Zahra Noorbakhsh was 14 when her Iranian immigrant mother discovered that Zahra was defying the family ban on mingling with boys: one was among her four friends heading to the movies together.

So the sex education talk that in a different life, back in the holy city of Qom, would have waited for her bridal night was instead delivered in the parking lot of a mall in Danville, Calif.

“Zahra, you have a hole,” her mother started. “For the rest of your life, men will want to put their penis in your hole. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, who is your ‘friend.’ ”

Young Zahra staggered from the car thinking: “I have a what?! A hole? Where? Was that what I had missed in sex ed the one day I had the flu?”