When a puppet show became the mirror of my life:

​It happened only once—a single school performance—yet it remains the most symbolic fragment of my childhood.

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I was a newcomer at Rah-e Danesh school, a fifth-grader drifting through a sea of unfamiliar faces. I was still searching for my rhythm, still looking for a place to anchor myself. Though the end-of-year celebration was reserved for the older students, the teachers chose me—the "new girl"—for the lead role. I was a quiet, sensitive child, possessing eyes that seemed to carry more weight than my words ever could.

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The end-of-year celebration was meant for the sixth graders, but somehow the teachers chose the new girl for the lead role. I was being a quiet and sensitive girl with eyes that carried more meaning than words.

In the story, my character falls in love with a toy soldier doll. But the doll maker doesn’t have enough material to finish the soldier’s face. She can’t complete it. She can’t sell it. She can’t deliver it to the world.

And in the end, the doll maker, furious at her own helplessness and unfinished doll soldier threw him down and broke it. And the girl -Yoli-  drops to her knees and cries over the broken body of the doll. 

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Now after decades, whenever I remember that scene, I can see the trace of my own life inside it: 

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loving what is unfinished, falling into the role of the rescuer, staying, helping,

and believing I could carry someone to their destination with love…

even when, behind those eyes, there were two faces, two personalities, two contradictions that could never truly make peace. And then mourning! For what breaks and for what is lost and never returns in the same shape. 

That day, I didn’t know this performance was rehearsal for stories I would one day truly live.

That role wasn’t just a role. It was a prophecy a quiet prophecy, written into the unfinished face of a toy soldier