Secrecy, duality, and generational trauma

Esther Amini Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Merage Naim. With me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Today we're speaking with writer artist and psychotherapist Esther Amini. Esther's family immigrated from Mashhad, Iran to New York City before she was even born. But she still spent a lifetime navigating those two conflicting realities, that of a conservative Jewish Iranian daughter whose only aspiration should be to marry and to mother and that of a curious child who grew into an accomplished woman and a professional with accolades and a strong will.

Kassia Binkowski
Yet again, Sabrina we are joined by a guest whose life experience is so radically different than my own. Truth be told, I had no idea the secrecy and oppression that Jews were living under in Mashhad, Iran, nor the trauma that has impacted so many generations of her family and beyond. Esther's story is about finding herself straddling two conflicting cultures, about how secrets have shaped her and generations that came before her, and how she has defined womanhood on her own terms, rather than on the expectations placed around her.

Sabrina Merage Naim
May we all be so bold. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Esther, thank you so much for joining us from Manhattan today. We're really excited to have this conversation.

Esther Amini
Thank you, Sabrina. I'm looking forward to our talk.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Absolutely. So Esther, you are not the first woman of Iranian descent that we're we've had on the show. You're also not the first author we've had on the show. But what is unique about you and what we're excited to kind of delve into is exploring your roots, your family history in a particular region of Iran called Mashhad, which has a very unique history. And the memoir that you wrote about that family history between Iran and then the US and a lot of the dynamics and complexity that exists between those two regions and multiple generations of your family. So I'd like to start the conversation with really your family's roots in Mashhad. You wrote the book Concealed, a memoir of a Jewish Iranian daughter caught between the Chador and America, which detailed your story as the daughter of immigrants and their story of a trauma they really could never escape. So paint a picture for us, of the lives as Mashhadi Jews, the lives of your family, and maybe even more broadly, the community of Jews that lived in that region who survived a lot of trauma for multiple generations.

Esther Amini
Well, I should begin by saying I was born in New York City on to Jewish Iranian parents, as you said, who came from Mashhad, but Mashhad is distinctly different from all the other cities in Iran, so a little background needs to be inserted. Mashhad is the most fanatical Islamic city in all of Iran. Reason being on the ninth century Imam Reza was buried there. And millions of people come to pay homage to him from around the world. And so the soil of Mashhad is considered sacred, holy. Mashhad is a Shiite stronghold, a pilgrimage site with a long history of maiming and massacring infidels. So they have zero tolerance for anyone who's different, who is not Muslim, making it very difficult to live there if you are different. And so my parents and my ancestors for many generations lived there as crypto Jews, as underground Jews, hiding their true identity. This life of duplicity, duality, paranoia went right into their DNA.

Kassia Binkowski
How large was that community? Are we talking hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands? How big?

Esther Amini
It's a good question. I don't know the exact number. But I would guess when my parents were there, and they were there through the mid 20th century, that there were about 500 to maybe 800 jews living as crypto Jews, they lived in a ghetto called Adga. And it was a charade. Because the Muslims knew who the Jews were. And yet the Jews were parading as Muslims. My mother wore the black chador, which is the burqa with eye slits, black, covering her from head to toe. And my father prayed from the Quran five times a day in the public square, and knew the Quran like the back of his hand. And yet, when he came home, in the privacy, secrecy of their home, they were devout Jews.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And just for the sake of our listeners, it's important to make the distinction that in other regions of Iran, particularly during that time, this was not the case, there was a pretty large Jewish population in Iran, who lived in different cities throughout the country, and who never had to, in the same way, hide their identity, particularly before the 1979 revolution, where, you know, there was much more of a freedom of religion and diversity. And this is a very unusual story of one community in one region of the country. And what's important that we're going to get into is how their being forced to hide their identity for multiple generations, their being forced to, as you say, be crypto Jews, then impacted subsequent generations, which I'm interested in hearing about as well. But you know, the fact that your father went and prayed in the public square five times a day with with other Muslim residents, I mean, for someone like me, whose family is also from Iran, who are also Jews, it is mind boggling to think about because it's just so different.

