memoir

Ghostwritten

I like misfits. I like asymmetrical sweaters and haircuts that are long on one side and shaved on the other. I like leather boots that look worn but clean. I guess that’s why I like modern vintage clothes, which is an oxymoron. I like the word “oxymoron.” I like dry bread and vines that snake in every direction. I wonder why no one takes the time to pick up loose change. I think every song could be danced to, from Daft Punk to the national anthem. I like to collect books, even those I know I’ll never read.

My mom bought me a Barbie doll when I was six years old, the kind where you could bend her arms and legs to make them move. All the other dolls were very stiff, but this one was bendy and flexible; very modern, very cool. Barbies were rare and expensive when I was a child. At least that’s what my mom told me. Now, I played with this doll, which I called Fancy Barbie, all the time. One day at home, I was playing with Fancy Barbie, very proudly showing her to everyone. I handed Fancy Barbie to my aunt and showed her how the arms and legs could bend. Then, while talking, she took one of the doll’s soft, plastic hands in her mouth and accidentally bit off four of the fingers! She had a habit of biting anything that was in her hands: pens, pencils and apparently dolls’ fingers.

I wailed. My Barbie was not perfect. She was flawed. But once I got over it my no-longer-perfect Barbie remained my favorite. She was more than a couple of missing fingers; she was the only Barbie doll I had. And now she was unlike any other Barbie in the world.

I should introduce myself properly. My name is Poopak. It means “a kind of butterfly” in Persian and it’s made me a bit of a misfit all my life.

Well, what I learned many years later, is that “Poopak” actually refers to a kind of bird. According to legend, this bird was the messenger of King Suleiman. In Latin, it’s called an “upupa,” (or ‘hoopoe’ in English) which sounds a little like my name.

When I discovered it was a bird, I felt downgraded. Apologies to the bird world, but butterflies are beautiful and delicate; they emerge from their cocoons better than they ever were before. Birds just aren’t as interesting. I received this unfortunate news long before the internet was a thing, so I couldn’t look up a picture of my namesake. When I finally saw a picture of it, I was pleasantly surprised. I liked this bird. It looked like a misfit, with a creamsicle crest of feathers and black and white wings.

My name was also, unfortunately for little Poopak, very similar to “Pofak,” the name of a popular snack brand, like Cheetos. And it only took those two letters (swapping an “of” for an “op”) to turn me from a butterfly, from the bird of kings, into a bag of Cheetos.

My name attracted bullies. They would surround me, taunting and laughing, calling me “Pofak” until I was yelling and crying for them to leave me alone. I didn’t want people to think of a bag of Cheetos when they heard my name. I wanted to be a teacher, to command respect like my wise father, Hormoz. How would a bag of cheese puffs earn respect?

Like all children, I blamed my mother, Esmat. She’d heard the name ‘Poopak’ once and thought it was beautiful, so it was the name she chose for me. I asked her once, why she did this to me.

“Why did you give me this name?” I complained. “When I have students, they won’t call me ‘Miss Poopak’, they’ll say, ‘Pofak, Pofak, Pofak!’”

My mother remained unmoved. “So what?” she replied. “Then people don't say ‘Miss Poopak’ and they just say ‘Miss.’”

“Nooooo!” I cried. “I want to change my name.”

“What? Everyone likes Pofak,” was her reply before turning back to cooking or some other chore. But I could tell the idea of changing my name made her sad. Eventually, I would turn to my father's brother instead—my Uncle Abbas, the scholar, and the most intelligent person I knew. He was an advocate for Persian names and Persian culture over Arabic influence; one day, I complained to him about how I was being ridiculed because of my name.

“No, no, no,” he said. “Poopak is a beautiful name for a beautiful girl; it’s a kind of

butterfly.” And whether he made it up or simply thought it was true didn’t matter. I liked it; I liked being a butterfly. It meant my name had a meaning—that I had meaning. Later, when my Uncle Abbas traveled to China or Russia (as a child I thought he was a secret communist), he brought me back a comb shaped like a butterfly. It was so beautiful, and it made me feel special. That’s when I decided to keep “Poopak.” Even if it was just a name, it was important. And it was mine.

