The Middle East was always a place confined to my imagination. As a child, Aladdin and his magic carpet rides, exotic bazaars bursting with veiled Persian princess gypsies and fez-wearing genies were ancient mysteries only in my dreams.

The Iran that belonged to American me in adulthood was a terrifying theocracy, war-torn and so far removed from my cultural hemisphere with it’s religiopolitical regime, all realities fed to me by U.S. media, that I took what I knew through my Californian existence as truth. We all know the Iranian government oppresses it’s own people. But Do we truly have insight into what those oppressed people endure?

I soon learned most of what I thought was true was just the Iran of my imagination.

Here is the story of my journey, beginning by my lonesome in Germany…

Landed in Germany. So many places, so little time…

When in Frankfurt, ya gotta have a freakin Frankfurter

Me and the lady sitting next to me — Zari — were the only two females flying business class to Tehran