The hacker had plucked my name out of Instagram like a wildflower—a simple romantic gesture.
Karen was the first girl I met when I came to the US for college in the late 1980s. We became fast friends back then. And she was the one who ultimately introduced me to my new superhero, Jay. Jay had joined a professional development program for young adults called “Year Up.” There, he met a bunch of people, including my friend Karen, with backgrounds that were different than his.
There was nothing like the “Year Up” program in Iran to give Mohamad a leg up. And as he mentioned when I asked him about starting his own tech business in Iran, “Iranians don’t understand tech startups.” He’d have a tough time finding a sponsor. I emailed Jay three “PASSWORD RESET” emails that had, by some force of miracle, not been deleted from my email system years ago. They were my only proof that the @negar handle had been on my Instagram account forever. Jay asked me to create a new email address that had never been associated with Instagram at all … and BOOM! There was @negar, liberated from my Instagram hacker’s claws.He felt sad, of course.
I wasn’t so sure. I worried about the terrifying life my hacker lived, split between his dad’s world and his mom’s. I worried about his possibilities and the kind of future he would have in Iran. He had so many dreams, so much talent, and such drive. From where I stood, he was playing a pretty risky hand.
But by robbing me of my online identity, my hacker had unshuttered a window to life in the country of my birth. While I had been barred from my home as a young child, my new setting was chock-full of luck. With my Instagram hacker in my life, my fortuitous situation stared me in the face. Looking at myself through his eyes, my life was abundant. I felt fortunate. I wasn’t about to give up the friendship I had forged with my hacker for anything.
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