Letter II

Afra my dear,

You have just turned seven. Even though you have been able to read and write for nearly a year, the only thing you can read in this letter is your own name. Up there at the top. In English.

Your mother will surely read this to you. Before you arrived on this planet, Elham and I sent each other many letters. Fifteen years of distance, and it was words — not video calls — that carried us through. In a letter, you have time to work a kind of magic for someone you love. You can arrange a small party, and hold a pleasant piece of time captive inside it.

I wrote the first letter of my life at exactly your age. Thirty years ago, at seven. Back then I was going to primary school in a small town near Tehran. That very first year, I wrote my first letter to my uncle, and when I dropped the envelope into the yellow postbox at the end of our alley, I thought to myself: now I am someone, and that is that. My uncle was a traffic officer. He made sure cars didn't run into each other and that people didn't quarrel in the streets. I adored him. I adored his uniform. We kept writing to each other for years, until I became a teenager. I fell in love, and the language of the letters and their recipients changed. In those years I wrote on exam papers and went on and on in endless, rambling chatter. "Verrāji." What words should I be choosing for you? At what point in this letter might you stop Elham and ask: "What does that word mean?"

I insist on writing in Persian. I insist that you understand my Persian. I can no longer bring myself to say "read Persian well." After all, Iran is not your first country. Persian is not your first language. You once told Elham: why do you insist I say "angoshtar" when I can just say "ring"? You're right. But I insist all the same. Only — what if my insisting is pointless and your patience runs out? What if these words seem clunky and strange, and you suddenly abandon the letter and me and your mother and go off to play? Where in the world of a seven-year-old girl on the North Island of New Zealand do this letter and I and the entire geography of Iran even fit?

In these seven years you have seen Iran once. A taste that many children of the second generation of Iranian migrants may not yet have had. So I shouldn't make too much of a fuss. I shouldn't complain so much. I should be grateful that you have an "image" in your head of the courtyard at Maman's house, and that Mohammad, the caretaker's son, is your closest friend in Iran.

There are hundreds of thousands of children like you on this planet. Children whose mothers and fathers are my age, who once left Iran in their early youth. Some were never able to return. Each for a reason. And the most important of those reasons is one that you, with your fresh and open mind, already know. A few months ago you told your Indian friend: "There is a very mean person living in Iran who hurts people. The people are sad." However hard your parents try to shield you from the bitterness, you know this number one secret. And I find that remarkable, even hopeful. I live on the other side of the planet, and I am always searching for signs of your connection to Iran. You are there, I am here, and Iran is somewhere in between us. When you are older, will the names of Iran's mountain ranges and rivers mean anything to you? One day when you are a teenager, will you even seek out Persian poetry, will you find the line that says "come, come, for I have a tale to share with you"?

Using this letter as my excuse, you are the first to hear this confession. My French therapist finally laid it bare for me. Just recently. She said she knows why I keep running from having a child. That my problem isn't work or busyness or travel. Those are excuses. She says, you're afraid to plant the sapling of a new human in France and then watch with your own eyes as it "fails to become" Iranian. You're afraid that that sapling, which is a part of you growing outside you, will go on with a non-Iranian mind and a non-Persian tongue. For me, who left Iran fifteen years ago, who has traveled widely and falls in love with other cultures very easily, this discovery is, in its own way, strange and, yes, a little sad. "Not becoming Iranian." How much of being Iranian is the "right amount?"

Afra, little tree. In Persian, Afra means maple tree. Your mom has always loved trees. In the years of my childhood in Iran, she was the first person to open my eyes to the wonder of trees. She got me into the habit of marveling. Of seeing them anew each time. Perhaps that is also what let her be unafraid, and "able" to bring a daughter into this world. Dokhtar and derakht. Daughter and tree. See the magic of Persian! A daughter carries inside herself all the letters of a tree. Your mother was not afraid to plant her little tree on the far side of our planet. She could let go of worry about borders. The mixing of languages brought no dread into her heart. Your mother was able to trust the earth itself, and its generosity.

In her place, I carry small wishes with me. As small as this one: that you, on the day you have become a young Afra, will read this letter yourself. That you will know the meaning of every word and be able to write back to me in Persian. Let it be full of mistakes, that doesn't really matter. After all, I will simply be delighted, by you, and by hearing this Persian sweetness flowing from your hand and your tongue.

Aunt Afsaneh
Paris, 28 May 2026