Esther Amini
So different, so different. To add to that picture, women in Mashhad, young girls in Mashhad were kept out of classrooms, were kept out of schools, they were kept illiterate. This was not going on in the mid 20th century in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Girls in Tehran, who were coming out of affluent families were being sent to Swiss boarding schools. In Mashhad, girls were kept illiterate, not the boys, the boys were allowed to learn to read and write. But the girls were kept illiterate. And they were also married off at a very young age. My grandmother, for example, was nine years old. This is my father's mother, nine years old when she was forced to marry my grandfather, 20 years older. And it's important to stop and think about that for a minute. Just imagine a nine year old girl standing next to a 29 year old man and being married off to him. That was the norm in Mashhad.

Kassia Binkowski
And your mother's story wasn't much different. She was only slightly older, is that right?

Esther Amini
Right, she was 14, forced to marry my father who was 34. This was the norm in the Muslim world. And the Jews did this as well, partly to look like everyone else, partly in case a Muslim should knock on their door and ask for the hand of a young girl they can say she's spoken for. And that was acceptable and understandable.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I want to just pause you there. Because I think that's a really important distinction. That part of the reason, like you said was for them to blend in. But the I think more important part was they were marrying their children off to each other very early on, so that there wouldn't be intermarriage with other kind of the Muslim community. And it was their way of protecting their community. And as an outsider, you think, okay, it makes sense. And... that's bonkers, right? Because these are children. And you have to separate yourself from the current environment that we live in, where we know that marrying a nine year old off is wrong, and acknowledge that there were protective mechanisms in place at the time that they felt were necessary.

Esther Amini
Absolutely. Absolutely. The tradition was for the young girl to move into her future in-law's house. The the husband was often a merchant, many of them were merchants, they would take off, go off to India, go off to Afghanistan, do whatever business they were doing, and wait to hear that their young bride was menstruating. And once they heard that was the case, they would come back and have sexual relations. So that piece needs to be inserted, because very often I'm asked, were they having sexual relations with a nine year old? And the answer is no. But even waiting a few years, you stop and think, how it affects a young girl who's maybe 12. Maybe 13. Married to a man 20 years older. And how brutal the experience can be.

Kassia Binkowski
How did this origin story of your parents' relationship impact what you witnessed decades later, when they were in New York, and you're a little girl born there, what did that look like to you? What relationship did you witness and how much did that trauma continue to shape what you saw?

Esther Amini
I think the shock was more than that. The shock was, A) my parents were diametric opposites. Just as Iran and America felt like diametric opposites. I felt like I was caught at the intersection of medieval Mashhad and 20th century America. I was also caught between a father who was rather medieval, quiet, withdrawn, sanctified silence, banned books in the house when it came to me. And a mother who was outspoken, in-reverent, rebellious and was lapping up the United States. She absolutely adored America, my father hated America. So it had more to do with all these contrasts, these clashing contrasts and the mixed messages that I was getting. One that yes, I'm growing up in America, I go to public school, because that is the law of the land. He knew he had to let me go. But at the same time, was insisting that I don't learn anything, that I don't learn to read and write, that I don't read books, that I marry young, he wasn't thinking age nine, he was thinking maybe age 14, 15. And that my sole purpose in this world was to marry, become a mother, procreate raised children, cook, run a home. And that's really the role of a woman, because this is what he witnessed. You know, I'm not faulting him. This was all that he saw for generations before him and during his lifetime in Iran, in the city of Mashhad. This is what he saw. And this is what he saw worked.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I just want to highlight the irony that when growing up, you didn't have access to books in your home, and then you grew up to become a writer.

Kassia Binkowski
Well, I was gonna say, I mean, by any measure, you've disproven or become everything that your father didn't want you to be. Which is fascinating. Was that your mother's influence that made that possible or who were the women in your life that were kind of safeguarding you against, or safeguarding you from those outcomes that he was so desperately hoping?

