On the eve of war with Iran

Check out this moving piece from our Director of Communications, Tara Ebrahimi. In it, she reflects on her connections to and memories of Iran during this tumultuous time.

“I have many aunts and uncles still living in Tehran and in northern Iran. I am scared for them and for what they may have to endure in the coming months, or even years. But I’m overcome with a feeling that I can’t even fully understand—something akin to patriotism, but the true sense of the word. Not in the way it’s used in the United States now—racism and jingoism and hatred.

But rather, the patriotism of feeling part of a beautiful heritage that welcomes others, that values poetry and art, that demonstrates a generosity that is in the very genetic makeup of its people. I recall the Tehran of my youth, the summers I spent visiting thousand-year-old palaces and picking mulberries off the trees and popping them into my mouth and sipping tea brewed from fresh leaves and buying barbari bread fresh from the stone oven and the sound of the busy Shemran streets and the streams of Karaj. Did the president of the United States ever watch from his grandparents’ balcony as the neighborhood erupted into a bright festival for the birth of a child? Did he ever run his hands along the sun-worn stones of Persepolis where kings led a great empire? Did he ever listen to the music of the Persian language as his grandfather recited Hafez and Saadi? Did he ever let the taste of rose water faloodeh tickle his tongue?”