I held onto the idea that I was a butterfly my whole life. Later, when I visited other countries outside Iran, I could distract people from my weird-sounding name by telling them it meant “butterfly.” Then they would say, “Oh, that's beautiful!” but still have that “weird-sounding name” face.

Facing mockery on the playground, and sometimes at home, taught me at an early age that life can be unpleasant at times, or downright traumatic enough to leave scars. But what those kids at school didn’t know—what even I didn’t know at the time—was that one day, I would fly.

***

In the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism and Persian folklore, there once was a great king who saved Iran from an eternal winter that would kill all the people on earth. King Jamshid and his magical, jewel-encrusted throne ascended to the heavens and with its light and heat melted away the ice and snow, thereby preventing the end of the world. This “new day” led to the creation of an annual celebration called Nowruz (“new day”) to welcome the first day of spring on the vernal equinox, which is when the sun crosses the equator.

According to the Persian calendar, this day marks the first day of the new year, and for more than 3,000 years, millions of people celebrate with festivals, new clothes and gifts of freshly printed money. Schools close and businesses shut down for two weeks. The celebration starts around March 20th and lasts for 13 days.

In Iran, we believe that with the spring, a new life begins. And it’s when my life in this world began, too. I was born at Farrah Hospital in Tehran on the day after the end of Nowruz, the 14th day in the Persian year of 1351, which I always thought of as a good omen because it meant I could stretch the celebration of Nowruz another whole day.

The Gregorian calendar would mark that year as 1972, before the Islamic Revolution, before the fall of the Shah of Iran, and before the Islamic Republic changed everything, including the lives of my family and my people—forever.

Tehran is a huge, bustling city, filled with tall buildings and lined with busy city streets clogged with cars, all of it surrounded by the stunning Alborz Mountain range—the one place to escape the pollution and smog of the city and breathe clean air. I hiked those mountains as a child, often with my older cousin Roya. Every Friday morning in summer, we would hike to our favorite mountain trail, Darband, before the sun came up. Once the sun rose, we would grab breakfast—either from one of the restaurants, or the ‘mountain folk’ who lived there with their mules, chickens, sheep, dogs and cats. They would literally walk their mules up and down the path, offering fruit and eggs to hikers and visitors. It was the best breakfast because everything was fresh from their own farms. Afterward, we’d follow the mountain path the rest of the way down, passing waterfalls and stopping to show off our new white American sneakers (you always wanted to look modern), before emerging back into the city smog that never seemed to go away. I was always thinking that we needed a vacuum cleaner to suck that air out of Tehran.

My family lived in the Voosoogh district when I was born. A few years later, we moved from there and then from district to district throughout my childhood. Still, I have fond memories of that place—of big picture windows that faced the busy street, the sound of cars and people walking outside. Neighbors became like family, joining the many parties and gatherings. Our next home was an apartment in Tehran Pars, and this is where I spent the first several years of my life, living in a shiny, beautiful, and prosperous world filled with everything my family could ever need.

Tehran is such a big, sprawling city that it was impossible to have enough traffic lights for every street. So, the city used roundabouts instead to help control car traffic. This is where we played as kids. These literal parks were oases for us; during the day, kids would skateboard or play hide and seek or whatever. In the evening, everything was illuminated, and vendors would come out to sell banana milk and pomegranate juice. The smell of roasted corn on the cob would fill the air.

My favorite place to play (well, not only mine but all the grandkids) was this huge construction area behind my grandmother’s house. Someone was always building something there; it was dirty with piles of rubble and dust, but that was our playground. Every time we went there, we would run down the stairs to the construction site and play.

But mostly, we played on the street in front of our building, or maybe on one of the side streets if there wasn’t too much traffic. And when the sky eventually darkened, everyone silently agreed to go home—not just because it was dinnertime, but because we knew the city at night wasn’t safe.

Previous
Previous

business