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As adults, displaced children crave to be normal again, free from the hundreds of daily calculations and errors.
成年后，无家可归的孩子渴望恢复正常生活，摆脱每天数百次的精打细算与误差。
We want big heavy doors separating our psychic rooms from our parents’, some distance and tangible borders between the present and the past.
我们想要一扇大而重的门，把我们的心灵之房与父母的分隔开，现在与过去之间相隔一些距离、也有着明确的边界。
Sometimes, that past is embodied by a heartbroken foreign mother always knocking on our door, issuing invitations.
有时，那段往事体现为：一位伤心欲绝的外国母亲总是敲响我们的门，并对我们发出邀请。
My mother’s face falls each time I enforce a hard boundary.
每当我严格规定界限时，我母亲就会垮起脸。
She keeps dusting our imagined refuge, where we three were all tangled up together, wishing for her children to return to it for a cup of tea and a laugh.
她不停地想掸去想象之中的避难所的灰尘。我们三个曾在那个地方相互纠缠，母亲希望孩子们能重回那里喝茶、谈笑。
I make a joke, and she thinks maybe the door is opening a crack. Her eyes light up.
我开了个玩笑，她就觉得那扇门开了条缝。她的眼睛亮了起来。
I wish I could sustain the warmth, but sensing danger, I retreat behind my own door. She’s alone again, mystified.
我希望我能留住暖意，但察觉到危险后，退到自己的门后。她又孑然一身，困惑不解。
For all our clashes of culture, our biggest rupture is over this: my mother spent my adolescence covering my body, policing my manners and generally shaming me for becoming a woman.
在所有的文化冲突中，我们最大的裂痕在于: 我的青春期是在母亲遮挡我的身体，监督我的举止，经常因我是女人而羞辱我的时光中度过的。
My repressed religious upbringing has become the single biggest influence on my own parenting strategy: I am vigilant against shaming Elena.
我受到的压抑的宗教教育对我自己的育儿策略影响最大: 我警惕不让埃琳娜受到羞辱。
The other day, watching TV, my daughter, now seven, said: “They’re going to have some lovely kissing now.”
有一天，看电视时，我七岁的女儿说: “他们现在要来个甜蜜的接吻了。”
I wanted to fast-forward through the four seconds of tame kissing, but I restrained myself.
我本想快进过那四秒平淡无奇的的接吻，但我控制住了自己。
In return for this leeway, she tells me all her heart’s secrets.
作为网开一面的交换，她告诉了我她所有的秘密。
When I was growing up, if television characters began to flirt, my mother would squirm and change the channel.
在我的成长过程中，如果电视角色开始调情，我母亲就会局促不安地换台。
If anyone kissed, she banned the show as filth, and said things like “If you watch unchristian things, I don’t trust you with the TV.”
如果有人亲吻，她就会以淫秽为由禁止观看，说着类似“如果你看不符合基督教教义和道德标准的东西，我就不放心你看电视。”的话。
To be fair, if she had watched television romances as a child, she would have been beaten and thrown out of the house.
说句公道话，如果她小时候看过电视上的爱情片，那她可能会被打一顿后被赶出家门。
Once, when I was 12, my mother snapped at me for a tasteless joke.
我12岁时，有一次，我妈妈因为我开了一个粗俗的玩笑而斥责我。
My chest tightened and I choked down my meal.
我的胸口憋着气，强咽下饭菜。
Later, to assuage my shame, she told me that, when she was a girl in pre-revolutionary Tehran, she was doing her homework while absently muttering three interesting words she had heard on television. “Mary, Virgin Mother.”
后来，为了减轻我的羞耻感，她告诉我，在革命前的德黑兰，那时她还是一个女孩，她一边做作业，一边心不在焉地轻念着她在电视上听到的三个有趣的词语。“圣母玛利亚。”
In Farsi it lends itself to chanting, all soothing Ms.
在波斯语中，适合吟诵出来，都是用来安慰女性。
Her father walked past, heard her mumbling, realised what she was saying and slapped her hard across the face.
她的父亲走过去，听到她的咕哝声，听懂了她说的话，狠狠地扇了她一巴掌。
Nothing would have happened to a boy in this situation, not in either of our generations, and that angers me.
在这种情况下，男孩是不会有事的，我们这两代的男孩都不会有事，这点燃了我的怒火。
But the story also makes me chuckle: as a child, my mother had already discovered the mother of all martyrs.
但这个故事也让我暗自发笑: 母亲小时候就已经发现了所有烈士之母。
