I was raised to think of Iran as somewhere temporary. A place we went back to, not somewhere my parents had left behind.
My parents travelled to the UK to study with every intention of returning home. Iran was still free then. Familiar. Their future. But history has a way of intervening. A stroke of luck — still-valid student visas — meant they were able to leave again after briefly returning in 1979, just before borders closed. My life could have been unimaginably different. Instead of Tehran summers, I grew up in Britain, tethered to a country I loved but could never quite claim.
