“People in America don’t know anything,” my grandfather used to say. He was a kindly old man with gnarled hands and salt-and-pepper stubble. His stooped body had come to America but his mind was still in Iran, dancing with memories of life as a wheat farmer in Borahvaz. We liked Grandfather’s stories because they were always about something that was wrong with America and right with Iran. My sister and I were recent immigrants, girls bewildered by a strange new world, so we clung to his every word.

Nasrin and I knew the rules. We were supposed to sit politely and listen until he finished with his story. Then he’d ask us a question so we could show him what we learned.

“Let me tell you about the wind,” he began, bones creaking as he settled into his rocking chair. “First of all, you must never forget that the wind has eyes. If you open the door and there’s a wind nearby, you should stand between the doorway and the wind. Because if the wind sees the opening, it’s going to rush at it. Wind has very poor eyesight, you know. That’s why it’s always knocking things over.”

We nodded eagerly, demonstrating that we understood.

“But that doesn’t mean the wind is bad. Far from it. The wind is mischievous and playful, just like you little girls. It likes to chase plastic bags around and blow leaves back and forth. Have you ever wondered how your kite sails up into the air? When you fly a kite, you’re giving the wind a plaything.”

Again we nodded, me less briskly this time. I was too little to fly a kite by myself.

“Persian men build dhows to trick the wind. They know it’s distracted by anything new and bright, especially on the open flatness of the sea. The sails are playthings to the wind, carrying the boat along.” Grandfather raised an eyebrow significantly. “Have you ever seen an American boat tricking the wind out in the harbor? No, you haven’t. They only have motors. That’s the only way Americans can make a boat go. In America people don’t know these things.”

I thought of the American boats in Long Beach harbor. Maybe they didn’t have sails, but they were bigger and faster than the dhows I remembered from Iran.

“Now let me tell you about the wind and storms.” He reached into his pocket, dribbling a fine white powder down his trousers and onto the floor. He showed us a palm dusted with flour. “When the wind is blowing into a storm, that means it’s hungry. You should always be prepared for a storm. Keep a little bit of flour in your pocket. To stop a storm, all you need to do is throw a handful into the air. Then the wind can eat and become full and ease again.” Noticing that he spilled flour on the floor, he kicked it into dust with a slippered foot. “Americans never feed the wind. They run and hide from storms, in their cars and homes and shopping malls, and let the wind grow weak from its hunger.”

Nasrin proudly showed Grandfather her pocket of flour. In my pockets I only had a marble and some bottle caps I collected for their strange words. A-R-B-O-C-G…oops, I remembered it’s left-to-right in American, not right-to-left like in Persian. K-I-N-G-C-O-B-R-A. B-U-D-W-E-I-S-E-R. K-E-Y-S-T-O-N-E.

He paused for effect, leaning down conspiratorially until his stubbled chin was almost touching his knees. “In America people think you can control the wind by giving it a name. They name every big storm and call its name on the news. That mastiff next door, the big dog that scares you so, it has a name too. Can you girls control the dog by calling its name?”

That made us giggle nervously, shaking our heads in unison.

“Okay, time to test what you’ve learned.” Grandfather crooked a finger at the framed black-and-white photo on the wall. His old farm back in Iran, a few buildings huddled in a field of wheat. “Imagine you’re on the farm with me and we’re walking along the fields. If you want the keep the wind from knocking over the wheat, what should you do?”

“You should plant a line of trees so high the wind can’t see over it,” Nasrin said with jaded 11-year-old sophistication.

“No!” I shouted.

He smiled benevolently at me. “What would you do, little one?”

“Shoot it with a machine gun!” I said, pantomiming something I’d seen on television. “Nothing can see if you put out its eyes!”

Grandfather sat back warily in his rocking chair. Then he tried to laugh, but it came out sounding more like the way he coughed after a Turkish cigarette. Later I overhead him telling Mom and Dad that America was changing me already. I couldn’t tell from his tone of voice whether that was good or bad.

America was changing me, turning me into a tomboy who forgot her memories of Iran and learned new ways. That’s how I know he was wrong about the wind having eyes, and feeding storms into calm, and lots of other things too. But when it came time to marry Saman, I forgot how different I’ve become. I forgot because I never really understood in the first place.

Now the man Nasrin and I called pedar bozorg — Grandfather — stares down from a gilded portrait on her living room wall. He’s forever kindly, with eyes like warm stones. I wonder what story he would tell me if I confessed the shadows in my heart, why I bought a one-way ticket from Kansas City to San Diego, the doubts and uncertainty and hopelessness I carry in my suitcase.