“Do you still love me?” I said, the fear surfacing in my voice.
“No…”
I got off the phone as quickly as I could. Even though it was midnight, I dialed my mom in tears and told her that Slash had said he didn’t love me anymore.
“What do I do?” I asked, hyperventilating.
“Sara joon,”*2 my mom replied, “why would you even want to make things work with someone who says they don’t love you?”
Once again, my mom had proven she was the second coming of Confucius. She was right. Why would I want to be with someone who didn’t love me? Before I’d called her, I was already trying to figure out how to convince Slash that we were meant to be, but my mom had given me the clarity that I needed. The moment Slash answered no when I asked if he still loved me, the relationship was over.
My mom remained my rock the way she always had through my romantic dramas, but most important, she never again made me feel ashamed or less than for sleeping with Slash. I was worried I’d get a lecture about how it wasn’t worth having sex with a boy if I couldn’t even trust him with my heart, but my maman didn’t pass any judgment. From that day forward, as more guys came into my life that didn’t seem to deserve my love or return my affection, I simply reminded myself of my mom’s advice. Why would I want to make things work with anyone who didn’t love me? Why would anyone?
* * *
*1 If there’s one thing that embarrasses me in this book, it’s my use of “making love” in this diary entry.
*2 Joon, a term of endearment in Farsi, means “dear.”
I tried to keep busy, but I kept crying. I fell asleep for an hour. But I thought I was going to puke. I tried to barf in the bathroom, but it didn’t work. It was so awful. I talked to my parents and things are good now, but
that day really messed up my way of thinking about things. I think my parents are miserable. And I think they have a lot of ill feelings toward me. I don’t know about having kids. I feel like more of a burden and I don’t trust my parents as much as I used to.
—Diary entry: March 29, 1998
My light blue corduroy pants that I’d proudly purchased with my 50 percent employee discount at the Gap were ruined forever. Hot drips of my café mocha spilled onto my thighs, but I was crying too hard to hold the cup still as my dad weaved through traffic on 280, right past the Winchester Mystery House, the only recognizable San Jose landmark and one that I had never visited in the fifteen years we lived in the city. Sarah Winchester was famously convinced that spirits cursed her family and that if she kept building staircases that led to nothing, the confused ghosts wouldn’t kill her. Right about then, I was considering doing the same thing to our town house so my parents wouldn’t be able to hunt me down and end my short life.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, not recognizing the route we were on as the one that normally got us home.
“Mebareemet ghabrestoon,” my mom responded drily. This directly translates to “We’re taking you to the cemetery.” I didn’t know it at the time, but this is an Iranian saying used when someone complains about having to go somewhere. I just thought it meant my parents were going to murder me.
There were only two other things I was able to process during that tumultuous drive. My parents were in the throes of a nervous breakdown, and I had driven them to the edge of insanity. If my dad slowed down the car to shove me out of it, the cops probably would have deemed it a fair punishment.
The car ride that day in March is forever imprinted in my mind as the worst fight I’ve ever had with my parents. They’d taken me out of school for the day to deal with immigration paperwork, but as the end of my senior year was approaching, all I wanted to do was hang out with my friends; flirt with Slash, who was then on the precipice of becoming my boyfriend; and head over to Izzy’s after school to gossip about our friends and potential love interests. Our favorite pastime was playing a game we’d invented called Random. We’d load her five-disc CD player with our favorite albums and treat it like an oracle. We’d ask questions about our future (“Is Slash into me?”), then hit the “random” button on her stereo system. Whatever song played would be the answer to the question. But instead of learning what the future held, I’d been dragged to downtown San Jose so my parents could fill out paperwork with our immigration lawyer.
I didn’t care if we were supposedly nearing the end of our legalization nightmare. We were always supposedly nearing the end of our legalization nightmare. I wanted to be a normal teenager. I was sick to death of visits to the INS that required standing in lines that made the DMV look like a spa day. Just renewing my employment authorization card required waiting outside at 6:00 a.m. for the doors to open three hours later. Most teenagers camped out for concert tickets, but I had to camp out so that I could continue to legally work in the country. Stupidly, I always thought the agents would be nicer to me than other immigrants, because at least I spoke perfect English. But they treated me with the same disdain they did everyone else who passed through the metal detectors, all of us equally confused by their rules and their paperwork that always seemed to be missing some important piece of the required file. There was no worse feeling of defeat than waiting at the INS for five-plus hours, only to be turned away for not presenting the proper paperwork that you could have sworn you’d never even received in the mail. I had reached my boiling point. I officially had illegal immigrant fatigue, and it had caused the most dramatic family rift I’d ever experienced.
