With the shortage of eggs, along with most other things, we were lucky to have a couple of chickens that provided us with fresh eggs daily. It was even easy to tell the eggs apart; the gray chicken laid brown eggs and the brown chicken laid white ones. We had gotten into a routine of collecting two eggs from the chicken coop every morning until it abruptly came to a halt, a fate that we all accepted. One day during science class, in order to give us a short break from actual studies, Mr. Mohammadhosseini told us another one of his stories that we certainly thought was fake. Given the topic of our lesson was plants, he went on to tell us how plants also had feelings and understanding and do much more than we give them credit for. He told us about a friend of his who had a rose bush in his yard but for the past few years it failed to fully bloom in the spring. So one day he grabbed a saw and accompanied by a friend went up to the bush and faked a conversation with his friend about ...
Holly Dagres is an Iranian analyst and commentator on the Middle East specializing on Iran with an emphasis on the intersection of security and human rights. Based in Washington, she is a Libitzky Family Senior Fellow at the think tank, The Washington Institute. Holly spent her teenage years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, from 1999 to 2006, during which time she graduated from Tehran International School. "When I look at some of my childhood photos from the late 1990s, I can’t help but think I dressed the part of the “cool girl.” But underneath the appearance was a little girl who was constantly made fun of while living in LA. I was too tall for sixth grade—taller than all the boys in middle school (5’10”, a height I still have today). I was also an Iranian girl, the kind who wasn’t allowed to shave her legs and was only permitted the torture of sugar waxing, which left me in tears with every strip pulled. I’d have to go to school with my legs exposed as the hair g...