Esther Amini
Well, in my memoir, Concealed, I write a lot about my two brothers, and they were surrogate parents for me in many, many ways. Albert, 10 years older, had dreams of becoming an architect. And he went to Brooklyn Tech High School in New York, and then went off to Cornell and was exposing me to his world, quietly, very quietly, and my brother David, 7 years older than me. And when you're a child, these numbers make a very big difference. I felt like an only child in many ways, growing up with a brother who left our home when I was 8, he was already 18 going off to college. And David, 7 years older, who was an English Lit major, and went to Columbia University and was sharing so much of what he was learning with me from a young age. And I would have to say they were the big influencers, there's no question about it. They wanted me to stand on their shoulders and reach for the sky. They never phrased it that way. It was their behavior. It was just all of the exposure and wanting me to use my mind.

Kassia Binkowski
Did that come at consequence to them? I mean, they were defying the the wishes and intentions of the patriarch of the family.

Esther Amini
You know, I mean, David would read passages from classics to me, and we would do it quietly at night in his bedroom when my father had already gone to bed and I'd be sitting next to him in my pajamas, and he'd be opening up a passage from Huckleberry Finn, and pointing out what he thought was absolutely brilliant and a lot flew over my head, but there was some that I was taking in, and the way in which we secretly spent time and what we talked about secretly. Albert invited me to Cornell to spend an extended weekend with him. And it was the way he phrased it. The way he couched it, he made it sound like he was missing me. And he said to my father, I just want to have her with me for a few days, and she'll be fine. He didn't stress the University and the University life, my father had no idea what happened on a college campus. And so he convinced my father and I went for an extended weekend. And that was one of the most mind boggling experiences of my life up until the age of 10. I was 10 when I went and to see his life, to see the intensity of the classes, the professor's, the passion for idea for discussion, the creativity, the freedom to think, was an eye opener. And he never said, I want you to see this and go off to college someday, that was never phrased, it was just come be with me. And between the lines, I really felt he was giving me permission. So a lot of this was done in concealment, to go back to the word concealed. And then growing up, I concealed my reading, and I did that under the covers, in bed with a flashlight. And there was a thrill to sinning. Yet I was also terrified of being found out. My father found me with a book, he would have a meltdown, it was as if I was mainlining heroin. I was a drug addict in his eyes if I was reading a book. And it was so different from what other little girls were experiencing going to public school in Queens, New York, where they were being reprimanded for not doing their homework. And I was pulling straight A's and having to hide my report card and forge signatures, my father's signature, and I practiced forging his signature from first grade and on. And so it was, again, the opposite of what mainstream America was experiencing.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Let's talk about the circumstances that brought your family to the US. I want to understand, because you came before the revolution, your family came before the revolution. What were the circumstances that brought them to New York and talk a little bit about how that transition was for both of your parents. You mentioned that your mother was just lapping it up. And I'm guessing for your father, it was a much more challenging transition?

Esther Amini
Yes. Well, firstly, it was right after World War Two. When my mother got it into her head that they're not staying one more day in the city of Mashhad, and they're getting out. The trigger was that they had sent their two boys, my brothers, who were young at the time, toddlers, to an elite private school, nursery school. And the teacher, the Muslim teacher, felt that my brother David had misbehaved. And she reached for a, what do you call it... a metal rod that you stick into the fireplace, and she heated it and pressed it against David's ear lobe and called him a dirty Jew. Now at the time he was a toddler. He came home with a bleeding, pusys ear lobe. And that's when my mother said never again. She said, you know, we have been, we have suffered, we've been tortured. Anti semitism has been horrific in this city. But I will not allow them to ever touch my son's again.

Kassia Binkowski
And your mother, to be clear, was probably not much older than a teenager herself when she was making that choice.

Esther Amini
That's right. That's right. She was a very strong character, had a mind of her own, did not need other people to validate her. And she was a force to contend with, at times a very difficult force, and at times a heroic force. And definitely at this moment, she was heroic. So she said to my father, who was 20 years older, and a very strong traditional man, I am taking these boys whether you like it or not, and it was not an easy time to leave. Right after World War Two. There were no commercial flights leaving from Tehran to New York City. So to get out, they had to go through Afghanistan by horse, buggy, train. They ended up in India, they got stuck in India for over a year. It was an Odessy, which I wrote about, but the the idea was that my mother could not tolerate it any longer, the anti-semitism, and she wanted her sons to have a life that she never had. She had a brother living in New York named Aaron, who had sent a message to her saying, America is good to the Jews, come. And that's all she needed to hear. So she had no idea where she was going. She did not speak English. My father was a merchant, he didn't have a trade, a profession that would be appropriate for the United States, in the 1950s. And yet, she grabbed the family and just dragged them over. And my father never wanted to leave Iran, he was tethered to Meshhad, he had owned lots of land, real estate, was leaving a comfortable life, was well respected. Although he was living this life of duality, it was the norm.

