Room Magazine

The Things I Didn’t Know

- NAGMEH PHELAN

My mom and I travelled 7,216 miles across the Atlantic to see her sister, my aunt, for the first time after thirty years. When we said goodbye in Iran all that time ago, none of us imagined that we would rendezvous in India—an unfamiliar neutral land. None of us imagined that thirty years would lapse before we would stand face to face again or hold each other’s hands. None of us imagined entire lifetimes would unfold—marriages, sicknesses, births, deaths, grudges, holidays and more holidays. As a child, I remember that goodbye akin to a goodbye reserved for family members prior to getting on a shiny plane for a holiday in the sun. In my tiny child heart, I thought we would see them all again in a week or maybe two. The word “them” is so small, but it was my whole world. And our exit out of Iran was actually a trek, through the desert, on foot, while holding our breaths. It was not on a shiny plane and we did not land near any beaches. We did not get to adventure and go back home relaxed and rejuvenate­d. I did not get to go back to my school and tell my friends what the sand felt like under my toes or how many seashells I had collected. I never saw them again. Not my house, not my family, not my friends, not the country of my birth. And yet.

Our exit out of Iran also included my aunt and two younger cousins, making our five-day stopover in Pakistan—a country I had never heard of and knew nothing about—play out mostly like a sleepover. I say mostly, because it was in this foreign land of spicy breakfast eggs that a man exposed himself to me. Because yes, #metoo. I was seven. My cousins and I were playing a game of tag or hide and seek in the hallways of our hotel while my mother had a shower. I distinctly remember her saying, “Be careful and do not enter any rooms,” but being an overly confident child, I entered a room not ours. The door had been left slightly ajar for houseclean­ing and I was curious. It also seemed like the perfect place to hide. Once inside the door, I noticed two men were cleaning. One of them motioned me into the washroom, where I stupidly followed. He then pulled down his pants and waved for me to come closer. I did not. When I turned around, I noticed that the other man was also now in the washroom, blocking my exit. I walked toward the door, but the other man smirked and laughed. It was the first time I experience­d true fear.

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