Chapter 8: Cousins

Cousins are a weird part of our lives, they are like our siblings, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. I had a six year age difference with my youngest girl cousin on my dad side and the rest were even older than me. Naturally they were always doing things together and I was always left out, but that didn’t keep me from trying hard to be in their group and be a part of their conversations. I remember one night that we were all gathered in my aunt’s place for dinner. We had just had our dinner that I noticed all the girls have disappeared. Being afraid that they might be doing something without me and that I might get left out, I started looking for them and soon found them in my cousin’s room, all listening to her telling the story of this guy she had just met. My cousin was sitting on the bed, with my other cousins each sitting in one corner of them room carefully listening to her describing this guy and how he looked like. I quietly made my way into the room and sat down in a corner, trying not to be seen and noticed. I started listening to how this guy had sun glasses on and was riding a motorcycle. How he followed my cousin and disappeared into the night. I can tell now that the story was much exaggerated, but at the age of seven, I believed every word. That night on the way back home, sitting on the back seat of our car with my brother deep asleep next to me, I looked back the whole time, thinking that the handsome guy in my cousin’s story might appear out of the blue with his sun glasses following us till we get home.

As I grew up, my cousins started to see that I act older than my age and they started to trust me with their stories. It got to a point where they told me that I am the first one they are telling this to and I felt so proud. I felt like I earned this, after all that time sitting in a corner and feeling invisible, now I was in the center. But soon they started leaving Iran one by one. The first one left Iran for Canada, the second one came here to the US, the third went to England and I was alone. I went through my high school and college years with no girl cousins to talk to and tell my boy stories to. They were out in the West, going in relationships, getting married and making their own story. I thought I was completely forgotten and thrown out of their lives, after all that years of waiting to get in. But that all changed when I got accepted to the University of Illinois. As they heard the news they were all super excited. One of them drove all the way from the other side of the country to pick me up from O’hare airport in Chicago and take me to Champaign. One of them invited me to stay with her for a month for my Christmas break and I started to be a part of their lives again. I was the first to know that my cousin Somayeh is pregnant and kept the news with me till she was ready to tell everyone. I got to spend time with my cousins every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring break and got to know more about their spouses, their kids and their life. 

Leaving Iran definitely made me miss out on a lot of family events, but it also brought me closer to my cousins, and after all your cousins are like your siblings, it’s just a bit more complicated!