And how come I was chosen to be trained as a fearless leader? There were 35000 employees in the huge corporation back in 2013 . I was new and fresh and I can say somehow inexperienced in the eye of XYz’s company culture.

When I was a child,  back in Iran where I was born , my grandfather owned a big garden. In Farsi we call this big garden , a  Bagh. His Bagh was called Kavoosieh. Going to this Bagh was one of his biggest pastimes. Not only did he want to go to the Bagh, but the colonial behavior ingrained him dictated that almost everyone is the family should want to go to the Bagh with him at the same time. Baba Jaan was his name or so was the name that we all called him. He was not a simple man, he was Bozorg e Famil,  head of family who happened to be a colonel in Reza Shah time. People who are trained in army become super disciplined and rigid people in Iran. I was always wondering if it is the military education that makes them such people or is it that their personalities are attracted to this rigid training and at times merciless training?

Wearing the long underwear that my grandmother,  maman tehrani had sewn for him, Baba Jaan  would stroll amongst the vines and pomegranate trees in Kavoosieh proudly. Even Though these trees looked dry and unhappy. Even though there were not enough water to quench their thirst. The trees and vines always seemed to be dying. Yet, come fall, the vines were flooded with grapes and there were so many pomegranates that we would give them away to other relatives, neighbors , and friends. In my mind, it was a miraculous bagh.

I never had any doubts that these pomegranates are magical. No where on earth a tree can survive such a drought. These were not the last pomegranate trees on earth but for this reason, they made me feel like eternity. Like even without water, they can always survive and be happy and so fruitful.. Like they could live forever. These crimson red fruits lined up in this Bagh were the boundaries between the earth and eternity.

Sometimes my little uncle, Yazadan would come up the tree and bring up a mirror with himself. He would use the mirror to reflect sunlight into my eyes. Annoyed, I would ask him to stop. All these would lead to my mom screaming even louder that I should come down the tree immediately.

Would I ever listen to my mom and come down?

Hell, no.

To this date, I can still feel the sunlight flickering through the leaves on my face, a face surrounded by curly hair, on top of a head full of stories and ideas. My round face, big brown eyes, long eyelashes, and perfect lips all shined healthily under the sun . I could hear myself laugh with joy and happiness. And the source of happiness was that I enjoyed the feeling of getting to the top of the tree. The challenge was thrilling for me. Sitting up there and seeing everyone and everything made me feel good. Like a conquistador. I was not there to fire walnuts into my little brother or my uncle. I was there with a book to read and enjoy. And nothing beats the feeling of reading a book on top of the world.

My mom would get mad, as mad as a mom can get. She would wag her finger threateningly and wave me down from the tree.

This was the beginning of my realizing what gives me thrill and excitement. I liked being on top , being a star, and everyone trusting me that I know what I am doing.

And that was obviously accompanied by my love of books. Books took me to a journey with them. An unparalleled journey of images and sights through words. Words always spoke to me . In a way I could see a movie played in my head through words that no Hollywood movie director could produce.

Perhaps part of it was tied to my name? My name in Farsi meant someone who is born to give light and direction to others. Not only, did I enjoy interacting with others and understanding their problems, I took it on me to lead them with the best solution I could think of. And to have that kind of wisdom , you owe it to yourself to read and learn. After all each book is another soul with own set of secrets and it is waiting to whisper all those secrets into your ears only if you want it to.

Books gave me courage. Stories always have ideas on how life is always stronger than defeat. Drowning in these worlds was such an intense pleasure for me that I even found this pleasure accompanied by guilt. Specially at times that my mom would call me to do something even something very simple like helping with dishwashing. Besides my lazy nature in house -related affairs, I could never imagine that I leave the eccentric world of a book I am reading to join the boredom of washing dishes in soapy water.

 As I grew up and expressed more ideas in life, I got used to the idea of “ raised eyebrows”. I learned that eyebrows have a tendency to raise rather quickly. Perhaps quicker than they should at times. The eyebrows was not raising because I was beautiful or for my being notoriously unscrupulous. On the other hand, I had an honorable reputation for venturing into areas that normally females would not go even near it. But yet again, I was used to so many ideas and stories that hardly anything was off limits.

At that time, in that life, fear was not a part of equation for me. I find this quite ironic as I lived in Iran. A country that during 90’s it was notorious for its fear driven culture and society from many aspects. A country where fear was so present in every single aspect that you could feel the warmth breath of death and torture on your slick throat every day if not many times a day.

As a female engineer in Iran, I was approached to serve an auto manufacturing company consultant. The job necessitated wearing helmets and heavy safety boots to go to the manufacturing lines. I was no stranger to being a female in the male dominated land. As a matter of fact, I was enjoying how as a female I was leaving my mark. Never, ever I wanted to be treated differently.

In a country like Iran, I was wearing bag like uniform so there was a no chance that my suggestive stride and oscillating movement of my hips would send the workers in factory to reveries of mischief and sexual insanity. But still when I was sitting with the managing partner of the company, he would avoid looking me in the eye and in front of all male colleagues ask me to correct my hijab. I can not forget his face: flat nosed with a face covered under facial hair to the point that even his best feature, his eyes had become unbearable to look at.

