From Boshehr to the Caspian Sea

Finally, our father, whom we called agha joon, “dear master,” had promised to take us on our dream vacation. The night before we left, my sister, Simin, and I stayed up till dawn. She had a book with a foldout map of Iran. She brought the book to bed, and we marked our trip in red. We would cross almost the entire length of Iran: from Boshehr, a city near the Persian Gulf in the south, to the Caspian Sea in the north, the world’s largest saltwater lake. A lake so big they called it a sea.