October 14, 2022 - “My Eyebrows” by Rahil Najafabadi

I was drinking tea with my mother on a school day and winter was dying out. It was cold; it felt colder because I was afraid. She placed a sugar cube in my mouth and urged me to drink the tea.

“Drink it, I want to get us ice cream in a bit. I don’t want you to crack your teeth” she said.

Two weeks ago, I threaded my delicate eyebrows and finally got rid of my unibrow. I always hated looking like I have one, long eyebrow. I hated how long the Taj/تاج (crown/top) of my eyebrow was. The hairs at the top of it were so long, and it always made me look like I’m raising my eyebrows even when I wasn’t. I trimmed it to ground my gaze. But then I got carried away. I cleaned up and shaped my brows. I wanted to look like my mom. She has clean, chic, pointy eyebrows. Powerful.

The day I showed up to school with my new eyebrows, everyone noticed. My friends, my teachers, and the faculty. The two-faced girls said I’d get in trouble, but I didn’t believe them. My friends told me to cut my bangs, as to cover it. My teachers asked me why I thinned my eyebrows. “They’re so out of style!”

My mom was going through a lot and my father was working overseas. I was scared of telling her. I wondered how she did not notice. Finally, on the fifth day of school, the vice-principal found out. “Ahmadi, Office.” We were never called by our first names in my girls-only middle school in Tehran, Iran. Only by our last names, and my Iranian last name is my middle name in America. She pointed to her eyebrows while summoning me and gave me a dirty look. I gulped.

I had never gotten into trouble except for selling Hollywood movies to kids who didn’t know how to download them. That was truly the only way one could watch foreign films in Iran; illegally. I was caught by my cool English teacher who knew I grew up in Connecticut. She let it slide, but I promised her I’d stop pirating movies and music and would focus on reading books. I’m still grateful for her and that promise.

“Who told you to touch your eyebrows?” the vice-principal asked.

The question was very strange to me. I was never told I couldn’t touch my eyebrows. The vice-principal suddenly began brushing up my eyebrow hairs with her fingers. I flinched.

“There’s nothing left of it! You could have done it discreetly, but no, you had to go all the way…Tell your mother to call me as soon as possible.”

I felt the worst anxiety whenever I heard the telephone ring in our home. I still had not told my mother I was in trouble for shaping my eyebrows. The next week, I saw the vice-principal again. This time, she told me something I couldn’t hold in anymore.

“That’s it, Ahmadi. If I don’t hear from your mother by tomorrow afternoon, I’m holding you accountable for this mess.”

I couldn’t come up with a way to tell my mom. I still couldn’t believe she didn’t notice my eyebrows. But then again, they were never really that thick. I just told her to call the vice-principal. I was so sick the next day I didn’t go to school. I sat beside her as she called. She kept asking me why and what this concerned. I just told her “She will let you know.” My stomach felt like a giant knot as she was greeting the vice-principal on the phone. It took them a few Persian minutes to finally get to my eyebrows. I knew she became aware when she put her glasses on and glared at my face. Her eyes were wide. Her expression was confusing.

“No, I wasn’t aware she plucked her eyebrows.” My mom grew silent. Then she frowned and got up from her chair.

“What do you mean? A week?! She’ll fall behind from all her classes, please. It won’t happen again…She’s a young girl. They touch their hair and eyebrows more than us. You know that, right?”

The vice-principal couldn’t be convinced. Never. They were an unbreakable species. I was suspended from school for a week, and I told everyone I went up North/شمال. It was so obvious I lied. Once my cousins saw me, they laughed and told me their own eyebrow stories. One of them told me she told her principal she had a band aid on her upper lip, and it snatched her mustache when she pulled it off. I laughed and these stories made the days go by faster, but I still felt ashamed.

My mom was really understanding but she was frustrated because she didn’t know about this “rule.” She lived outside of Iran for over fifteen years and forgot about these weird restrictions. She was angry at herself. Angry at the school for suspending me because of my eyebrows. She looked at me silently the first few days. “Sit under the light” she’d say. My mom put her glasses on and looked at my eyebrows carefully, trying to see what I’ve done to them. She hoped I didn’t overpluck them. She kept telling me how beautiful my natural eyebrows were and that I should learn to love them even when I’m older. I wouldn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. My eyebrows became a revolutionary part of me. They had to be thin.

“When I was in middle school, the principal called Madarjooni/مادرجونی (my grandmother) and told her I had a picture of an unruly male.”

“Who was it?” I asked my mom.

“Bruce Lee.” She finally smiled.

“Was he nude?!”

“He was shirtless. Portrait length. I found the picture in a magazine and put it in my pencil case. The vice-principal and their radars looked for such things in our bags while we were on recess.”

She looked away and smiled a bitter, sad smile. I could tell she had forgotten those moments. When you leave your homeland and become an immigrant, all you take with you is the love and poetry. You forget about the things that made you leave. When you’re an immigrant, you’re pushed away by people who take your place in your own home. And they tell you you’re not allowed to touch your eyebrows.

“They would always think I thinned my eyebrows. Our vice-principal lined us up and touched our eyebrows with their fingers and long nails. I hated it.” I knew exactly how disgusting that felt.  

One long week of staying home and reading poetry with my mom passed quicker than I thought. I was told to come back to school when my eyebrows grew out, so we applied castor oil twice a day. Luckily, I was an Iranian girl. My black eyebrows grew back and framed my eyes boldly once again. It was time to go to school, but I felt sick. I couldn’t finish my breakfast. My mom made me tea with fried eggs and fresh Barbari bread/نون بربری. She was taking me to school that day instead of the school bus service to speak to the vice-principal. She did her makeup and wore her prettiest coat.

“Eat up! You have math first period.” She was wearing pink lipstick.

“I can’t. I feel sick. I feel…

“Like your heart has emptied?”

“Yes…yes exactly.”

My mom placed her hand on my head, touching my Maqnae/مقنعه (forced head covering).

“Your eyebrows looked like mine. But yours will always be prettier.” She winked and her smile loosened up the knot in my stomach.

“Always.”