In 2015, I began tutoring a young woman from Iran at Literacy For Life. She and her husband had been in the US for six years when I met them. He had completed his undergraduate studies at another university in America, and came to William and Mary for graduate studies. I don’t want to use their real names or their pictures, so I’ll call them Bahar (Iranian girl’s name meaning “season of spring” and Behrooz (Iranian boy’s name meaning “better day.”)
Bahar and I began meeting weekly as she worked on improving her English. She was also working on getting an Associate’s Degree at the local community college, and I was able to help her understand some of her coursework.
We became friends. She and Behrooz had not been able to go home to see family for several years, and she missed them. I became her American “mother.” We walked and talked a lot. Tim and I went to dinner at their house, and they visited us at our house. We met at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore café for many of our “lessons.” One of her favorite things to do was bring a transcript of a Ted Talk that had caught her attention, and we talked through not only the content of the Ted Talk but also the vocabulary, word usage, and grammar.
She attended several meetings of the United Methodist Women book group at the Methodist Church I attended. The women at the book group enjoyed meeting her, and she enjoyed her interactions with them. I remember the first time we went to a book group meeting in a local gated community – Kingsmill. She was very uncomfortable at the guard station, fearing that the guard would give her a hard time because she was wearing hijab. He didn’t give her a hard time, but she also told me that she didn’t want to go into Kingsmill again. I couldn’t blame her.
Bahar and Behrooz spoke to one of our women’s “circle” meetings at the church, talking about their faith and how it connects to Christianity in many important ways. They were warmly received. I can still picture them, sitting in a circle of chairs with about 25 women, talking, laughing, and sharing their lives.
As the 2016 presidential election neared, Bahar and I talked a lot about the threat a Trump presidency would pose to the plans she and Behrooz had made. They anticipated that when he finished his doctorate in the spring of 2017, he would try to find an academic job at an American university, to, in his words, “give back” to an educational system that had provided him so much.
Bahar accompanied me when I went to vote on November 9, 2016. The kind people at my precinct allowed her to go with me as I voted, and she was giddy about the whole thing.
About 10:00 pm that night, as the election was beginning to turn to shit, she texted me: “WHAT IS HAPPENING!” She was no better prepared for a Trump victory than I was. Over the next couple of days, as it became clear that Trump was the victor, she was very worried about what his presidency would mean – not only for the US and for the world, but for her and Behrooz.
She was right to be worried. As Behrooz began to send out inquiry letters to potential university employers, he was met, not with outright resistance, but with uncertainty. Any university that hired him would have to work with him to acquire a green card to replace his student visa, and no university was able to predict what a Trump administration would do to his immigration status. Behar and Behrooz began to think about possibly going to Canada, where they thought Behrooz might be able to get a job.
Things got worse. On January 27, 2017 – a week after Trump was inaugurated – Trump issued an Executive Order that would impact people from a number of Muslim countries, including Iran. Bahar and Behrooz began to realize that their hopes were dashed.
The reactions to what came to be called the “Muslim ban” were immediate. William and Mary hosted a “No Ban in Our Name” rally in the Sunken Garden on the campus, and many local faith leaders spoke out about this un-American policy. At my invitation, Bahar and Behrooz attended the rally with me, and they wept at the outpouring of support they received. Behrooz was so moved that he went to the staircase where the speakers were and asked to speak. His brief remarks focused on how much he and Bahar appreciated the support they were receiving, and how much he hoped that they would be able to stay in the country they had come to love.
As hard as it is to believe, things got even worse. On the evening of the day Behrooz successfully defended his dissertation in the spring, they got word of a pending death in the family that required them to go back to Iran immediately. My final communication from Bahar was a frantic text from Dulles Airport, telling me tearfully that they had to leave.
They left. They only had enough time to pack a suitcase.
Behrooz’s colleagues at William and Mary took on the responsibility of cleaning out their apartment – putting things aside that would be sent to Iran and either trashing or giving away things that they didn’t want. I participated in the “clean out the apartment day” and I wept as I went through my friend’s toiletries, canned goods, clothing, and cleaning supplies. Behrooz’s colleagues took care of the administrative details of terminating the lease on their apartment and selling their car – which first had to be retrieved from the parking lot at Dulles.
The next week, I saw a friend at church who had known Bahar from the church book group. When I told her what had happened to Bahar and Behrooz, she was appalled. I knew that she was a Trump supporter, but when I told her this story about a woman she had known and liked, her response was along the lines of “I didn’t know this would affect someone I knew.”
Bahar and Behrooz are still in Iran. They have had a couple of children since they went back – they named their first child after the family member whose death had brought them back to Iran. Bahrooz is pursing a career that uses the education he received in the US. Bahar is staying home with their children for now, but I don’t think she’ll get around to pursing the education she had aspired to while she was here. We have facetimed a couple of times, and she has told me how American sanctions on Iran have impacted her family’s ability to live comfortably.
Bahar and I communicate a couple of times a year – I usually text her to wish her “Ramadan Mubarek” – Happy Ramadan – at this time of the year. She usually texts me to wish me Merry Christmas. She shows her children my picture and describes me as their “American grandmother.”
After a targeted American drone strike authorized by the Trump administration killed the popular Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January of 2020, Bahar changed her Facebook profile image to a picture of the general. Her comment about this picture was “we will continue, our children will continue, our children’s children will continue. We miss you, our beloved General.”
It didn’t have to be this way.
Heart breaking and horrible.