I have left home again, only to arrive at home, or to arrive at my second home as immigrants often call it. And once again I feel a whirl of emotions that pull my insides, emotions that I physically feel in my stomach, my throat, and the back of my eyes. I can cry any second but I don’t because I know these feelings too well, I know they won't last but they’re never really gone either.

Dear Babajan,

I write to you in a language that you never spoke. I love you. I never really knew you, but I know you are a part of me. Babajan, this summer I traveled back home to the city where we were both born, to our very own Tehran. You weren’t there, but your traces were everywhere. I went back for you, I want to know you better. Memory is such an odd thing, I rely on others’ memories to give me a notion of you, of who you were, and how you spoke, walked, laughed.

Your laugh I remember a bit though, from what fragmented memories I have of you that are my own. It is from a time when I was in your bedroom, and everyone else was there too, certainly everyone that mattered to the three-year-old me. Mom, Dad, Sara, Mamani, and you. You were talking and I was playing with your pills in that tinted tiny glass. The glass was small, like me, toddler size, so it belonged to me. I would not tire of emptying it, sipping from it, putting the pills back in and including you in the process. It’s a blur, but I remember hiding under the couch next, upset at you. Was it the same day? I don’t know, memory has a way of playing tricks, condensing time, or stretching it, disposing of the in-betweens but keeping the essence of every encounter. I remember seeing you kneel down on the floor to get me. I remember your apology, not the words but the gesture, the feeling, and I remember loving you again. I loved you so much, Babajan. I have a vague image of you in my mind, giving me a chocolate bar in your room. It must have made me so happy, because to this day I still look for the same purple and yellow wrapping of that same chocolate bar in convenience stores of Tehran.

I have all of three memories of you, and in the very last one, you weren’t really there anymore. You were on the bed, motionless, sleeping. Everyone was there, people I didn’t know. They were towering over us, I was standing next to you, and I was high enough to reach up to your eyes. I tried to open them to show Dad you were just sleeping and there was no need to cry, but he yelled at me, I think, because the next thing I remember is being really upset and running to Mom who was also crying. Everyone was so sad Babajan.

Babajan, I wish you were still here, to see how much you are still loved. I wish you were here to see our Tehran; it has changed so much. I think Tehran misses me each time I leave, just as I miss it, do you miss me too? Tehran is tired, and old, but it holds you and me in it still. Every time I walk in the streets of our city, I can feel you. The bakeries are the same, the sidewalks, the stray cats, the alleys and the people. Do you remember the doorbells the old houses used to have? They were like little white buttons begging to be pressed, kids would always press them and then they would run away, so fast! Oh, and the mulberry trees that had such a grand presence in the city. Every summer people would pick mulberries off the trees. It was one of my favourite things to do, and you must have done it too! I don’t know why, but the mulberry trees don’t have the same presence anymore, maybe because there are fewer of them now. How I loved the streams along the streets that used to be full of water. Our summer afternoons would be spent with our feet in the cool water that came from natural springs, but now they seem to always be dry. Tehran has aged, but there are things about it that will remain forever ageless like the gentle mountains to the north that watch over the city, or the stray cats that never miss a chance to greet you. I know you too loved cats, Babajan, like I do, like every Tehrani does.

I know now, Babajan, that you grew and changed with Tehran just as I did. The more I learn about you the more I feel closer to you. You were 14 when you took the role of the breadwinner of the family, to support your mother and brother, something I could never imagine doing at that age. I was 14 when I migrated to Canada with Sara, and flew to the other side of the world, something you probably never dreamed your grandchildren would do at your age. But back then, did you ever cry? Because I did. I felt the weight of every single letter of the phrase “Cultural Shock.” When you were passing with your permit through the alleys of Tehran at night, to get to the print shop where you worked as a typesetter, during the second world war, I’d take shelter in Toronto’s underground subway stations from the freezing cold winter storms on my way to and from university. All the while longing for the same alleys and walkways that you had rushed through long ago.

I doubt you ever felt as alienated in Tehran as I did in Toronto. It took the city a long time to grow on me. You can’t just call a place home from the get-go. There was a lot of back and forth before I got to where I am now. For nine years, Sara and I would book a ticket back to Tehran the first chance we got. Maybe only immigrants understand this helpless feeling of constantly wanting to go back home, but knowing staying somewhere else is for the better. Your home was always Tehran, and I like to think the Tehran you knew embraced you, helped you grow to the point you were able to build your own house for our family. The same house I was born in, and the same house you passed away in. I love Tehran, Babajan, but I think Tehran is tired now.

After nine years of constant back and forth between Tehran and Toronto I decided to book a one-way ticket back to Tehran. Babajan, you don’t know how hopeful I was, there was nothing that could get between me and my city. Tehran was going to love me, Tehran was going to understand me, like it did you. There would be no self-doubt because I’d finally know myself in Tehran. I’d speak Farsi fluently without ever having to worry about mispronouncing a word. I’d know the city like the back of my hand like you used to. I’d spend my weekends with the family I loved so much like you used to, and on weeknights, I’d go to the lively downtown with my friends, to exhibitions, movies, and plays filled with the culture I knew and felt so well, with the exception of the cabarets and the bars, of course. It was your generation, not mine, that got to enjoy those. For me, the bars, cabarets, and clubs stayed back in Toronto. But no fret, I was home, and for a while, home was welcoming.

