by
NR:
My family left Iran in 1986 when I was six years old…and of all the fifty states….my parents chose….Minnesota…
On my very first morning in Minneapolis I went down to the kitchen, expecting the usual Iranian breakfast: fresh bread, feta cheese and hot tea…but to my horror, I encountered strangely colored small nuggets…sitting on the kitchen table….in a little plastic bowl.
I watched my cousin who was born in the U.S. pour milk on to what I could only guess was food….and when he was done eating, he drank the pinkish, purple milky residue at the bottom of his bowl. Then I began to cry.
My parents assumed it was because I missed Iran…but it was the breakfast cereal…Fruity Pebbles made me cry that morning. They were a sign of things to come.
A few weeks later, my sister and I entered school at Corpus Christi Elementary…a Catholic School. The first English phrases I learned there were the "Our Father" prayer….it didn't seem to matter that I had no idea what I was actually saying…
My parents sent us there because our neighborhood wasn't exactly a pristine one...my purple, second-hand, banana seat bicycle was stolen from our block…..three times…so they did custodial work at that private school in lieu of tuition.
I spent that year trying to make sense of the world around me.
I vividly remember my family's first Christmas and our very first Christmas pageant.
My first grade class was supposed to depict species of birds for the pageant. I was assigned to dress as a robin red breast.
On the big night, my classmates proudly displayed their beautiful and elaborate bird costumes….but I stole the show…in a way that no kid should ever steal a show.
For one thing, my family's version of a robin red breast consisted of a full bodied, hooded, bright green pajama set…with a red paper circle pasted to my chest….like a bull's eye.
And, as a classmate's mom pointed out, I was the only "coffee colored" kid on stage.
But for me, it was still pretty easy to get used to this country. It actually happened in a single moment… in the hall one day after school. Our principal, a white-haired old nun, named Sister Josephine was glaring at me….I had stopped talking in class…English really wasn't for me anyway, I'd decided…but Sister Josephine…was not happy…
She began to lecture me….and in a flash it dawned on me that her words…the same ones that for months were just noise...started to twist and mold and transform in to meaning...
After that moment English just came to me, in fact my parents couldn't shut me up…and at the same time….they couldn't understand me.
Once my native language was pushed to the background…English took over.
greedily monopolizing my thoughts and my every word. I began to dream in English.
I became a translator for my parents and grandparents
And barring a failed campaign to change my name to Tiffany when I was fifteen, the embarrassing moments sort of dwindled after English fell in to place…and now these memories make my family laugh…when we remember those early days….when this country seemed so foreign and so confusing.
Back Annouce: Nazanin thinks she'll stick with her first name….since "Tiffany Rafsanjani" just doesn't have the same appeal it used to….