Scenes I Thought I Would Never See Again

I was five or so, standing in a line with my mother for rationed butter and sugar on a sizzling hot summer day. Butter had been out of stock for months, and I hadn’t had my favourite breakfast for so long that I had forgotten how it even tasted. “Maman,” I said. “Can I have honey and butter with bread tomorrow morning?”

“Sure, darling,” she said. “We’ll get the butter today and we’ll have a delicious breakfast.” Her smile was reassuring.

The designated store was far from our house. People went there from all parts of the city. We had no other choice. You couldn’t simply drop by the supermarket close to home and get the rationed items. My mother used a newspaper to fan me and herself. Another woman in the line fainted and people were asking for water to revive her.

After hours in line, we finally got two sticks of butter and a kilo of sugar. We took a taxi home. Looking out the taxi window, I watched the streets of Tehran, war-torn, windows crisscrossed with duct tape, sandbags stacked against walls, and young soldiers marching off to war. My attention was still mostly on the next morning’s breakfast.

“We got the butter, we got the butter,” I sang as we entered the house.

My brother ran into the room. “Where is it?” he asked.

My mother opened the plastic bag to put the butter in the fridge, and when she did, we noticed the butter had melted. An oily mess streamed out of the packages and all over the plastic bag.

My brother’s smile faded. He stood by the kitchen door, not moving.

My mother knelt on the floor, the oily mess covering her hands. Then she broke into tears. “Sorry, baby,” she said.

I hugged her and stroked her hair. “It’s okay, Maman. Please don’t cry.” I could smell the butter. It smelled delicious.

I was born in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war, a war that began in 1980 and lasted eight years. During the war and for years after, people would stand in line for hours with their ration coupons, to buy essential food and goods. Sugar, rice, meat, cheese, oil, tea, and other commodities were in short supply. Whenever the government would announce that it was time to go and claim a specific product at a specific store, people would skip class, cancel appointments, or ask for time off from work, and then rush to the designated stores with the ration coupon in hand. People would stand patiently in line, sometimes for a whole day in the sun or rain. It could be a heatwave, it could be storming.

Supplies were scarce. No one knew when the next time something essential would be available again. Every other day, my mother would leave home early in the morning to get a place in line to buy our share of milk. Two bottles. The distribution truck would arrive at the supermarket just after sunrise and there was no guarantee that people waiting at the end of the line would get their milk.

When I was ten and my mother had hand surgery, getting the milk fell to my father, who already had a lot on his plate—work,  hospital visits, my brother and me. He had no time to stand in line for milk. He explained our family situation to the supermarket owner and asked him to set aside the bottles that he could pick up after work. The owner agreed—for double the price.

During those long years, electricity was also rationed. For hours, several blackouts occurred throughout the country, one region after another. Kerosene heaters were the main source of heat for most households during the winter, only kerosene was scarce like everything else. In the cold Tehran winters, people would stand in endless lines, in deep snow, holding portable cans, waiting on their refills. I can still see them, covered in snowflakes, blowing on their hands, rubbing them together, shifting from foot to foot, just trying to get warm.

Filling a prescription was another story. Most of the time, people couldn’t find heart pills for their grandmothers or cough syrup for their kids. People would go all over the city, from one pharmacy to the other, to find the medicine they needed, or go to the black market and pay ten times the original price.

As the years went on, the memories of the war-torn Tehran of my childhood faded somewhat. But the COVID-19 pandemic brought them back. I saw scenes I thought I would never see again, especially not in Canada: shortages, empty shelves, long lines at grocery stores, banks, and supermarkets, cancelled flights, deserted streets, panicked eyes, and the constant news of death. It was similar to what I’d lived through during the war.

As the years went on, the memories of the war-torn Tehran of my childhood faded somewhat. But the COVID-19 pandemic brought them back.

“Can you believe I stood in a line yesterday to enter Costco?” one of my colleagues said during our break. She took a sip of coffee before continuing. “This is the craziest thing.” It was mid-March, 2020. The pandemic had just started.

“During my childhood, people stood in line for almost everything,” I said to comfort her. “It’s not a big deal.” Her blue eyes grew wider, still sipping her coffee, with a look asking “Where on earth did you grow up?”

A few days into the pandemic, I realized that my Canadian colleagues were panicking more than those of us who had lived through wars or economic sanctions. People here had lived a peaceful privileged life for so long in their democracy far from war, famine, forced lockdowns, or any kind of shortage, that they felt their lives changed dramatically. It was being called a war against the virus. “I just can’t believe it,” I heard people say. “This feels so unreal, like an apocalypse movie.”