Kassia Binkowski
Was his family still there?

Esther Amini
At that time, yes. And his family eventually moved to Jerusalem, and they settled there, his parents. But he came here, and he felt that this is a hedonistic country, from day one, immoral, unethical, zero family life compared to what he had experienced in Iran. And he thought it would contaminate our home. And so he was here against his will, the rest of his life, never, never accepted the United States. And because I was born here, and was his only daughter, he felt highly protective of me, and didn't want America to enter our home in any form or fashion.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It is a very common immigrant experience, not just specific to, you know, Iranian immigrants, but immigrants from anywhere, that having to flee your country of birth, when you're a little bit older, and then settling in a new place, like the US is an extremely challenging life stage. And for many, especially those proud men who had a place, who had a position in their country, and then came here with nothing, and had no place, they never recover. And for someone like you who, you are American, but in your home, there was a very different kind of message and culture and the traditions were so different in your home than outside of your home. Straddling those two cultures is also extremely challenging. And growing up in that is extremely challenging. So I want you to kind of reflect a little bit on your own duality growing up between your home life and your out of the home life.

Kassia Binkowski
Especially as a woman, and with these two cultures affording women such different experiences and opportunities.

Esther Amini
Well, it's very true. I continue to this day to live with feelings of duality. I've always felt like an outsider, which I think has served me, it's a very good feeling. Ultimately. Not as a child, it's difficult, but later in life, I think it really is strengthening. Not feeling, I mean, I understand the American world, I grew up in it, my friends are American. And yet, I do feel very much like an outsider looking in very often, which is what I think a writer needs to feel. And I also spent many years painting, and I think a painter needs to feel that. I think doing anything creative, it's very helpful to feel that you belong but you don't belong and that you're seeing it through a different lens. So for me that has worked. Even as a psychotherapist, you know, I'm a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with a private practice in Manhattan and listening to people and hearing their stories and being able to hear differently. and sit with it, and be comfortable with the uncomfortable, has a lot to do with having grown feeling like an outsider.

Kassia Binkowski
You paint such a vivid picture of a little girl reading under the covers by flashlight, you know in total secrecy. Walk us through your childhood. And as you become a young woman, where are the other moments that those cultures really clashed and you were forced to choose between or hide one to protect the other? Where are the other points of clash in your experience?

Esther Amini
You know, I think the first thing that comes to mind when you ask that question is thinking, I was raised again, this is my family, you know. You may have someone listening in, who says, that's not true, that didn't happen in my family. That's okay. But in my Mashhadi family, my father forbid me to think. And here I am, naturally thinking, and I happen to be a person that does a lot of thinking, in addition. And the whole idea of a girl should not think, not a lot, at least not about anything significant. Because the world of thought should come from men. There was a belief that my father had, this is not my mother. This is my father, that the brain is a male organ. And the more you use your mind, the more masculine you become. And what then happens, you will be unappealing, no man will want you, no man will want to marry you. Because the ultimate goal is that you get married. And he actually said to me, I mean, it wasn't something I was putting together, he would often say to me that you're going to shrivel up, your eyes are going to shrivel up, you're going to lose hair, you're going to age prematurely with all this thinking that you do and all this reading, because at times he would catch me reading, with all this reading that you would do. That no man is going to watch you because you're going to be like a man.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to just look at the macro Mashhadi community for a second, because there's now a pretty decent Mashhadi community living in New York. And still, there's a bit of a separation, a bit of a protection of that community, even within the larger Jewish community, even within the larger Iranian Jewish community. And I'm curious, you know, thinking about the fact that it's really been scientifically proven that certain traumas can actually alter your DNA, and then therefore the DNA of your offspring. I'm curious after generations and generations and generations of the Mashhadi Jews having to hide their identities, marrying their children off so young, the girls being really children when they get married off. How has that now, many generations later when the community is now settled in New York or in other parts of the world, how have you seen... now I'm kind of tapping into your psychotherapist background. How have you seen that the way that that community is living and settled now is impacted by what they went through for so many generations?

