The Language of Our Love

By Keemia

“Anything we do in our lives does not go to waste, and there is so much to gain from every choice we make.”

Keemia: I recently wrote my grandmother a letter in Farsi, something I'd never done before. My handwriting was shaky, my spelling horrendous, and my vocabulary like that of a second grader. But when she called me to say that she'd received it, she was crying and telling me that she would now sleep with my letter tucked under her pillow. She asked me to write to her more often.

Later, I thought of the woman who made all this possible. Homa Hanjani, a member of our Iranian community in SF, and the woman who taught me to read and write in Farsi. I wanted to thank her for giving me the tools to connect with my community, my family, and my culture.

Here, Homa—an educator, mother, and wife—talks to me about the journey that led her to begin Farsi Ba Doostan, the name of our weekly language classes.

Homa: I was always very much interested in cultivating the Iranian culture, just in general. In the years that I was teaching, many years before I had my own kids, I would always talk to my students about the Iranian new year, and I had so many wonderful, warm stories about my own childhood, and gatherings, and celebrations, that I would bring all of that to my classroom. And I have students who are now adults and, you know, have their own families, and they still remember when they were in my class. And, one of them went to UCLA and he's like, I met so many Iranians and I knew about the culture so much just from what you taught me in fourth grade! And, it was just a really sweet experience for me to hear someone who's not connected to me in any way, other than being my student, took that passion in such a meaningful way.

So one time I was sitting with a friend who you know, Banafsheh Joon, and she said, “Well, you're an educator. So you have been teaching and you speak Farsi; why don't you teach Farsi?” I said, I'm not—I'm not equipped to do that, you know. That's not something… I felt like I am ready for it. And she said, “Well, let's give it a try.”

I remember as a teacher, I had students who… were from Russian background, Chinese background, and so forth, and in the community that I was teaching, I would see their grandparents dropping them off and, you know, speaking their native language with the kids and the kids were always like, “Don't speak to me that language!” And I was like, “Oh my God, how could you possibly say that?” So I would pull the kids aside and I would encourage them to value and appreciate what their families were doing. And one thing that I heard from a lot of these students was that they hated their language classes on the weekends, and that was something that I really wanted to undo, and not feel like it was a chore, that, you know, If I had a group of students coming, I wanted to make sure that they wanted to come back to it rather than dreading it. And so, I would meet with you guys after school and you would come and I would do the tea and the little, you know, kind of cookies and sweets and something similar to what I remember coming home to my own family with. But also the element of studying and learning the language was a part of it. And then I incorporated, of course, the shaving cream on the table with drawing pictures and recognizing letters and, you know, doing it in a more, kind of, interactive way that it wasn't just about, you know, the rote memorization, so that, hopefully it would bring joy to my students' lives—who became not just my students, but, my own children in a sense. So that's how it really started. And then, it was just one of the things I loved doing for so long.

Keemia: I asked her why teaching Farsi Ba Doostan was so important to her.

Homa: Raising kids in a culture that is different than what you're trying to… cultivate at home can be really easy to lose. And, you know, partly, because I was in education, I knew struggle meant progress, and I knew that hard things happened because you, you know, if you have the passion and you persevere, you can get there. And I had to give it a try.

I think just looking back, I feel like your parents are offering you a gift. it's something that, you know, you can hold onto and you can use it for the rest of your life. And I would have probably been very, very sad if my children did not speak Farsi and/or, they were not raised in the culture that made who I am today. I think, you know, being immigrants here, I've never lost my grounding and my roots, and I think that's been such an important part of… how I relate to my own childhood and my background, but also what I felt would have been a loss if I didn't give it to my own kids.

Keemia: Here, she says something that stays with me long after the interview.

Homa: Anything we do in our lives does not go to waste, and there is so much to gain from every choice we make.