The little showing of my hairline out of my scarf would certainly send him swirling to the land of infidels. Being who he was, he was under a firm belief that everyone sitting in the same meeting would follow him hence came out the more than humiliating remarks.

The first time he made the remark, I bit my lip and fixed my scarf. I could feel how I am swallowing my pride. I am presenting an idea on how to save his manufacturing line from spitting out damaged products and he has no other business than just asking me fix my hijab?
Pushing away these thoughts was not easy but it was not impossible either. I had lived enough under these same circumstances to neutralize my brain at times needed.
Team and I continued our work. The workers were excited and I should say amazingly helpful. Great listeners. I made templates for them and trained them how to log defective parts. I showed them how by analyzing the log of defective parts, we can find out what machines are contributing to the most defective parts, at what times and what possibly could be causing the defects.
I tried to avoid contact with the weird looking man with the twisted mind as much as possible. We managed to lower down the number of defects. I was genuinely happy and thankful to all the hard working workers that helped me monitor the line tirelessly.
These folks were engaged and that’s what I loved most. One of these big guys, Sultan Khan came to me when I was changing my heavy, factory shoes one afternoon.

” Khanoom Mohandes?”( Miss Engineer?)

I looked up. He had removed his helmet and I could see that he was sweating profusely. He was a big guy. May be 6.6 , broad shouldered with the largest hands I had ever seen. I think each of his hands was one third of my torso. Yet, this big guy had the shy eyes that you could see only in kids that want to ask you for something but they are sure they can never have it.

” Yes, Sultan Khan. What do you need?”

” I am going back to school. I want to finish high school. I can never be an engineer like yourself but…”

He left his sentence unfinished. My heart clenched. I lifted my head from struggling with shoe laces. The cooler had started and a cool breeze was coming in. The breeze was playing with his sweat covered hair.

“Of course, you can do it Sultan Khan. I am thrilled you are going back to school.”

He played anxiously with his helmet.

” I know. My wife says school is a waste of time. It is not for a worker like me.”

I wish I could find a magic wand and playfully rub it in the face of anyone who would think of education in such a skeptical way and turn them into something. May be a frog, may be a donkey?

I pulled myself together and stood up.

” You should follow your passion and dream. Follow your heart and remember to stand up for yourself. Look, how your log is looking better than many of your peers”. 

I flipped through a havoc of handwritten pages, his had a lot of notes on it here and there. Most workers only filled out the template I had given them with the exact information needed. His had some of his personal observations.

“Sultan Khan, you are on the right track. As a matter of fact, I see how many parts are defectless in this report..”

I was just looking at these logs for the day and the numbers looked great. Show off time. I felt obligated to my ego to finish this very rewarding moment and run to the managing partner’s office to share the great news.

” I have to run but you will do fantastic. Just keep on believing yourself and get that diploma!”

” I will”, said Sultan Khan. There was hope in his voice.

I ran back upstairs to the management headquarters. Hastily walking, I even forgot to change the heavy toed boots I was wearing with my decent looking shoes.

Mrs Fazeli, the managing partner secretary let me know that the twisted man in charge is in his office and can see me. I picked up my papers to enter his office when Mrs Fazeli stopped me: My dear, can you please fix your hijab?

My hand automatically reached out to my scarf but I stopped. I have done such an amazing work that could possibly save him  and his company a ton of money and all this guy would care about is a strand of my hair showing off?

That was an enough is enough moment for me. I put my hand down without touching my hair. Turned towards Mrs Fazeli and said: Thanks for the reminder.

There was something in her look. Like: Aren’t you afraid? Do you even understand what are you doing?

It was an unspoken moment between us. One of those moments that based on laws of physics, no word is exchanged yet there is a profusion of words and emotions happening all at the same time.

I opened the door. The man with twisted mind was sitting behind a desk many many times bigger than his size. He motioned me to enter. I handed him the report and pointed to the pages where damaged product charts were recorded. He skimmed through a couple of pages, snickered, handed the report back. “ It’s amazing how much improvement can be there, “ he said, picking up his pen to write on papers.  His gaze was fixed on numbers, “ your work in here is very impressive. Yet..”, he wrinkled his nose, lifted his face avoiding my eyes, “ you need to fix your hijab”.

Did I freeze?

I remember pushing my lips together and for a moment I decided no amount of money and no matter that I had a private driver bringing me to work, none of these was worth the humiliation I received from this twisted mind.

My face turned red , I suppose and I said what everyone thought I should regret at one point.

“ It’s not my hijab that needs to be fixed, it’s the way your mind works.”

And may be for the first time since my engagement with his company, he looked me in the eye. His eye muscle was tweaking. Was it a psychological tick? I never got to know.

It felt like wrestling a black bear with bear hands.

I left and never returned.

I am sure he never told anyone what happened. No one would doubt the veracity of my story. But from his side, there was no way to show those big scars coursing a jagged path down his ego.

To him I was a force of  nature and how can a man like him with a thick beard, a wayward crop of oily hair with hands that looked capable of uprooting the machineries in his own factory , and a black glare that would compete with that of devil surrender to defeat and mental sarcasm from a woman engineer?

The company sent me my books and my money from the contract.

Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in August 2013 and choosing me a fearless leader trainee was already laid many years before in Iran.