Pregnancy, prayers and Persian rice pudding: what do we do …
At six weeks pregnant with Cyrus, I travelled to Iran for an early scan and was told there was nothing there. Back in the UK, I studied the grainy scan photograph over and over again while H’s family, thousands of miles away, prayed, cooked sholeh zard through the night and gave it to their neighbours. Ten years later, I understand that moment differently. This is a story about pregnancy, Persian culture, family, uncertainty and what hope looks like when certainty simply isn’t available.