Mina fiddled with the end of her black braid while her homeroom teacher droned his instructions about the assignment. Really, why didn’t he just say, “Write a one-page essay about your dream job”? But she waited until he’d finished, then flipped her braid back over her shoulder and clicked open her pen.
Dreams are easy. Reality is hard. Still…maybe this essay could help with the hard reality, since it would be a thing she could hand her parents, the next time that discussion came around.
AN AMERICAN GIRL’S DREAM
Forty-three years ago, a little girl escaped Iran with her mother and her baby brother. She was too young to understand why her world had ended, too young to know why her father wasn’t with them, why her mother kept crying, why she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone on the cars and trains and planes they went on. All she knew was, her room, her toys, her parakeet—that life was gone.
Everything but her mother and little brother.
They went to a place where people made noises that sounded like talk but had no words. And just when some of the noises started to become words, they went to another place where the people made noises. This happened a third time before they stayed long enough for the words to develop in her mind and she could reach out to strangers at last.
My mother was this poor refugee from a rich background. She grew up in London and met my Brazilian father during a riot, when they both took shelter near a police constable armed with nothing but a stick. They married and came to America, a country where bad things may happen, but where good people can still speak up.
Hearing these stories in my childhood taught me that there are two strong things: language, and the law. With one, you can reach out to strangers. With the other, you can try to protect them.
My dream in life is to bring the two together.