Nowruz, Tehran, 1988

I sat in the middle of the living room, undressing my newest Barbie, when the sirens erupted. The lights went out, everywhere. Tehran, the city of ten million, was extinguished like a candle. In a sudden rush I was hoisted into the air, into my father's arms, flown out the door, jolted down eleven flights of steps. My mother carried the kerosene lamp, whose flame flickered in time to my fluttering heart amid the tumult of passing playmates bobbing baffled downward in other parents' arms. The brown mosaic floor tiles shown murky beneath the basement's jaundiced lights, fueled by backup generators, caged in steel. Our neighbors inhaled the damp musty air amid a symphonic alternation of pants and gasps. I climbed out of my father's arms and listened in awe as he explained how Saddam Hussein, that monstrously mustached maniac, had used a scud missile to interrupt my search for what lay beneath Barbie's dress. Read more!