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I now know that the good-smelling room, that imaginary safe space I shared with my brother and mother, was never actually safe for a girl.
我现在知道，我与哥哥、母亲一起住的那个气味怡人的房间，那个想象中的安全空间，对一个女孩来说从来都不安全。
An Iranian daughter isn’t ever meant to leave. A son will eventually go, but a daughter must rot there.
伊朗女儿注定不会离开。伊朗儿子最终会出去，但女儿必须在这里腐烂老死。
She can never express any deviation from her mother’s values, or revel in any triumph her mother might find shameful.
女儿永远不能表现出对母亲价值观的任何偏离，也永远不能沉湎于母亲可能会感到羞耻的任何喜悦。
I realised this when, three months after my divorce in 2013, free in my pretty Lower East Side studio, two men in my family suggested that my mother and I move in together, since we were alone now and couldn’t possibly need privacy from each other.
我意识到这些要从2013年我离婚三个月后谈起，那时，我在下东区自己漂亮的工作室里随心所欲，但家族中的两个男人建议我和母亲搬到一起住，因为我们现在都单身，彼此不可能需要隐私。
Now, 10 years later and an ocean apart, my mother and I are sitting in our kitchens – me in my European tenement flat, she in her American farmhouse – and we speak through our screens in the presence of an English therapist.
如今，10年过去了，我和母亲远隔重洋、坐在各自的厨房里——我在我的欧洲公寓里，她在她的美国农舍里——在一位英国治疗师在场的情况下通过屏幕交谈。
Privacy with my mother has become frightening, so I’ve suggested a compromise.
和母亲独处让我感到害怕，因此，我提出了妥协方案。
“This isn’t normal,” my mother rails against my new boundaries: that I won’t discuss my writing, that I won’t be lectured on religion, that I won’t abide nightmares and paranoia (scheming relatives, meningitis scares with every itch).
“这不正常,” 我母亲抱怨我的新界限: 我不会讨论我的写作，不会接受宗教说教，也不会忍受噩梦与恐惧(狡诈的亲戚，浑身发痒、恐惧到会得脑膜炎)。
But what is normal for mothers and daughters?
但是母女之间什么是正常的呢?
I want a social scientist, not an Iranian mother, to tell me.
我想要一个社会学家、而非一个伊朗母亲来告诉我答案。
In Iran, at great personal cost, daughters preserve a fantasy of closeness with and for their mothers.
在伊朗，女儿们不惜付出巨大的个人代价，保留与母亲亲密关系、亦或是对母亲亲密关系的幻想。
Mothers criticise. Daughters listen. That’s love, I guess.
母亲批评。女儿倾听。我想这就是爱吧。
Over the decades, my mother has cooked thousands of extraordinary meals for me, pouring herself into each one.
在过去的几十年里，我的母亲为我做了无数顿美味佳肴，每一顿都倾注了她的心血。
She has hemmed my jeans and plucked my eyebrows and made me laugh.
她为我缝牛仔裤边，为我拔眉毛，逗我开心。
She has also dismissed my expertise, instructed me to hang my diploma below my ex-husband’s, vilified my partners and accused rival mother-figures of brainwashing me.
她还对我的专业知识不屑一顾，教导我把自己的学位证书挂在前夫的下面，贬低我的合伙人，指责慈母般的竞争对手给我洗脑。
None of this is as big a deal to her as the meals and the plucking.
于她而言，这些都没有做饭和拔眉毛那么重要。
She never considers that I might have earned my values, or that I may be insulted that she doesn’t believe me capable of forming my own opinions.
她从来没有考虑过我的价值观是我博得的，也没有考虑过她不相信我有能力形成自己的观点可能是对我的侮辱。
To her, I’m just a stupid child who gets manipulated by cleverer people: wily men or witchy rival mothers.
对她来说，我只是一个被更聪明的人(诡计多端的男人或者唱反调的巫婆母亲)摆布的傻孩子。