Esther Amini
Well, I think we have to backtrack and recognize that the Jews of Mashhad survived as Jews through this method of theirs. All the intermarriage, back then they were marrying first cousins, there was a lot of that. All this marriage within families, for fear of assimilating, for fear of losing their Judaism, and they succeeded. They held on tightly. They came to the United States, some have gone to London, there's a community in Milan, Italy, there's a community in Hamburg, Germany, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and I'm sure many other cities. They survived. And I think that feeling of, we have survived, keeps them feeling that they need to stay insular. They need to only marry within. Not necessarily first cousins. That's not what's happening now. They're marrying people who are not related to them, but are Mashhadi Jews. And the feeling, they have a strong commitment to the continuity of Jews, of Judaism. This is their primary commitment, the continuity of Judaism. So, you know, I don't think you can fault them. I think you have to just realize that that is a value and it has worked. They have realized in the Ashkenazi world, with all of its freedoms, there is a lot of intermarriage and they pride themselves on not having lost too many members of their tribe to other religions. So that that's going on. At the same time, I have to say there are changes taking place. What was going on when I was growing up is not what's happening right now. Young girls are going off to college, it's not such a big deal as it was for me. And the fact that they want a BA, or perhaps even a Master's is not considered outrageous. So girls have more opportunity. But in the mesh of the community, there's still the wish that she married from within. And if she doesn't, if she marries a Jew outside of that Mashhadi world, many accept it, they're not thrilled, but many accpet it, which is very, very different from my time.

Kassia Binkowski
Can you point to kind of where your courage came from? I mean, you've said here and you've said elsewhere that the expectation was that you marry, that you become a housewife, that you remain uneducated. Where did the courage in you, was it your brothers' influence, was your mother's rebellion and embrace of all things American? I mean, where did that spirit and drive come from?

Esther Amini
I would say my mother, I would definitely say my mother. I was a late bloomer, in many, many ways. You know, I, as a child, I was quiet, observing, listening, attentive, cooperative. And even as an adolescent, I had my rumblings, my feelings, that I would put into my journal, but I didn't act out, I was as accommodating as I could be. I think this need to finally have a voice and to follow the grain in my own wood, it has a lot to do with having had a mother like mine. She was irreverent. She was not going to kowtow to tradition, to convention, be it American convention be it Iranian convention, she was her own person, for better or for worse. And very often, she frightened me because her behavior did never considered consequences. So things would happen, and I didn't know where any of us would land. She just was in the present tense, fully in the present tense. And I didn't want to be like her, because I felt she was dangerous in some ways. But what I was gleaning, I think, and saying to myself, as I grew older, I want her courage to follow what she believes is right, or I want the courage to follow what I believe is right. And yet think through and consider consequences, and not do it in a way in which I'm creating any kind of disaster around me. And so how do I fine tune this? But I think that I wanted her strength. And I think over time, it took me a long time. But over time, I think I have internalized a lot of her strengths.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to make an observation, which is that on this show, I also revealed that my great grandmother, similarly, was married off at the age of nine, and how that trauma must have impacted her, and also to an older man. How that trauma must have impacted her, the confusion, that feeling of betrayal of your family, you know, so much that kind of was woven into that story. And yet she did grow into a strong woman who's courage, who's desire to push through the difficulty, to be in a position of strength always really impacted multiple generations of my family. It was so much thanks to her. And I think that it's just an interesting thing in retrospect, to kind of think about which is these girls who were married off so young and yet grew into these strong and courageous women against the odds. I really think.

Esther Amini
So let's let's talk about that.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, I was going to ask you, because from a psychotherapy standpoint, I'm sure you've had a moment to kind of step back and look at this and say, what does this really mean? Where does it come from?

