Diversity Essay

Diversity Essay

“Mom! Tell him to get off me!” cried my sister in Farsi to my mother.

My mother ran into the room and pulled me, kicking and screaming, off of my older sister. My sister had come home from her first day of school, and was by this time crying. After issuing her punishment and telling me never to hit my sister again, my mother demanded to know why I was so upset.

“She went to school today, Mom, and she won’t teach me English!” I sobbed.

Of course, it was foolish of me to think that my sister could teach me a new language after her first day of school, but I was too young and frustrated to know any better. My frustration was caused by living in a foreign land and not knowing the language, and was amplified by our poverty. I did not have many toys and could not play with other children my age because of the language barrier. I was only two-and-a-half years old when my family moved to America from Iran to avoid the onslaught of the Iran-Iraq war. I was too young to remember any details, but the war stories I have heard are horrifying. Children were used as human sacrifices to deactivate landmines and sent to the battlefields with keys that would “allow them access to Heaven.” My parents envisioned a future for my sister and I somewhere that would shield us from such atrocities and allow us to advance our lives, even at the expense of their own. The strength that they displayed in sacrificing their own lives for our opportunities has been an inspirational force throughout my life.

My mother worked at a laundry service in an apartment complex, and because we had no car or babysitter, I had to wake up mornings and walk with her to work. Several residents noticed me sitting impatiently in the cramped workspace and tried to entertain me in any way that they could. One of the residents, a tall man with funny-looking glasses, was a magician who gave me a copy of a children’s book. I could tell from the pictures that it was a book about a penguin, but I could not yet read its contents. I appreciated the gift, and because I liked this man who would show me card tricks and make funny voices, I was inspired to learn to read it.