Often kids tried to be funny by chanting, “I ran to I-ran, I ran to I-ran.” The correct pronunciation, I always informed them, is “Ee-rahn.” “I ran” is a sentence, I told them, as in “I ran away from my geography lesson.”

Older boys often asked me to teach them “some bad words in your language.” At first, I politely refused. My refusal merely increased their determination, so I solved the problem by teaching them phrases like man kharam, which means “I’m an idiot.” I told them that what I was teaching them was so nasty that they would have to promise never to repeat it to anyone. They would then spend all of recess running around yelling, “I’m an idiot! I’m an idiot!” I never told them the truth. I figured that someday, somebody would.

But almost every person who asked us a question asked with kindness. Questions were often followed by suggestions of places to visit in California. At school, the same children who inquired about camels also shared their food with me. “I bet you’ve never tried an Oreo! Have one,” or “My mom just baked these peanut butter cookies and she sent you one.” Kids invited me to their houses to show me what their rooms looked like. On Halloween, one family brought over a costume, knowing that I would surely be the only kid in the Halloween parade without one. If someone had been able to encapsulate the kindness of these second-graders in pill form, the pills would undoubtedly put many war correspondents out of business.

After almost two years in Whittier, my father’s assignment was completed and we had to return home. The last month of our stay, I attended one slumber party after another, all thrown in my honor. This avalanche of kindness did not make our impending departure any easier. Everyone wanted to know when we would come back to America. We had no answer, but we invited them all to visit us in Iran. I knew no one would ever take us up on our offer, because Iran was off the radar screen for most people. My friends considered visiting their grandmothers in Oregon to be a long trip, so visiting me in Iran was like taking a left turn at the next moon. It wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t know then that I would indeed be returning to America about two years later.