Bombs were exploding, screams of pain and fear carried across neighborhoods, sounds of aircraft, of missiles, of shouting people. Israel attacked Iran June this year, just like it said it would, but still, it came unexpectedly.
Above the sounds, my daughter’s tearful voice. She and her husband live in Tehran, in a subdivision close to where the first bombs fell. What words can a mother who lives continents away say to assure her child? Distance is a curse. It is a pain like no other, a pain that tears cannot wash away, that searing pain that leads to an agonizing wail that cannot be silent. You might say, “C’mon!,” but I have lived with such pain. From straddling countries and cultures.
My name is Jay Dawn; the Dawn because my mother’s name is Aurora. I am her only daughter but disappointed her in my youth for preferring jeans and t-shirts to frilly dresses. I am a Filipino, raised in the Philippines in a church-going Protestant family, educated and worked in the Philippines. I met my future husband at university. He is Iranian and comes from a large religious family of devout Moslems. Both our families were strongly opposed to our plans for marriage. Both families would not give their blessings, so sure that such a marriage was doomed to failure even if it were possible at all!!! I’ll tell you in a later blog what we had to go through to become a married couple. It’s novel material!
So, we got married, yes. And no, we had no wedding. But Javid, my husband, asked permission from my parents for a dinner party in a beach resort to celebrate with friends and family. They gave permission but did not attend. A few days after, we left for Iran. That was back in 1982 when the country moved from a monarchy to an Islamic Republic after a revolution and had just started it’s 8-year war with Iraq. I was 21 years old; a young bride who naively thought it was no big deal to live in a far-off country at war, with a family who did not want her. It was no big deal that I didn’t know the language. I am smart. I’ll learn. It was no big deal I had no one from my own family. I had Javid. That was enough. Or so I thought. Love with a wonderful person who supports you not because he has to but because he cares, is a great blessing yet sometimes not enough when you ache for the sounds, the hugs, and the presence of your mother, your father, and your brothers. You would ache for things familiar: food, the church, people, the familiar streets, the familiar sounds, the smells wafting from the pots and pans of street vendors, or anything, anything, anything familiar. How many times darkness would fall over my spirits. And how many times I had to crawl out from those suffocating spaces I created for myself. Never few. Eventually ‘though, the years gave me and Javid three beautiful, wonderful daughters, a life of fullness, achievements, and exciting travels. Both our Filipino and Iranian families loved us and traveled life’s journey with us, cheering us all the way. Then our daughters grew up. We celebrated graduation milestones, marriages to wonderful men, and the births of our grandchildren. I’ll share stories with you in later blogs, I promise! In 2014, our eldest sponsored us to come to the United States. We live here now, with me working as a Medical Interpreter, and surrounded by many members of my own family.
Do you see what I mean by straddling countries and cultures? To straddle has many meanings and it also means extending oneself to be situated on both sides of something. But for me, it’s not only two sides. I am still very much a Filipino living in America in a culture so different from the culture and lifestyle of Iran where I lived for 33 years. My days, my actions, my habits, my plans, my languages and even my dreams are never just Filipino and neither solely Iranian nor American. I straddle cultures and I love it!