There was another milestone event today in Sepi\u2019s family – my other family. Farideh, Sepi\u2019s sister in Montreal, has been trying to get her daughter Sara to come to Canada from Tehran for some time now. Sara\u2019s travel arrangements were complicated by the fact that she wanted to bring her 12 year old son with her. Not to mention complications due to coronavirus!<\/p>\n
Sara had been all set to come in August, but at the last minute there was a snag and she had to stay in Tehran. After much agonizing, Sara had decided to come ahead this weekend even if it meant leaving her son in Tehran. She bought tickets for two, though, and they both went to the airport yesterday with hope in their hearts.<\/p>\n
At the last minute, the authorities allowed Samyar to board the plane! Joy was spread across three continents! Sepi and I embarked on a marathon FlightRadar24 viewing session. We \u2018watched\u2019 the plane take off from Tehran, cross the Persian Gulf and land in Qatar, then a couple of hours later take off from Qatar and head for Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n
This morning, when we picked up the track they were over the North Atlantic. We \u2018watched\u2019 them as they first made landfall over Newfoundland, then crossed the top of Maine and landed safely in Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n
Through the miracle of modern communications – mostly WhatsApp video calls, we were able to be in nearly constant touch with Sepi\u2019s sisters in Montr\u00e9al and Tehran. Farideh\u2019s joy over the prospect of seeing her daughter for the first time in three years is tempered by Mali\u2019s sadness over losing her niece. Mali\u2019s daughter is grief stricken as the two girls are almost the same age and are very close.<\/p>\n
Sara is only on a visitor\u2019s visa so she will most likely have to return to Iran but Farideh\u2019s goal is to get her permanent residency in Canada. Once Sara and Samyar are out of quarantine they will be working on that. There will be some big hugs first, though!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was another milestone event today in Sepi\u2019s family – my other family. Farideh, Sepi\u2019s sister in Montreal, has been trying to get her daughter Sara to come to Canada […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[638,645,646,643,533,644],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-farideh","tag-mali","tag-samyar","tag-sara-k","tag-sepi","tag-tehran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thezachproject.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}