After Tehran by Marina Nemat Page A

passport, Andre received a phone call from a lady who worked at his father’s factory, and she informed us that work on the building had begun. We told her we were planning to leave the country but had run into some financial problems. She offered to buy our share in the building and pay us five hundred thousand
tomans
more than what we had already invested. Strangely, we needed that exact amount. When I put the money in a briefcase to deliver it to Evin prison, my father told me I was an idiot, that they would take the money but would not let me leave. I ignored him.
    Now, fourteen years later, my father, who had never shown much interest in his children, was enthusiastic about going toUkraine to see relatives he barely knew. Gradually, I realized that this was probably because he could start his relationship with them from scratch and become a more loving person. There was no history between them, no painful memories to face. That my father wanted to better himself and be good to others mattered to me. He began sending money to Ukraine, and I was proud of him for it. Even though Natasha was a head nurse, she made just sixty dollars a month. My father was not wealthy and his only income was the small pension he received from the Canadian government, but during his visit to Ukraine, he realized that compared with our relatives in Simferopol, he was truly a rich man. This made him appreciate Canada more.
    My father’s trip was a success. Our relatives were happy to see him. They were very kind to him and took him around the city. He went to Tamara’s grave and Victor’s, and this meant a lot to him. My father had connected to his history and had found himself. Once he returned to Toronto, he was noticeably happier. He kept telling me about Maria, Natasha’s youngest daughter, who was fourteen years old. Maria began writing to my father regularly and called him “Great-grandfather.” When I saw her photo, I was surprised to notice that she bore a slight physical resemblance to me. Like me, she was a very good student and wanted to go to medical school. She was artistic and drew sketches of all of us from the photos my father had sent her. One of my hobbies when I was a teenager had been drawing sketches from photos. My father proudly showed me Maria’s work, telling me how lovely and talented she was. As I watched my father, I realized that he was trying to do for Maria what he had never done for me. Goodness and love were spreading in my father’s life, bringing light to his world. Even though our relationship had improved after my mother’s death, I knew that I would always be a reminder of pain and suffering to him. Maria was everything I might have been, and I was grateful to her for making my father happy.
    After
Prisoner of Tehran
was published I gave a copy to my father. Although it took him a while to start reading it, he eventually read it twice and told me he was proud of me. I never thought I would hear him speak those words. He left his copy of my book on a coffee table in his apartment to make sure that all his visitors saw it. He told friends, acquaintances, sometimes strangers that his daughter was a famous author. He had blamed me for my imprisonment and everything that followed. He had been ashamed of me because of my conversion to Islam and my relationship with Ali. Even though we had never talked about Ali, I was sure that my father had read about him in the
Toronto Star
article, but my father didn’t say a word about Ali to me. Then, after my book came out, my father saw how well it was received, and he admitted that maybe he had been too severe. The book was much more detailed than the article, and it enabled him to see the situation from my perspective.
    When in December 2007 my photo appeared on the cover of the Canadian book-publishing magazine
Quill & Quire
, he left the magazine on his dining table and never moved it. Whenever I go to his place, I still see it there. I look like Cinderella in