But by that time, I had spent several years distancing myself from the country then known as “Eyeran.” I had seen enough footage of the hostage crisis. I had been called a “smelly A-rab” at school, watched my mother get stared down in grocery shops on account of her accent and witnessed the sharp looks my veiled grandmother drew in the streets. I had quickly learned not to be Iranian in ways that showed. I plucked my eyebrows, bleached my hair with Sun-In and hitched up my skirts. My accent was pure Valley girl, heavy on the “likes.” By summer’s end, I was desperate to get back to California. A visa was the only thing standing between me and the only country I cared to claim.

The first thing I noticed at the American Consulate, where we went to fill out the necessary forms, was the line of people snaking around the building. Most were dark-skinned, and more than a few of the women were veiled. “Refugees,” my uncle explained. “They come every day in hopes of getting visas.” His voice trailed off, making it perfectly clear how they fared.

Because my father had German citizenship, I had a German passport, too, and that meant my mother and I were permitted to skip the line and enter by a different door. That door, and its false promise of entry, would soon become very familiar to me. And with each trip we made to the consulate and each denied petition, the distance between us and the refugees grew smaller, and the possibility of returning to America more distant.

OVER the next several months, the mattress on my cousin’s bedroom floor became my bed. I learned to speak Persian fluently again because it was the only language my family and I shared. Back in America, my father ran the motel, saved money for a lawyer, and devoted himself to filing appeals for us. He persuaded the local high school to let me take my classes through correspondence work. My German wasn’t good enough to enroll in a local school without intensive remediation anyway, and what was the point if we’d soon be leaving? Eventually, my mother rented us a basement apartment, but strictly on a month-to-month lease. “We’ll be back in a few weeks, you’ll see,” she explained.

When I wrote to my American friends, I never explained why I hadn’t returned at the end of the summer. I made it seem like a choice, like we were having such a wonderful time that we’d decided to extend our vacation. They mailed me letters and mix tapes, and I hoped they wouldn’t forget me. But despite my mother’s reassurances, the truth was that I started to think I might never return to America.