Esther Amini
I'm a big believer in obstacles. And I think that if they are viewed correctly, if they're interpreted correctly, one realizes they're there for you to overcome. And for you to flex your muscles and to get stronger, not to be defeated. And I think someone like your grandmother, someone like my mother, who had many, many obstacles in front of her. Illiteracy for one, she was never schooled, and that was a pain for her throughout her life. She was ashamed and she felt empty that she couldn't read and write. Married off at a young age to a man that she did not even want. And having lost her parents, I mean, she was an orphan. Her mother died giving birth to her, always feeling that she murdered her mother, by coming into this world and her father died when she was two from tuberculosis. There were no medical facilities in Mashhad. There were no hospitals, no doctors, no antibiotics, no electricity, no running water. It was not Tehran. This is a whole different ball of wax. And so she came from feeling she was parentless, illiterate, forced to marry someone she didn't want that all her options were taken away from her. And yet, in her own way, she was jumping hurdles and strengthening her muscles. And using whatever capacity she had to the fullest.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Can I just dig deeper there for a second? Because I hear you. And I think that it's very true, and those obstacles and maybe even the feeling of being pushed to the point of I have nothing to lose, so I will rise up like a phoenix. I hear that that is such a motivator for creating strength and resilience. But what is the difference between someone like your mother and someone like my great grandmother, and the many, many women out there who are broken beyond repair because of the situations that they are put into where they feel like there is no hope? There is no way out, I have no voice. They're not encouraged by anyone to have one scrap of independence? Where does that come from when they are essentially in the same kind of situation, but most of those people are broken shells of themselves for the entire lives?

Esther Amini
Well, I think that A) there's such a thing called genetic disposition. That you come into this world, and if you are someone who studies infants and young children, and you see the differences, they come into this world with certain strengths, certain weaknesses. And there is such a thing as having a disposition that enables you to push forward and to fight and to leap over obstacles over time. There's also, I really have coined it extractors. I think there are those of us who innately are extractors. I found that I was always looking at other people, they didn't have to be family members, they could be strangers. The neighbor next door, a third grade teacher, it didn't matter who, and trying to extract their strengths, trying to internalize a piece of them. Wanting to emulate, wanting to use them as a role model in one way or another. It could be the way they speak. It could be the way they dress. It could be the way they formulate a sentence. It doesn't really matter. But I think my mother was an extractor. I think she extracted from her environment left and right. And I think I am an extractor. And I look at people with that in mind. Do they have that capacity to extract? And if not, can it be built? Because you're not going to get everything you want from your mother, your father, your country, your religion, you may not get everything you want. Can you extract from other places?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Esther, I'm gonna ask you a question that I may regret. I may not like the answer.

Kassia Binkowski
Always the best questions.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah. You talk about, you know, the things that your father tried to keep from you or the things that he didn't want you to experience or to be exposed to and yet, here you are a highly educated woman, highly accomplished psychotherapist, published author, mother, grandmother, all of the things. Did he ever look at what you accomplished and say, you know what? You are right, and I'm glad and I'm proud of you, and way to go.

Esther Amini
The answer is yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Oh, yay! Okay. Tell us.

Esther Amini
Yeah, answer's yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What a happy ending.

Esther Amini
You know, I always loved him. He frightened me as a child, he confused me as an adolescent. But I always loved him because there was a nurturing side in him which I zoned in on and I wrote about. And he was a healer, and he was a savior. And I felt his love even though I felt he was barricading me, I felt his love. Later, later, later in life, he would loop his arm and introduce me to his peers, as Dr. Amini with tremendous pride. Number one, I'm not a doctor, so he was exaggerating. So he actually took it up a few levels, and he called me doctor Amin. The first time this happened, I kind of looked at him, like, Who are you? My entire life you didn't want me to read, what are you talking about, Dr. Amini? And later, as he repeatedly did this, it came together. And I understood what happened. He was terrified of what America would do to me. He really believed that this culture would turn me into a whore, prostitute, a slut. He said it many, many times. Education would make me immoral, unethical, promiscuous. And so he saw what came out the other end, that I was married to a wonderful man. I was not running a brothel. I had great children attending a Jewish day school. And he was so proud of the final outcome. And that's when he could breath, and that's what he could say, I'm proud of you.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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