Little Miss Trouble

You get the feeling Parvin Darabi just was not cut out to be a good Muslim in Kohmeni's Iran.

I was six days old when my grandfather passed on his religion to me by reciting a series of Arabic words into my ear. I am quite positive that those were the only Arabic words my grandfather could recite and he perhaps did not know what he was reciting into my ear. We are Iranian and our language is Persian and a vast majority of the Iranians including my family do not speak Arabic, the language of God. Religion is like the color of our eyes. It is hereditary.

For kindergarten I was sent to this neighborhood school where an old lady named Kobra was its head mistress. I hated this school and the head mistress because she always looked so mean in those black shrouds she covered herself in. She wore black at all times. No laughter, no music, no play and just God and Islam. And the school was dirty and all she did was reading her Koran and prayer book. I knew she had no education and could not read, because when I would place her Koran upside down she would still read it just the same.

[Hat tip, Amritas]