When You Can’t Go Home, You Get on A Boat

(Reza Ghazali)

BY DENA ROD

Welcome to The Transgender Sabbatical Blues, an ongoing series exploring Dena Rod’s experience as a transgender, non-binary, Iranian American Bay Area local who took a five-week sabbatical all over the Northern Hemisphere.

But stopped I was. Without anyone responding to me on WhatsApp, there was no way that I could move forward with planning this sabbatical. Then I actually got my hands on what an Iranian visa application looks like and my blood stopped cold. As a US citizen applying for a tourist visa, I needed to provide my social media accounts, and a resume of my life including where I went to school, what I studied, where I work, and why I wanted to visit Iran. A quick glance at my socials would reveal my intersections as a transgender, queer, Iranian American. Because the Islamic Republic was so friendly to those identities. 

But here came the kicker: I also needed to provide my parents’ full names to the Islamic Republic of Iran so that they could confirm if my parents were on the “right side” of their history. The pit of my stomach dropped off a cliff I didn’t know existed in my body. There was no way I could move forward without getting the consent of my parents to give their names to the Islamic Republic. 

“What do you think?” Becky texted. 

“I’m scared,” I responded. “I don’t know if I can give my parents’ names to them without telling my parents about this trip.”

Oh yeah, I was planning on going to Iran without telling my parents because my entire life they always told me NOT to go unless I was in my thirties. Well, the human brain always wants to do what it’s told not to. Ask any teenager. 

“I’m scared for you,” Becky texted again. She wasn’t alone in fear this time around. 

There was only one way that I could really resolve this. I had to tell my parents something I knew they wouldn’t like. Something I’ve historically been terrible at. 

I called my dad. and told him about my plans for my sabbatical. 

“You see, there is actually a way for me to go to Iran as a US citizen, I just have to —”

“No,” he said firmly. “No, no no no no no no no no. No. You can’t go.”

‘Can’t’ is much different than don’t. ‘Don’t’ implies an instruction and instructions can be disobeyed. I was very good at disobedience and being a willful child. But ‘can’t’? That implies a lack of ability, an insurmountable obstacle. Can’t is not a command but almost a state of fact. “I can’t lift this,” because it’s too heavy. “I can’t drive” vs. “I don’t drive” implies agency. 

I can’t go to Iran. No longer a command of Don’t because I always thought the Don’t was really trauma talking wearing my parents’ faces. Don’t was really fear masquerading as concern. Don’t meant that there was a way, if only I was clever enough, spent enough money, and did it the right way. 

But I can’t. I can’t go to Iran. The reasons themselves weren’t clear when he spoke but then hearing his history of events in my childhood showed me what I refused to see: This was an impossible dream. The idea of “going in my thirties” was wishful thinking that maybe, by that age, the Islamic Republic would have fallen to a new, kinder regime. That due to the way my parents left Iran, there wasn’t just no going back for them, but for me as well. 

Because I really meant ride or die, I was willing to die in an Iranian prison if it meant that I could see the Takt e Jamshid, to see Persepolis, to see the red clay beaches of Hormuz, to eat pastries made by hands descended by those who invented them in Yazd. I was willing to leave it all behind here in America, leave my wife and loved ones to mourn me if I never came back. That’s how deeply it calls me. It’s illogical. I would risk it all if I could see where I come from. I was choosing to gamble on a dream over the safety and security of my body, where I could minimize the bodily risk to myself but I couldn’t undermine the concerns of the people I love. 

So? What to do on a sabbatical? I had 6 weeks & it was difficult to reframe and let go of this lifelong dream. Well, I am Iranian American after all. So why not travel America? As a born and raised Californian, I spent most of my life exploring the west coast but had never been to the majority of the country. Soon an itinerary started to form, spurred on by epic traveler Becky Lee. 

I received one of the best late night texts ever. “Hey listen I know this wasn’t what you planned for your sabbatical, but Lindsay invited me to stay on her boat. Are you down?”

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. “Yeah sure. Why not?”

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