Naz Noktehporkar
I WAS BORN BETWEEN NAMES
I was born in a country
that would not keep me.
But it stitched itself into my name,
into the softness of my vowels,
into the silence my father carries
when he watches the news.
I grew up in a country
that never claimed me.
But it taught me how to disappear politely,
how to pronounce my shame
in perfect English,
how to smile when they said,
“Go back where you came from.”
Here, I am too much.
There, I am not enough.
In Iran, I am Western.
In America, I am war.
I wear my hyphen like a wound.
Iranian-American.
A bridge made of broken grammar.
They ask me if I speak Farsi.
I say:
only in dreams.
Only in poems.
Only in the language
I lost slowly,
syllable by syllable.
I miss a country I cannot return to
for a childhood I did not have.
I forget which god I’m supposed to apologize to.
I light candles
and don’t know which language to beg in.
I say “baba”
and remember how he left.
I say “maman”
and she flinches
like something is always about to be taken.
Still,
there are girls in Tehran
with uncovered hair and uncovered hearts
who walk like open wounds
into closed courtrooms.
There are mothers burying children
and whispering the names of God
as if He might finally answer.
And here I am
free,
but haunted.
Exiled not just from a country
but from the version of myself
I might’ve been
if revolution had meant healing
instead of control.
I was born between names.
Between veils.
Between visas.
Between silences that do not translate.
And I am still becoming
someone no regime
can disappear.
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