Prophet Nina

In their book, Prophet Nina preaches ethical relativism in the hopes of preventing their followers from murdering people who are dressed differently. To promote physical and mental health, Prophet Nina encourages everyone of all ages and abilities to dance at least five minutes a day in a public square. Prophet Nina will never approve of selling dangerous drones to Vladimir Putin to use against the Ukrainian people. Prophet Nina will ensure that all women have the same rights and opportunities to ride bicycles in Iran as their male and nonbinary neighbors.

After expressing myself on TikTok, I went out for a bicycle ride to Ocean Beach via the beautiful JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, past the conservatory of flowers, a skating rink, the de Young Museum, all the lakes, all the meadows, all the buffaloes, and a Dutch windmill to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Normally, riding my bicycle in San Francisco distracts me from awful, intrusive thoughts, but not on that day. Somehow all I could think of were images of me punching my older brother in the face, chest, and back, then in his face again. These thoughts felt right and cathartic at the time because I have hated my older brother most of my life. My brother lives in Tehran; I have not talked to him in more than a decade, and I doubt I will see him again. Regardless, these visions were unsettling and violent, and I am not a violent person. Later in the day, I became disgusted with myself and confused.

In reality, I have never punched my brother. He is seven years older and always loved learning and practicing martial arts growing up. He made my childhood a nightmare. Because of his age, and my parents’ work schedule, he had many hours alone with me in a supervisory role. He was a violent person to be around. My parents knew he physically and verbally assaulted me, since he did all those in front of my parents’ eyes too. My parents didn’t care a lot unless we had a guest at home. In that case, they would make sure their kids behaved according to the protocols of an imaginary respectable family that we were clearly not, but, apparently, strove for whenever we had an audience of random guests.

In the context of Iran’s current situation, a readily available analogy would be my parents as the Supreme Leader Khamenei and his three useless branches of the Iranian government. My brother as the morality police enforcing his own protocols may or may not align with my parents’ goals. Obviously, I would be a typical Iranian girl in this lazy analogy. Further, I cannot comment on how the majority of Iranian families raised their children in the ’80s, but I can report that I was caught off guard when I learned that other kids at my school liked or adored their older brothers. I think the first time I heard of such sibling dynamics was in fifth grade. At that time, I had a crush on a classmate who was okay at math and science like me, but was a star in soccer, basketball, and ping pong. He was brash and funny. I liked him like that. But, obviously, I never got to tell him how I felt because, in spite of not knowing the word for people like myself was gay, I knew it was extremely dangerous to express such gay feelings as a boy to another boy. Homophobia aside, I remember feeling sad that I didn’t have a close relationship with my older brother like my crush had with his own three older brothers! What stung the most was the fact that I had to go back home after school. Every time I was home, I had to find ways to avoid contact with my older brother. I didn’t feel safe around him but I had nowhere else to go to escape him. My parents’ house where I grew up in was a snug two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom apartment in a four-story building between Laleh Park and Gisha neighborhood in a central part of Tehran with a variety of government offices, K–12 schools, museums, mosques, churches, hospitals, a garrison, and different academic colleges. I loved my neighborhood but I hated my home.