Persian cousin
It’s 2023. Unable to meet anywhere else, we sit on a coach in Istanbul, Türkiye, headed to the harbour, showing each other our summer photos. She gawks as I stop on a picture of myself at the beach.
“Wow- you really wear swimsuits that revealing in the West? I thought school was just teaching us propaganda!” She remarks, and we both laugh.
We find ourselves at the cinema. The Barbie Movie is on. They don’t show it in Iran. My cousin cries; it meant a lot to her to hear a woman being told she could be herself, independent of men. A male family member had to sign for her to be here.
The next day, we sit in a KFC, and my cousin excitedly eats, never having tried it before. She tells me about her class.
“The girls are quite accepting of LGBT,” she says with a mouthful of chicken, “it’s just the boys who are intolerant.” She tells me about the girl she secretly dated. They confessed feelings over telegram.
Her and our Mamanbazorg could only afford a short stay. We’ll see each other again! She chirps with a smile as we part ways. I smile too. Maybe we can meet in Armenia in a couple of years. Maybe I could even come to Iran.
It’s 2026. I turn on the news. The U.S. and Israel have declared war on Iran, and the bombs are raining down. I freeze. She was meant to arrive home today, my auntie says. She had been travelling south, down from university. All the students got sent home.
No one knows where she is. No one knows if she’s safe. I open social media. The bombing is justified because the regime is corrupt, they say. This will solve everything. If you’re against this, you support the regime. The deaths are worth the liberation. Civilians are just necessary collateral, right?
I think of my cousin.
