"Ever since we had arrived in the United States, my classmates kept asking me about magic carpets. - They don't exist-I always said. I was wrong. Magic carpets do exist. But they are called library cards."
"Older boys often asked me to teach them “some bad words in your language”. At first I politely refused. My refusal merely increased their determination, so I solved the problem by teaching them phrases like 'man kharam' which means “I'm an idiot”. I told them that what I was teaching them was so nasty that they would have to promise never to repeat it to anyone. They would then spend all of recess running around yelling “I'm an idiot! I'm an idiot!”. I never told them the truth. I figured someday, somebody would"
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Source: Firoozeh Dumas (2007). “Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America”, p.34, Random House
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