Comforting each other is more natural when we’re physically present, which is what the pandemic made it impossible for my not-husband to be.
We don’t crave the things we’re close to, even if they’ve shaped us into who we are.
If you’re looking at something, you don’t know where it’s going; if you know where it’s going, you don’t know where it is.
In class we’d learned the Australian flag was blue to represent the sky and ocean both, our collective identity shaped by that constant hue.
I love our Little Odessa because it is the closest approximation to a home I will never really know.
Sometimes, the word “belonging” feels more apt when snapped into two: be longing.
“The borders don’t even matter,” Kartik said. “The British just made them up.”
When we decided to immigrate to the US from Iran, I thought I was ready to face any possible hard times ahead—but there was still so much I had to learn about living.
My parents wanted to give me opportunities that they never had, to let me participate in bizarre American rites of passage.
What did it mean that now both the villages and the qilin were gone? This portal to the ancestors gone forever.