Tell me about your grandmother.

“I think of her often as a person whose life was in some ways robbed from her, but in other ways has had a very beautiful life. She says that she's very positive about it all, that she's very glad that things turned out the way they did. I think that's just part of her personality.

She was born in Mashhad in Iran. Her Dad was a fruit vendor. He had opened a shop. I think it was in their house. He had met her mom on a farm in a vineyard just north of Mashhad. He had gone there to buy grapes. He saw her in a field and thought she was very beautiful and wanted to ask her hand in marriage. So that's how their love story began. So, eventually my grandmother was born. She had a brother, but that brother was born just when there was an earthquake, and a lot of babies died in that hospital. Then they didn't know who was who, which baby was from which parents, so the rest of the babies were adopted and we actually don't know if he's alive or not. Anyway, that's another story.

My grandmother grew up in Mashhad, quite close to the Imam Reza’s shrine which is a very important holy place in Iran. Her life was basically going to the shrine quite often with her mom and learning the Quran. Her Dad would go on long travels to buy fruit, and in many ways she grew up in the kitchen. She tells me all about the food that her mom used to make; baked treats with walnuts and pickled apple and lovely carrot jam, which her relatives still make and which I've tried.

The memories of her childhood are of a very simple family life. Her father as a fruit vendor, and all the little animals that they had in their garden. In Iranian houses, traditionally, you have this little pool or pond where you would wash all the fruits and vegetables, and you'd feed the animals from that and wash your clothes in that.

She got a lot of suitors after she was nine, I think. My grandad just happened to be one of them that came by. He knew about her because his brother had married an Iranian woman, and that woman had told my grandfather about her. So, he went to Mashhad especially for her. Her parents had rejected so many men before him. Her mum was so scared of sending her anywhere far away. She was going to be in Mashhad, in her own house with her new husband. Even sending her to Tehran was so scary for her. She really, really loved my grandmother.

When my grandfather came along from Bahrain, he ticked a lot of the boxes that her father thought important in a suitor. One was that he was Shia, another was that he was a government worker, as only they got pensions. A third was that he was a teacher, and the fourth was that he’d never been engaged.

The way it worked was he’d come formally to meet the parents first, especially the father, and then come back to meet the girl.  Normally, the parents ask the girl to bring out some tea, so she comes in with a tray and then they see her. So, when my grandmother came in with the tray of tea, her veil suddenly fell. She had two braids of hair, and one of her braids fell in one of the tea glasses. So, she just threw the tea on the table and ran away. But that’s when grandpa said, ‘I want to marry this girl!’

Her mom protested a lot, and she cried a lot. It was extremely difficult for my grandmother. I asked her, ‘Why didn't you say something if you didn't want to go away?’ She said, ‘I couldn't say no to my father.’ So, she moved to Bahrain when she was 13 years old. She arrived in the village in darkness, as there was no electricity, and there was no hot water in the tap; it all had to be boiled on the fire. Coming from a city it was a culture shock for her. It was also a culture shock for my mom coming to Bahrain, and it was a culture shock for me being to be born in Bahrain! But that's how it happened.”

How would you describe your relationship with your grandmother?

“I wasn't really close to her growing up. I registered her as my grandmother, but I didn't appreciate how different she was, or her Persian influence. There were words that I knew but I just didn't realize they were Persian. Same for the food. I'm just learning this now. So, I wasn't close to her then, but now I wish I had been.

Covid brought us together. I was back home in Bahrain. Ola, my boyfriend and I had broken up at the time and it felt like my whole world was falling apart, you know. I was not able to go back to Edinburgh, all my stuff was left in Scotland, my boyfriend wasn’t there anymore, and I really felt like I had come from the city to the village again. I felt so imprisoned. And that's where my relationship with her began. I was so surprised because I felt she was so traditional, so committed to her religion and her prayers that I just didn't think she would understand so much about love, and loss and suffering. Anyway, I just would sit with her for hours, and I would not see anybody else because it was Covid, and I would just sit there in her living room, with tea, both of us on the floor. I listened to her for hours as she spoke about her parents and the jam that her mum made, and the fruits that her dad would sell and the goat that they killed that her dad was so sad about. These little stories! She remembers so much.

She mostly talked about that part of her life rather than the other parts. A lot of the other parts of her life were of course very beautiful and happy, but she also suffered a lot. The suffering began when she left Iran. Imagine, you’re 13 years old and you just have to leave. She had to take a train to Tehran, and then to Shiraz by bus and then she packed her whole life onto a ship and sailed to Bahrain and to this village.”

Your time together must have been very special for her too.

“Yes, it was. And I've made a point of showing her all the Iranian movies she never saw. She was so young, there were no cinemas around. And when she did go to cinemas as the wife of my grandfather, they were just Indian movies but not Iranian. She just missed out on so much of her country, so I’ve tried to do that. So, that’s a very happy side to our relationship.

And now I'm studying Persian literature. She didn't get the opportunity to continue her education but if she had, she might have studied something similar to this in normal school, even if not in university. We’re closing the circle in a way. Yes, it’s been a beautiful journey.”