Iran

Oh did I finish this year with something good. Since I was a little girl, I have always dreamed of travelling to Iran. I’ve always been proud to be from Iran, or having a father who is from Iran, but have never been able to grasp what that actually mean. Some of the stories I have been told since I was a child have been in the lines of ”You have 90 cousins in Iran, the mountains there are incredibly beautiful and we always cook and east together with the entire family”. These are only a few of the things, but no matter what story I’ve been told, it’s been all about family. Family is obviously very important in many cultures, but for some reason it has a completely different meaning in Iran.

So why did it take me 27 years to travel to Iran? Back in 2012, I had applied for a visa to Iran and was beyond the moon excited to travel there together with my father. Unfortunately he visa was rejected. The reason given to me at the time was that I had to apply for an Iranian passport, due to my father being from Iran (forcing me to change my first and last name). This of course, was not something I was willing to do, nor did I have the time before the journey. Since then, I had given up the hope and I started focusing on travelling to other countries.

Things change, I suppose, and as I was introduced to Parvin, (our fathers are childhood friends) she was eager to help me sort this out now in 2019. I decided to visit her in Kish, which is an Island in the Persian Gulf. Kish is a free-zone and does not require any visa. Therefore, as I had 1 week of vacation, I booked my flight tickets to visit Parvin and Kish. By chance, together we applied for a visa to the mainland of Iran, and lucky me, but the visa was approved the same day I was flying to Kish. How could it be so easy? Did they not realise or see that my visa had been rejected in the past? These questions and concerns were obviously going through my mind at the airport while arriving to Kish. Everything went well, and I arrived successfully in Kish and my vacation