100 People Who Love You, No Matter What

Zahra Noorbakhsh — 100 People Who Love You, No Matter What

I’m going to take you to San Francisco, California, a little suburb outside of San Francisco, California, way back, a long, long time ago to when I was a little girl and you had one phone in the house. [audience chuckles] Usually in the kitchen. I’m a little girl, and it’s late at night, and my mom is performing her usual ritual, holding this little green card with 15 digits on it, saying, ​“Wake up. Wake up, Zahra. Meena, wake up,” and taking us over to the kitchen, dragging us. 

And then, while we were yawning and exhausted, we would wait to hear, ​“Hello, [speaking Persian] Salaam.” My grandmother’s voice. My mom would say, ​“Tell them. Tell them, Zahra. Tell them about your day. Tell them about the flying car that you drew in art class, Zahra. Tell them about your report card. Say something. It’s your family.” I’d be like, ​“Cool. Okay.” 

I would hear my grandmother’s voice, and my grandfather’s voice, and my aunts and my uncles, and my cousins all saying, ​“Hello, how are you? We miss you. We love you.” And I’d be like, ​“I have no idea who you are.” [audience chuckles] Because I grew up here. I grew up here, and I had never met them before, these disembodied voices, these ghosts on the other side of the phone that my mom would say, ​“This is your family. This is your family.” 

There were times at school that I did feel different. But not because we were Iranian, not because we were Muslim and my mom wore the Islamic headscarf, not because my dad had a thick accent, not because I spoke two languages, but because I had a ghost family [audience chuckles] that lived on the other side of the planet, and it made me feel really different. 

When my parents came here, they came just before the revolution broke. They came for school, and then the revolution happened, and they were stuck here for a time. And then, it became difficult to visit because they had me, and then they had my little sister, and it became even more difficult to try to visit. And then, they had my brother, and it became even more difficult. 

My father had a highly competitive job, and my mom was still in school. And then, they had my little brother, and he was growing up, and so we moved. We moved to another suburb outside of San Francisco, California, where everything looked exactly the same. [chuckles] My sister and I were going to school, and it was a new school. We had moved in the middle of my third-grade year. I remember I had a tough time making friends. I came home one day, and I was complaining to my mom that it was difficult to make friends. And she said, ​“It doesn’t matter, Zahra. None of those are your real friends anyway. You have 100 people who love you no matter what in Iran.” [audience laughter] And I was like, ​“Yeah, that’s going to go really well at school, Mom. [audience laughter] I have 100 ghost friends. I don’t need you, guys. I have 100 ghost friends.” 

As my brother got a little bit older, my mom was able to go back to work. And so, she had us ride the bus for the very first time, and she told us, ​“I’m going to pick you up from the fourth stop.” It was my job to remember as the fourth stop. The bus is going, and I lose count, and we get off, the bus driver leaves, and nobody is there. I’m with my little sister, and we’re so lost. Every house looks exactly the same. I can’t remember if we live on Deer Brook Lane, Meadow Drive, or if we live on Meadow Deer Brook Lane Drive. Meanwhile, 6 Brook Meadow Lane Drives down, my mom is waiting for us.

And the bus comes, and the bus is leaving, and my mom panics and says, ​“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” She’s dragging my brother in the stroller, and she says, ​“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. My girls. My girls.” The bus is still leaving. My mom runs up to the bus, and she’s sleeping on the bus doors, and she says, ​“Please, please.” She scans the bus really quickly, the empty bus, and she says, ​“My girls, my girls, my girls. I can’t find my girls.” And the bus driver laughs at her and says, ​“Lady, if there were less of you in the world, we’d all be better off anyways. [audience chuckles] And now, my mother is terrified, and she’s looking for us everywhere. And then, we finally see her calling our names at the end of Brook Meadow Lane Deer Court, and we yell, ​“Mom! Mom!” We grab each other, and we hold each other, and we’re both shaking and shaking and shaking and trembling.