I wonder now, Babajan, were you ever hurt like I was? I stayed for exactly four years, and over time I grew more and more tired. By the fourth year, my mind was exhausted. I felt belittled from subconsciously lowering my head every time a man entered an elevator, or looked at me in the street, in the taxi, or in a store. I felt drained for having to pretend I didn’t miss Toronto, and frustrated for having to argue constantly with managers, and accountants for my paychecks. I grew angrier from seeing the value of my savings drop as more sanctions were imposed on Iran. Having to make it home before the curfew at night had worn me out, and I was infuriated for being silently pressured by the society and the culture to constantly think about my age and marital status. Being a Tehrani exhausted me, but what finally broke my heart, Babajan, was seeing how exhausted everyone else was. You’d feel that immense pressure too, if you were here, from the weight of not seeing a desirable future… the weight of despair. The Tehran you grew up in, Babajan, grew with you, expanded and thrived, until the people became enraged and took to the streets of our city to revolt. Dad told me you grew sad when you saw the buildings burning, the city bombed. You told him Tehran will never go back to its old self in your lifetime, and I think when you passed away, Babajan, you took a part of that Tehran with you. Because my Tehran misses you, I miss you.

Were you ever hurt like I was? The first time I immigrated to Canada, it wasn’t a decision of my choosing, but the second time, it was. Babajan, I cannot begin to explain just how much it hurt knowing I was the one that finally decided to leave my own home. Because when you decide to leave home, it feels as though it is your home that leaves you. There is a void inside that you can’t fill with anything, not even with what you just left behind. It takes time to learn how to live with this void, without feeling guilty. But now, although I have made my peace with leaving, and accepted Toronto as my second home, I feel like I’m still on rocky ground.

My dear Babajan, this summer I traveled back home to the city where we were both born, to our dear Tehran, and for the first time in my life, I faced this void inside of me. I finally saw it for what it is, the life I was never meant to have, the life that I’d like to think you got to live. You were born in Tehran and grew up there. It was very hard, but you raised your status in society, started your own business. You built your own house and raised your family in your home city. Maybe I should call you lucky because you lived during a time when Tehran was growing and expanding, and Iran had a prominent place in the world. Maybe you never felt the need to leave Iran because your city was growing with you. So you watched your children and your grandchildren grow up in the same land and country that you did. You witnessed my birth and when you passed away, you were buried in the land you always knew as home. But Babajan, you and I both know by the time my life began, Iran was slowly losing its global status, and the Tehran you grew up in changed its face after the revolution.

Babajan, now I am as much a part of the diaspora as I am a Tehrani. They say the void is a “feeling of nostalgia for the future.” A longing for a future that could have been but is not, a future that can only be imagined. I can’t count the times I would catch myself on my way to school or work, thinking about the trajectory of my life had Iran been different, or had you been alive. I still do it… old habits die hard, and I have had this habit ever since I first moved to Canada. No wonder I hold on so tightly to the very few memories I have of you. How I’ve always tried collecting every little detail, like precious pebbles, from the tinkle of your laughs, to the way you talked in order to capture your likeness. No wonder I can’t fully leave our dear country behind. Because somewhere in my mind, a future has taken shape that needs you to be alive and needs Tehran to be the perfect version of itself.

When I moved to Canada, the initial alienation I felt as a newcomer pushed me to imagine myself in a world where I didn’t have to leave my first home. Where I would grow up, with you in my Tehran, my Iran. I’ve always longed for this imagined life, and while you have passed away, Tehran is still here. This void, or this pain, Babajan, is knowing that my city, that my ideal life in my city, is in sight, but out of reach. It’s knowing I alone don’t have the power to fix my city, to help my people. It’s knowing that the only future I can build which might resemble that imagined ideal life will have to take shape in a city other than our very own Tehran.

My dearest Babajan, I have written all of this to you in a language you don’t speak, but I imagine you do. I think with longing, of you and me in our perfect Tehran meshed with parts of my Toronto. I imagine us speaking Farsi or English, or a mix of both whenever we please. I imagine us hiking the mountain trails of Tehran on early Friday mornings and canoeing in the lakes of Ontario on Saturday evenings. I imagine us walking together in narrow alleyways of our Tehran, by streams of water and trees laden with mulberries. I imagine having my hair down and you picking the saturated red berries off the trees for me while we talk about our day, as a little fawn cat purrs at us. And for as long as I dare to imagine, I will wonder if somehow, by some miracle, this future could have happened to you and me. I hope you know I love you and I will forever miss our walks together, the ones we never got to have.

Your loving granddaughter,

Sadaf