I spent the morning reflecting on a brave young woman I met when I was only 15.
In 1978 I first met my first Iranian woman. I was studying Russian language at Philips Academy in the summer school session. I checked into my room as a young woman with long dark hair checked into the room next door. I will call her Aisha.
Aisha was also 15. We introduced ourselves and I asked her where she was from. She replied Iran. I asked her what she had come to study and she appeared confused. She explained that her parents sent her and her brother to live in the US because Iran wasn’t safe anymore. I understood immediately what she meant. Our community had been sending funds and making space for the Jews who were fleeing Iran for a number of years and co-ordinated rescue efforts were happening at the time of Aisha’s escape.
I asked about her family and she told me that her parents were still in Iran. She was clearly frightened. I reassured her that she would be safe here. Over the next couple of months, we learned a lot about each other and a lot about the cultures we each grew up as a part of. I was the first Jewish person that Aisha had ever met and she was the first Muslim I had met. We spent a month reading each other’s holy books and talking about the similarities and differences between the faiths and the cultures. Neither of us was intensely religious. We had both been educated in the faith but were largely secular. We had both grown up in affluent areas without much exposure to violence for most of our childhoods.
Aisha was with her brother and there were two other young people in the programme at the same time who had been sent to the US to safety as their parents were targets of the regime that was coming to power. There was no large community to absorb them. They were frightened but happy to now be in the west.
Aisha and I had much in common. We both had strong identities. We grew up as young women taught by our mothers that women were the equal of men, that women could do anything. We were encouraged to pursue our dreams. We both valued freedom. The freedom to choose, the agency to choose, as most important and what made life worth living.
I lost touch with Aisha and had not thought about her for many years. I was reminded of her when Mahsa Amini was murdered by the regime for the crime of having her hair improperly covered. Aisha was always very fashionable and considered her luscious dark hair one of her best features. I remember she said that covering her hair at the request of a man was something she would never do.
Today, I wonder where she is, what she thinks about how life evolved for Muslim women in her country (and indeed in much of the rest of the Muslim world) since the 70s and if she danced in the street as the Ayatollah was deposed last week.
I think of that time in my life and how free we both were. The fear we felt came from others trying to take away our right to choose, came from others seeing us as different and came from others seeing women as less deserving than men. Even with this fear, we were both protected from the worst abuses, the worst rhetoric during that small window of time.
On this International Women’s Day, I dance with the Iranian women who are reclaiming their agency, their right to choose. I dance with those who fight for everyone’s right to live the way that they wish to live, with all those who are able to see difference and approach with curiosity and kindness, with a heart full of pride for my heritage and the rich gifts my culture has given me, with strength born out of a history of challenge (if you know my history, you know) and the resilience that comes from being birthed from a line of women who would not go quietly and who fought for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
On this International Women’s Day, I remember my grandmother’s tenaciousness, resilience and cheeky resolve to be her full self, my mother’s strength and intelligence and trust that they would be proud of me.
