250 No god but God
because this is precisely how I am dressed. When I catch their eyes, I
can see a glint of the same anxiety that courses through my body. It is
a mixture of fear and excitement. For many of us, this will be the first
time we have set foot in the country of our birth since the revolution
forced us from it as children.
As part of an effort to reach out to the massive Iranian Diaspora
who fled to Europe and the United States in the early 1980s, the Ira-
nian government recently issued a tentative amnesty to all expatriates,
announcing that they could return to Iran for brief visits—once a year
and not to exceed three months—without fear of being detained or
forced into completing their mandatory military duty. The response
was immediate. Thousands of young Iranians began pouring into the
country. Some had never known Iran except through the nostalgic tales
of their parents. Others like me had been born in Iran but were spirited
away when we were still too young to make decisions of our own.
We disembark and slip into the steamy early morning. It is still
dark, but already the airport is bursting with arrivals from Paris,
Milan, Berlin, Los Angeles. A raucous crowd has gathered at passport
control in nothing resembling a proper line. Babies scream. An unbear-
able odor of sweat and cigarette smoke wafts through the air. Elbows
jab me from all sides. And suddenly I am flooded with memories of
this very same airport many years ago; of linking arms with my family
and shoving our way through a frantic mob, trying to leave Iran
before the borders closed and the airplanes were grounded. I remem-
ber my mother crying out, “Don’t lose your sister!” I can still hear the
terrifying breathlessness of her voice, as though she were warning me
that if I let go of my little sister’s hand, she would be left behind. I
gripped her fingers so tightly she began to cry, and dragged her
roughly toward the gate, kicking at the knees around us to make way.
Two decades and four suffocatingly long hours later, I am finally
at the passport window. I slip my documents through a slot in the glass
to a young, lightly bearded man in broken spectacles. He flips through
the pages absentmindedly while I prepare my well-rehearsed replies
as to who I am and why I am here.
“What is your point of origin?” the agent asks wearily.
“The United States,” I reply.