I watched my colleagues go out at lunchtime to look for sanitizer and toilet paper. They would come back with the information. “No mask or sanitizer in any pharmacy, but you can have one pack of toilet paper per person at Shoppers.” My Iraqi and Syrian colleagues and I would listen and nod our heads in sympathy, but we were not panicked, especially not about toilet paper.

“Do people get diarrhea from coronavirus in the West?” one of my cousins asked our family group chat, followed by a laughing emoji. He then shared photos of people fighting over toilet paper in England.

“What do you do with that much toilet paper? Do you want me to post some packs?” another cousin teased those of us in Western countries. “Let’s make a YouTube tutorial video of  Iranian toilets to show Western people that they can wash themselves with water,” he wrote.

Every toilet in Iran has a hose attached to a water valve behind the toilet, so that you can easily wash yourself. Easy and practical.

“You might go viral with that video,” I wrote to my cousin in the group chat.

I did not stockpile groceries. I wasn’t scared when I faced empty shelves. But I got angry when I couldn’t cook Sabzi polo Mahi—herbed rice with fish—our traditional dish made for Nowruz, Persian New Year, marking spring’s first day. There was no fish at the grocery store. “What are they thinking?” I asked my husband, Aydin. “Is famine coming to Canada?”

Being from the Middle East—where war and sanctions never stop, where your movement is restrained, and your freedom is taken from you—has prepared me for many aspects of living through a global pandemic. It didn’t seem like an apocalypse movie to me. The life that Westerners describe as abnormal is the reality of countless people in different parts of the world.

My immigrant experience also helped me cope with things that were unfamiliar to many Westerners. For most Canadians, the notion of virtual attendance at their loved one’s birthdays, weddings, and funerals was novel, but also weird. My immigrant friends and I had been doing that for years. When two of my uncles died during my early years in Canada, I could not take part in their funerals. When four of my cousins got married, all I saw were their spouses’ pictures on social media. Two of them have babies and I have no idea what they look like. My mother takes videos for me at weddings and birthday parties, and sometimes I have Skype chats with my extended family, although the time difference between Tehran and Ontario makes that hard.

I have had a virtual family since I immigrated. The pandemic hasn’t changed that for me, but it has added to my suffering and the pain of loss. When Canada closed its borders, I did get scared. “What if it stays like this?” I wondered. “If something happens to our parents,” I asked Aydin, “what will we do?” Being lonely and isolated, far from my loved ones, terrified me more than being hungry, more than the hardship of standing in line for hours trying to buy essentials, and even more than getting sick.

Being lonely and isolated, far from my loved ones, terrified me more than being hungry.

Early on, Iran became a hotspot and the virus spiralled out of control. Due to the economic sanctions, there was no PPE and there weren’t enough ventilators. Every day, many people lost their lives. I was terrified because I have parents in their mid-70s. I would call twice a day to check if they were okay. “Please stay home,” I would beg them hundreds of times.

“Don’t go shopping.”

“Eat whatever you have at home.”

“Are you coughing? Do you have a fever?” I would ask whenever I heard my mother clearing her voice.

I had a breakdown when one of my mother’s friends passed away from the coronavirus. It happened so fast. I would cry every night and tell Aydin that I would never forgive myself if my parents died and I couldn’t be there.

I felt guilty that I couldn’t take care of my elderly parents.

In April 2020, we moved to another city because of Aydin’s job. We had planned for this move months before, not knowing that a pandemic would turn our life upside down. Suddenly, we couldn’t hire movers, or ask for help from friends. It fell to the two of us to move the queen-size mattress and the 200-pound dining table. It took half a day to load the rental truck and another half a day to unload it. The following day, my muscles were sore and trembling. Aydin’s fingers were so swollen that he couldn’t even open a jar. We rested most of the morning. It was late afternoon when I slowly started to unpack.

At 7 p.m., I heard loud noises outside the apartment. It started with a cheer, a woman’s voice from the far side of the building. Then other voices joined in, howling, cheering, clapping.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think people are thanking the healthcare workers,” Aydin said.

I rushed out to the balcony and started clapping. It was chilly out and I was barefoot on the cold cement, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to miss the moment.

The sound of whistles caught my attention and I saw two women dancing in the visitor parking lot, cheering up the neighbours, whistling along, all while keeping socially distant, two metres apart. Grabbing the balcony rail, I stretched my neck out—something I would never do normally—and saw my new neighbours to the right, banging pots and pans with wooden spatulas. We nodded and smiled at each other. More heads started appearing out of windows in the opposite building and they started howling and waving at us. One person had a walker. She waved and then had to grab it quickly to keep her balance before she could wave again. I waved back.

