The story starts like this: They tell you what you are. And you believe them.  

I am eight years old when I am first called a terrorist. Eight years old when I feel the power of words puncture my chest like needles. Eight years old when my feet fall from the clouds and sink like lead. 

It feels like jumping off a swing at the wrong moment and landing on prickly mulch. I am still figuring out how to tie my shoelaces. I’m still learning my times-tables when I first learn that my culture is dangerous.

I think back to the weathered, wrinkled hands of my grandmother cradling my face. I remember the warmth of my aunt’s voice, tucking me in with old Persian lullabies. I wonder how my warm peace could ever be dressed up like a senseless war. 

She says my skin is too dark. We stand on the metal stairs of our school’s playground. The playground's bright reds and yellows attract the fancy of wide-eyed children. And she says it again. 

Across from us, a boy plays Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on a toy piano. Clink, clink, clink.

She says the hair that covers my arms reminds her of an animal—a gorilla.

My shame ignites with the ferocity of a wild beast.

Our very own pianist stops his playing. He rings with laughter.

But I hold my tongue. It is oppressive, this silence. 

She has bright blue eyes that gleam in the sun and pale skin that bears light brown freckles. I think she is beautiful. When my mother says the same of me, I can only question her. 

That night in the shower, I take a razor stolen from my sister's drawer to the hair on my arms and legs. I scrape and scrape and scrape until the water runs clean down the drain. My bare limbs are dotted with blood.

I am a young girl, but I know something is not right. 

I am eleven years old when I discover that to be American is to forget. Eleven years old when I stop responding to my parents in Farsi. I answer in English, instead. 

The kids at school only want to learn dirty words from me. It seems my language is either a source of crude entertainment or shameful embarrassment. Maybe, I muse, it just depends on the day. 

At school, I stop practicing the writing my father has taught me—Persian script—the day my math teacher peers over my notebook with a sneer. It is the same look my mother receives in public when she stumbles over her English words. I end the lessons. 

Going one step further, I tell my mother to stop giving me leftovers from home for school lunches. 

“Don’t feed me what the kids call stinky—what they call disgusting. I need to be normal,” I want to say. Despite my requests, she keeps making the lunches. 

So I hide them in my backpack the entire day. I eat the bland meals the school provides. They taste different. Everything feels wrong.

It starts to feel like being American means to neglect. 

One day, I write a list of new names for myself. My classmates can't pronounce the one I was given. They make jokes, saying it sounds like Nazi or nasty. 

I laugh and play along. But inside, the desert within me grows bigger and hotter. 

I decide to rename myself, to be like the rest of the bright-eyed children around me. But the jokes only get worse. The laughter gets louder. 

I am fourteen years old when I read that my skin is like the color of spices from foreign lands. Fourteen years old when I am told I appear “exotic.” As if my heritage, my culture, is a rare species among the human race.

It's as if whiteness is normal. Anything else is marked as “other.” 

I want to tell people to open their eyes. I want to scream that there are plenty of people like me. The words sit in my mouth. Their heavy weight becomes a burden. 

Men stare. They flirt with cheap lines dressed as compliments. 

It's like a lesson outside of school: they teach me the system.

I learn that I am defined only by my otherness. I learn that I’m desired for all the wrong reasons.