“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being.”                                              ~Hafez 

We were sitting at a low table during free play, the kind with rounded corners and a surface that always smelled faintly of tempera paint no matter how often it was wiped down. I was drawing with a couple of thick crayons, pushing blue wide across the paper and layering purple over it— a quiet sky closing in on itself.

Two boys at the same table were talking while they built something out of wooden blocks.

“My dad says Iran is our enemy,” one of them announced.

The other boy stacked a block carefully on top of his tower. “Yeah,” he said. “They took Americans and won’t give them back.”

I remember the strange stillness that came over me. I knew about Iran. It was not abstract to me, not just something on the news. It lived in my house, in framed photos of relatives, in a black-haired doll which I’d had since I was a baby, in the way my grandparents answered the phone: “Salām, joonam!”

I knew how to say salām. I knew a few other small words they used with me—azizam, boos, sohb bekheir. Enough to feel the warmth of the language, but not enough to speak it easily, not enough to claim it confidently in a room full of other children who spoke only English.

I kept coloring, very carefully, as if the focus on my purple and blue layers could keep the conversation from affecting me.

“My mom said they’re really mean,” the first boy continued.

I looked up before I could stop myself. “They’re not mean,” I said quietly.

Both boys turned to look at me. “How do you know?” one asked.

“My family is from there,” I replied, and instantly wished I hadn’t. The words felt too big in my mouth, too revealing.

They blinked, processing this.

“Oh,” one said finally. “But you’re not mean.”

There was no cruelty in it. Just confusion, the kind children have when reality doesn’t match the simple categories they’ve absorbed. Still, I felt my face grow hot.

“I’m American,” I added quickly.

They nodded, satisfied, and went back to their blocks. The conversation moved on. For them, it was nothing. For me, it stayed.

That afternoon, at pickup, my mother greeted me with her usual bright smile. “Salām, joonam,” she said, kissing my cheek. 

In the car, I asked, “Mommy, are we Iranian?”

She kept her eyes on the road. “Our family is from Iran,” she said carefully. “But we live here. We are American too.”

I traced the pattern on the car seat with my finger. “At school they said Iran is bad.”

Her hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. “Countries do things,” she said slowly. “But people are not just their governments. And being Persian, being Jewish— ours is a very old community. A beautiful one.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I understood. All I knew was that the word Iran now felt like something that needed quick explanations or reassurances: I’m American. I’m like you. Don’t worry.

The language made it more complicated. I wasn’t ignorant of Farsi—I could greet my grandparents, recognize certain affectionate phrases, and catch the gist of simple exchanges. But I wasn’t fluent either. My mother had chosen English for me, carefully and deliberately. She wanted me to sound completely at home here, untouched by any accent that might mark me as different.

So I grew up in an in-between space: knowing just enough Farsi to feel connected, not enough to feel fully at ease. Carrying a heritage I sensed was precious at home but potentially awkward in public, especially when the word Iran appeared in tense adult conversations.

As a child, that translated into a quiet, almost invisible shame. Not dramatic, not overwhelming—just a small inward flinch when classmates repeated things they’d heard at their dinner tables. A habit of saying “my mom’s family is from there” in a quick, casual tone and then changing the subject.

Years later, I began to undo that flinch.

I started asking relatives to speak more Farsi with me. I practiced simple conversations, stumbling and laughing at my own mistakes. The few childhood words I had held onto became the seeds of something larger, something I could actually grow.

At the same time, I came to see my heritage differently. Persia was not just the country that had once made me nervous in a preschool classroom. It was also the setting of the story of Queen Esther, the courageous Jewish queen who saved her people while living in the Persian court. The tomb of Esther and Mordechai was in Iran, not to mention thousands of years of my ancestors’ remains. My people’s history was woven into that place in ways that were ancient and profound.

Now, when I remember that little table with the thick purple and blue crayons and the boys stacking blocks, I don’t feel the same embarrassment. I feel tenderness for the child who didn’t yet have the language—literally or emotionally—to hold all those layers at once.

She knew how to say salām, but not how to say: This is part of who I am, and it is not something to apologize for. That sentence came later. And when it finally did, it sounded less like a defense and more like a quiet declaration of pride in being, fully and unapologetically, a Persian Jew.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)