My Village in Brooklyn When I left Iran, New York terrified me. I am a villager. My parents are farmers, their hands built our life from soil, vegetables, sunflowers, basil, tomatoes, cucumbers. That garden was how they brought bread to the table. My mother's hands smelled of basil and tomato vine. My father's back was curved like a question mark from years of bending toward the soil. When I arrived in New York, the city did not welcome me. A village woman among towers. I did not know how to be small in a large place. So I built my village in Brooklyn. I planted a cherry blossom and named it after my mother. A peach tree for my father. A wide bloomed tree for my brother Ali. And sunflowers my entire nation, my whole lost, beloved country, standing tall, facing the light as if they had not been told it was impossible. That garden became a kind of miracle. Neighbors stopped. They smiled. They took photos, spoke to one another softly. In this vast city of strangers, the garden made us a village again. Then one summer afternoon, I noticed a man standing behind my sunflowers. He seemed to be talking. I leaned closer: “What?" He looked up. Eyes cold. He had a headset. He wasn't speaking to me at all. He was speaking to the men who had sent him. I learned this later, in a federal courtroom, where Khalid Mehdiyev, a member of a Russian-linked organized crime group said plainly, that he had not come in my front door for the flowers. He had come to close my eyes permanently, on behalf of the government that had already closed so much else. They took my country first. Then my mother's visits, my father's voice on the telephone, my brother's face across a table. Then the garden that I created in exile. Then the cherry blossom, the peach tree, the white blooms, the sunflowers standing in their row, still facing the light, not knowing I was gone. I grieve Brooklyn every summer. I grieve Iran every day. These are not small griefs. They are the size of nations. But I am my mother's daughter. I know what it means to bend toward the soil and believe in what has not yet risen. But I will find another garden. I will plant my mother again. I will plant my nation again. This is how I survive. 💔✌️🌻