Having grown up in different cultures with different expectations, my mother and I have often clashed. But as my daughter grows older, I have come to see our relationship in a different light
For a short time in 2020, when my daughter, Elena, was four, we lived in France. On our first day, our kitchen in boxes, I took her to McDonald’s and told her that the French call it “Le Macdo”. I propped her up on a counter and read her the French menu items, as she giggled into my shoulder. “Mummy, the French are so funny!” A few weeks later, we ran into a boy from her school. He said “Coucou, Elena!” She waved coolly at him, then grinned at me. “Isn’t that so funny?”
Her secret laughter reminded me of my first glimpse of family life in the west. I was nine and we had just escaped from Iran, because my mother was a Christian convert – an apostate. My mother, brother and I had been living in undocumented limbo in Dubai, and when the migrant hostel closed without notice we were taken in by a family of Australian missionaries. On our first night in their house, we three retreated to our room and giggled as we dissected their routines. We were grateful to have a comfortable room and a bed, but the family seemed so strange to us. There was also a thrill in scrutinising the habits of white people; we didn’t often get the chance. My mother’s eyes went wide when dinner arrived: plates of cold cuts, cold vegetables and leftovers. Each night, their son Nathan, a boy my age, got his private time, then official tuck-in with each parent, a bizarre ritual.