That particular day, I threw a fit when it looked like our dealings at our lawyer’s office would take longer than expected and I wouldn’t get to hang out at Izzy’s. By then, I’d gotten used to bitching under my breath when it came to our immigration issues, only to have my parents frantically apologize for the messy state of affairs. But this time, something snapped inside of them. All the uncomfortable and vicious fights I’d witnessed between my American friends and their parents suddenly seemed like child’s play. I couldn’t bite my tongue or stop myself from talking back. I was acting like every rude teenager I’d been secretly horrified by.
Years of frustration and stress were spilling over on both sides. On my parents’ end, they couldn’t understand why I was making an already challenging situation worse. On my end, I realized something I’d never quite verbalized before: this had nothing to do with me. It was their fault. Why didn’t they immediately apply for political asylum? Why didn’t my mom bite the bullet and enter into a fake marriage to get us green cards faster? Why did they trust incompetent lawyers who steered us in the wrong direction, just because those lawyers were Iranian? I should have been cursing the system, but my mom and dad were much more tangible scapegoats. But they no longer had it in them to quietly take the blame and apologize for inconveniencing my life. For once, they decided to fight back.
The most disturbing part of our argument in the car that day was the moment my dad declared that he hated his life. Looking back, I know he didn’t mean it at all. It was a comment he made out of sheer exhaustion and anger. This was still the man whose motto was “Don’t worry, be happy.” Nothing seemed to get under his skin. But hearing him say that he hated his life brought on a sobering realization for me: my parents were human. They had their own disappointments and regrets. Over the years, I had never considered their happiness. It was just a given. Of course they were happy. They had three healthy children who adored them (most of the time). What more could they want in the world? The thought of them waking up feeling sad or miserable made me sick to my stomach.
After years of paperwork, lawyers’ fees, and an unwanted divorce, my parents were finally falling to pieces. If anyone out there thinks that undocumented immigrants are privately high-fiving each other and throwing backyard barbecues to celebrate their free ride in America, let me assure you that is not the case. What followed our blowup were heartfelt apologies on my end and my parents’ end, but we had no idea that our immigration status was about to get far more complicated and scary. The worst was yet to come.
In June of that same year, my sister was about to turn twenty-one. This meant she could drink legally and go to bars. It also meant she could buy me alcohol upon request, and that we looked enough alike that I could use her ID to go to bars myself if I wanted. She was as excited as any warm-blooded alcohol-loving American would be. And that’s partially why my parents had decided not to tell her that turning twenty-one also meant that she would no longer be allowed to get a green card through the application we’d filed with my uncle as our sponsor. This is what the INS calls “aging out.” It’s a term used when an accompanying child on an application turns twenty-one before the case has been approved. That means the child can no longer be granted permanent residency as part of their parents’ application. We’d filed to get a green card through my uncle in 1985, and after a thirteen-year waiting period, my sister was about to get kicked off our application. While my mom, dad, and I would all be able to become permanent residents, my twenty-one-year-old sister would have to start the process all over again. If that happened, her only hope would be temporarily marrying our cousin (who, unbeknownst to us at the time, happened to be gay and in a committed relationship).
Anytime my sister called from college to catch up, I had to keep the terrible aging-out secret from her. My parents insisted that we didn’t mention it to Samira. Why worry her if we could manage to alleviate the issue? She was in the middle of finals and there was no way she’d be able to concentrate if she knew about what we were dealing with back home. Nearly five years before, she had been the one to break the news to me that we were at risk of getting deported, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that she might be the illegal immigrant black sheep of the family.
In a nutshell, her
e’s how the process worked and exactly what we were up against. We received a notice in the mail that our application for green cards (through my uncle) was being considered. It had been more than fifteen years since we’d moved to the country, so we were beside ourselves that our illegal immigration problems were finally coming to a close. But what followed was more waiting. After your application makes it to the top of the pile, you get another notice in the mail for an appointment to get your fingerprints taken, which are used for a background check. Once your background check gets approved, you receive your interview notice in the mail. The process after the “your background check is up to snuff” letter can still take years. But we didn’t have the luxury of time on our side anymore. My sister had to get her interview date on the books before her birthday or she was screwed. So our lawyer (also known as the white savior in this story) rushed my mom’s and my sister’s applications. This meant once their fingerprints were received, they’d immediately get assigned an interview date and my sister would avoid aging out.
With a few days to spare, my mom and sister got their fingerprints sent in, and it seemed like everything was falling into place…until a storm on the East Coast threw a major wrench into the plan. Due to bad weather, it looked like the fingerprints would not arrive in DC in time. Samira was going to turn twenty-one on Monday, June 22, 1998. By Friday, June 19, there was still no indication that the fingerprints had been received and that the interview date had come through. At this point, my parents were more desperate than they’d ever been. So they decided to drive straight to the INS and beg. The offices were closed when they arrived, but they banged on the door and asked a janitor to let them in. (This was pre-9/11. I have a feeling they’d be arrested for that now.) When the janitor saw that they were both in tears, he took pity on them and ushered them inside. They must have looked pitiful enough, because they managed to get face time with the immigration officer on their case.