Some car alarms went off in the parking lot. The flashing and beeping made for a noisy ending to that Friday evening.

A moment before, I had been moaning in pain and cursing my bad luck. Then all of a sudden I was cheerful, clapping, and howling. I felt better when I stepped back inside. That joyful ruckus was more than just a thank you to healthcare workers. It lifted my spirits. It reminded me that I was not alone in this pandemic. It reminded me that there were so many others like me, people who’d lost loved ones, who couldn’t see their parents, and who were worried about them day and night.

That was collaborative therapy and it worked better for me than other therapies did. Standing on my balcony in Burlington, I realized that this feeling wasn’t new; it brought back memories from a decade earlier, on my rooftop in Tehran.

In June of 2009, a controversial presidential election took place in Iran. The results were rigged. The ruling regime appointed their favourite candidate as president, and the people pushed back. Massive protests broke out throughout the country and it became known as the Green Movement. People marched peacefully in the streets, holding up signs that read, “Where is my vote?”

The authorities retaliated violently, hitting, arresting, and killing people. Armed forces and heavy vehicles filled the streets to disperse any “crowd” of more than two. People were ashen-faced and speechless. Terror and horror were everywhere. Still, people found a way to deal with their fear, grief, and anger. Every night at 9 p.m., when darkness fell, people would go to their rooftops and shout, “Allahu Akbar.” God is great. As soon as the first voice pierced the quiet of the night, more voices would join in. The cries of “God is great! God is great! God is great!” echoed across the city.

This was not a new concept to Iranians. My parent’s generation had used the same tactics during the 1979 revolution when the Shah was killing protesters in the streets. People found ways to show their solidarity by taking advantage of the protective darkness when they could not be seen. However, this was new for me, and it soon became a ritual. I would knock on my neighbours’ doors in my apartment building to call them out to the rooftop, where together we would shout, “Allahu Akbar.” Then we would pause. There was a moment of silence, which would be broken by voices from the building across the street. They would reply to us and then wait. “Allahu Akbar,” another rooftop cried. This was like a code between us, meaning we were together in this catastrophic situation.

We stayed on our rooftops for an hour every night and vented our anger and sadness about what was happening in the country by shouting and crying. But more than that, to show that we had each other’s back no matter what. It gave us hope. My voice hardly came out of my throat the next morning. But come nightfall, I would do it all again.

‘Allahu Akbar,’ another rooftop cried. This was like a code between us, meaning we were together in this catastrophic situation.

Then, the security forces cracked down on us. They would identify the houses and buildings from which the cries of “Allahu Akbar” would come by marking the doors with black or white spray paint. The following morning, they would raid those buildings and arrest people. This never happened to any house or building in my neighbourhood, though, thanks to Mr. Tamjid, an artist in his late ’70s living in my apartment building. He never came up to the rooftops, but every morning before sunrise, he would go around and paint out the marks on the doors. I would see him every morning when I was leaving for university.

“You can go to the rooftop tonight,” he would say. “I took care of the marks.” Then he would disappear into our building with his paint bucket and brush.

During my youth, I watched as an oppressive system tried to isolate and frighten people. Now, the oppressor was a tiny virus. It might not be the same, but it feels similar. Then, I didn’t know what would happen to democracy and freedom in Iran. Now, I don’t know what the world will look like post-pandemic. Both situations trigger terror, fear, and grief. But from shouting on the rooftops in Iran to cheering and howling on my balcony in Canada, I felt like I was part of something bigger, part of a large group of people that were spreading the message that we need to be unified to overcome hardship.

I grew up during a war and I lived under a totalitarian government. Add to that the shortages and difficulties I faced because of economic sanctions. Western countries impose sanctions to punish the ruling systems, but they only end up targeting ordinary citizens like me. People in the West had no sense of what it would be like to live in a situation like that until the pandemic. The pandemic is a glimpse of life in forced lockdowns, under constant fear of losing lives because of a lack of access to medicine or food. The pandemic showed them how it feels to be separated from loved ones without knowing when you will be reunited. Just a glimpse.

I thought there would be a silver lining to this pandemic when I saw the unification and determination of the world to fight the virus. I thought this global solidarity would help end other ruinous forces, whether war, economic sanctions, oppressive systems, or borders. I was wrong. More economic sanctions are being imposed, more fuel is being poured into war machines, and more refugee crises are being created. Once again, I witness the contrast between “our” lives and problems and “theirs.”