And my sister is saying, ​“Where were you?” And I’m saying, ​“I’m sorry.” And she says, ​“It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. Thank God. Thank God. Echoda. Echoda.” She’s so scared. That night was a long night. My dad came home late. He had a meeting with the principal, and he made sure that bus driver was fired. [audience applause] 

And even though we were supposed to be in bed, I could hear them arguing. I could hear them arguing about whether or not it would be better for us to go back. And my mother was saying, ​“They should be somewhere where everybody loves them, no matter what. I know that they’ll be safe.” And my dad was saying, ​“But there are so many more opportunities afforded to them as two young girls growing up if we stay here.” It is true that growing up, we were afforded amazing opportunities as two young women here. And I am especially proud of the life that I’ve led. I have done incredible things. I’ve done things that would have been unimaginable if we were still living in Iran. 

I am a comedian. I tour. My writing is published nationally. I have a podcast where I talk with my big loud mouth about being feminist, Muslim, Iranian-American, bisexual and out, pork-eating, alcohol-drinking, Muslim. [audience laughter] Married to an atheist, infidel, living it up. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

I’ve even had the honor of going to the White House once a while ago, [audience laughter] [chuckles] to talk with my big loud mouth and my confusing ideas. These are things that would have been unimaginable if we had stayed in Iran. And after shows, people will come up to me and they will say, ​“Aren’t you glad you’re not there?” And every time somebody says that, I go back into my mind to when I was 14 years old, like a time travel. 

When I was 14 years old, I finally went to this country with the ghost people on the other side of the planet. I remember it so clearly. It was midnight, 1 o’clock in the morning. And just like at home, my mom was full of energy and we were exhausted. She’s taking us checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint. You know, this metal detector, grab those bags, fill out these forms. Do we have something, do we not have anything for customs? All the rituals that a kid is lucky to be able to just say, ​“Huh,” as you go through. 

We finally come to the last clearance place with the metal detector and everything. I get distracted, because I hear boom, boom, boom. We look and we can’t see anything, because it’s pitch black. It’s glass doors everywhere, all around us, but it’s pitch black. And then, we hear athrus. Boom, boom, boom, athrus. And the guy handing us our bag looks at my mom and says, ​“You’re very popular.” [audience laughter] And then, my sister and I drop our bags and we look at each other and we look at my mom and say, ​“Oh my God, are we famous in Iran?” [audience laughter] 

My mom is crying, and tears are streaming down her face, and she wipes them with her sleeve, and her voice cracks as she says, ​“No, that’s [in a sobbing voice] your family.” And the double doors bust open and all I hear is, ​“I’m your uncle. I’m your uncle, I’m your uncle. I’m your uncle. Uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle. Aunt, aunt, aunt, aunt, aunt. Cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin.” And I can taste tears and I can feel my cheeks being pinched and I can feel myself being squeezed and hugged. And then, one of my cousins grabs me by the arm and takes me inside. She has a million questions and she says, ​“Okay, okay, you have to tell me, what’s Michael Jackson really like? [audience laughter] And then, she says, ​“What is it like to live in Hollywood? Can you tell Steven Spielberg he’s got to make another Indiana Jones? [audience laughter] And what do the American people really think of Madonna?” [audience chuckles] And I say, ​“I don’t know, I have to go to my mom. She’s crying.”

I’m looking for my mom, and scanning and scanning, and then I see her. And I also see in the distance four school buses. Four school buses drove my mom’s family to the airport [audience laughter] to meet us at 1 o’clock in the morning. And coming towards us from the school buses, I hear one voice that I really recognize. ​“Aziz, Afros. Azizam, my baby.” And my mom [in a sobbing voice] says, ​“Maman.” I realize that’s my grandma. My mom has a mom, [audience laughter] and sisters and brothers, and I have cousins. As I’m looking at my mom there, I see her face and she is glowing. Glowing. And for the rest of my life, I will measure my mother’s joy by that moment, looking at her kids playing with their cousins, surrounded by their aunts and uncles in the arm of her mother and father.

And now, looking back, I know that it’s not super safe for me as the pork-eating, alcohol-drinking, bisexual Muslim married to an atheist infidel with her big loud mouth to go back. But I know how much they miss me because of how much I miss them. And thanks to my mom, I do have my nightly ritual of calling up my grandmother. And what I wish for you all is to have anywhere the 100 people that love you, no matter what. Thank you.