Many of my co-workers at the Persian Service distrusted me as a new arrival from Iran. Supporters of the deposed monarchy thought I was an agent of the Islamic Republic, ex-Communists suspected I was a monarchist, and others disliked me simply because I got my job on merit and not through diaspora connections. I hid my initial struggles from my father, who had invested heavily in getting me the right education.

After my father’s phone call and my daughter’s concert that May evening, I called the hospital in Tehran and spoke to its director, Dr. Reza Fattahi. “We love your father. We are even more concerned about his well-being than you are,” he assured me. I couldn’t stop worrying.

I had tried to bring my father to the United States in the winter of 2017. Applicants who are 80 and older do not need to be interviewed in person. Yet he was instructed to go to Ankara, Turkey, for an interview in March 2018, where he was told he would get a tourist visa in a few weeks. Six months later, I got an email saying his visa application was denied because of the Trump travel ban.

On an early June morning, the day of my daughter’s high school graduation ceremony , my father was released from the hospital. Once he was home, we connected via FaceTime every day. He walked, talked and ate by himself. But I sensed something was off. My sister and her husband, who live in Tehran, got a doctor to check on him. Blood tests revealed he had an infection. His blood pressure was low and he was not alert. My sister and her husband moved him to another hospital.

On June 22, I was traveling with my daughter for her college orientation. We checked into a hotel and settled in to prepare for her big day. I kept telling myself to focus on my daughter and not be distracted by my worries about my father.

But I continued messaging my brother-in-law in Tehran for updates: Baba had developed a septic infection and was not doing well. I drifted off to sleep around 1 a.m. At 1:42 a.m. my phone rang.

My brother-in-law was crying, barely able to talk: “Baba’s gone.”

“What do you mean?” I stubbornly replied. “Tell them to revive him!”