My parents were born and raised in Iran. To them, it was home. Even though it had transformed over the decades since they left, they knew the people and customs in a way I never would.

I connected with the language. The melodious words flowed from my glossed lips, and I became someone else. Persian Ayla was softer. She worried about how she looked. She had a big extended family. She was sassy and flirty. I was jealous of this other self who could only exist for a couple weeks at a time once every few years. Strange, that in a country that in many ways suppresses women, I felt somehow more of a woman.

My uncle took us out for dinner. Prayer was broadcast on the restaurant television. We coolly ignored it and feasted on saffron rice, chelo-kebab, roasted tomatoes, and moonshine smuggled in water bottles. After dinner, adults piled into one car and the young people into another. My young female cousin drove my sister and me, scarved in bright hijabs framing our carefully made-up faces.

Two teenage boys on a rickety motorcycle pulled up even with the driver’s window and reached out to smacked the side of our car. My cousin pulled down the window, cursing them in Farsi. They laughed and landed another hand on the side of her car. “I’m going to knock them over, the idiots!” She yelled, preparing to swerve to the left. “No!” I cried, “No, don’t do that!” Not thinking of any words in Farsi more compelling in that heated moment, I just pled, no, no. And, my cousin finally sped away from them.

I wondered about why those boys risked injury for such a pointless thrill. But, deep down, I felt I knew. Two boys, probably of not much means, from a vibrant and joyous people strangled by sanctions, theocracy, and restrictions, found themselves suddenly close to three girls from another world. They smacked the car, breaking through a barrier between the male and female, between those with means and those without. They were reaching for something, knowing they couldn’t have it but wanting to feel it for a moment. Was I rationalizing harassment? I wasn’t sure. But, even as my cousin explained the situation to her father who approved of her initial inclination to knock the little punks into the dirt, I was happy I had said not to.