Roxanne Varzi is the author of Warring Souls: Media, Martyrdom and Youth in Post-Revolution Iran. She teaches anthropology and film and media studies at the University of California, Irvine.
This year my son will turn eight, the age I was at the time of the Iranian Revolution, when my American mother brought me to the US, leaving my Iranian father in Tehran. When Donald Trump was elected president, my son asked if we would have to move to Tehran. My Iranian husband and I did what my parents did during the Revolution: we lied, saying that he had nothing to worry about.
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