After getting hit by a car, Ph.D. student Reyhaneh Maktoufi must navigate the recovery and paperwork as an immigrant from Iran.

Reyhaneh is a Ph.D. candidate in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University. Her main fields of interest are science communication, curiosity, and public engagement with scientists. She is a visiting researcher at the Adler Planetarium, where she studies science communication and facilitates workshops on communication skills. Before starting a Ph.D., Rey has been working as a health communication facilitator and campaign manager in Tehran, Iran. She also produces comics and videos about science and the science of science communication. In her free time, Rey enjoys staring at a wall and making up stories in her head or play bad ukulele and scare off birds while singing high pitch.

This story originally aired on November 22, 2019 in an episode titled “Outsiders: Stories about seeing things from the outside”.

Story Transcript

My name is Reyhaneh. It means ‘basil’ in Persian. I am from Iran, Tehran and I came here three years ago to get married to my husband and to do a PhD in science communication, which basically means I see how scientists get people to be more interested in science and be more curious and ask more questions.

For that, I get to do my research at a planetarium, which is really fun because growing up I was a huge astronomy enthusiast but I didn’t get to be around astronomy and space because I studied physiotherapy and then I started working in hospitals. I was really far away from space. Now, it’s great because I get to learn about the coolest thing in space, like there are gigantic stars that have whole hard cores made of diamond or that there might be a ninth planet in our solar system, and I am not talking about Pluto. This is my favorite thing.

My name fits really well in that geeky environment, because I usually tell people my name is Reyhaneh, Rey like ‘Ray’ from Star Wars and then ‘Han’ like ‘Han’ from Star Wars and then “Eh’. Or I can shorten it and say my name is ‘Rey’ like the cosmic ray or x-rays.

But this specific day around a year ago my name felt like an alien. It was a really nice day. It was a great day. The weather was nice. I had dinner with my husband and he goes off to his pottery class and I’m on my way back to home. I was just singing songs and I was just happy. Everything felt nice.

And instead of crossing the street towards the train where the traffic light was I decided to walk a little lower down. So I go down. I stand by the street. I look to my right and then I look to my left. On the left I see this car standing waiting to turn left and another car standing right behind it. I thought they're far away enough. I can cross.

So I step in the street and suddenly everything goes dark. But not dark like in movies when everything goes dark and then someone wakes up in a hospital and says, “Oh, I can’t remember anything. What happened? Where am I? What happened?” It was dark but I was there.

I was hearing everything and I was feeling everything so vividly. I felt weightless and I felt like I was lifted from the ground. And I could hear everything so loud, like breathing in a microphone I could hear myself breathe. And I started hearing something hitting something else. And then those really short moments that felt like forever were suddenly over.

I open my eyes and I’m in the street next to this car and it dawns on me that I got hit by a car and those noises that I was hearing was me hitting that car. I suddenly just start crying and screaming loud and asking for help and I feel this terrible pain in my legs and in my knees.

And as a physiotherapist, you know that knees are shitty. Knees when they break they don’t heal well. They take forever and they’re just the most annoying thing. And I love my knees. I like running or walking, whatever it is you do with your knees.

So I just cry and I’m screaming and then I see this woman running towards me. She's asking me if I’m doing okay. She takes her phone and starts calling an ambulance and I’m like, “Fuck, ambulances and healthcare, expensive. That’s not good.”

I start freaking out and I’m just like, “Ma’am, please don’t call an ambulance. Please just don’t call an ambulance.” For good reason, she did call an ambulance.

And then I see from a distance this driver is walking towards me and he looks horrified. He is so scared and I start feeling so guilty. I’m like, “What have you done? Look at this poor guy. Look at what you've done to him.”

So I just start feeling guilty and I keep crying. He's coming towards me and I decide to crawl on the ground towards him while I’m crying and I hold his shoes with my tears and my snot just falling on my shoes and I say, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” as if he wasn’t traumatized enough. So I have that memory.

So I’m apologizing. I can’t remember what he did next but I start hearing the sirens. The police arrives and the police is talking to the driver and the paramedics. They come towards me and they start putting this neck thing around my neck to make sure I don't move and I’m like, “Oh, my knees. If I stand up and walk magically I will be fine. If I can just prove myself that I’m fine.”

So I’m like, “Oh, I don't need the stretcher. I could walk.”

And they're like, “Ma’am, I don't think you can. Just sit. Let us handle this.”

I’m like, “No, no. I'll be fine.” I try to stand up and there's this terrible pain in my knees. So I’m like, “Okay, no. I will let you help me.”

So they put me on the stretcher and we’re in the ambulance. At this point my husband also arrives and he's outside talking to the police.

So the paramedics they have this scissor and they're starting to slowly, slowly cut my beautiful gray leggings with this amazing floral patterns on it. I’m just like, “No, just take it off, please.” But no, they have to cut the leggings.

While he's cutting it the paramedic says, “Considering what you did to the car, you look pretty good.”

Apparently, I flew over the car, I break the windshield and I fall down and I think to myself, “You know what? You're good. You're alive. You're fine. You're good.”

So we drive to the hospital and we’re in this room and the police keeps coming in and out and in and out. The doctors tell him, “Hey, can you just wait outside until we’re done?” So the doctors were trying to figure out what else is wrong with me except for the mild concussion that I have that is giving me a headache and dizziness and everything. I am still in denial. I’m trying to walk around like, “See, I can walk perfectly and everything,” but I was in pain.

So a few x-rays later, it turns out that my knee is broken and I’m again feeling terrible and I again start crying and thinking of everything that I have to go through. But then again I think to myself, “You know what? That was the worst of it. That was the worst, right? You're fine now. It’s just the knee.”

Now, the police can come in. And before that my husband says, “Hey, I got to tell you something about something that happened while I was talking to the police.”

“So the police asked me,” my husband, “What’s her name?”

“It’s Reyhaneh Maktoufi.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Excuse me?”

“What kind of a name is that? Where is she from?”

“She's from Iran, Tehran.”

“Does she have any paperwork? Does she have ID?”

“Yes, she has Federal ID. Do you need me to go find them? Bring them to you?” At this point the police lost interest.

So I’m confused why the police is asking all these questions from my husband and then, again, another wave of guilt starts falling over me because, let me tell you. My husband is a Jewish boy raised in Alabama so he had his fair share of interesting comments and questions and behavior and I felt like I was like, “Oh, you know what? Let me sprinkle a little bit of brown Muslim from Iran on top of the Jewish boy from Alabama because that’s going to work great.”

So I start crying again feeling guilty of he has to go through all of this because of me. Shit!

So the police comes in and suddenly this memory that I have from the room is just the room is so much bigger and my bed is so much smaller and really long. At the end of the bed this police is standing and next to him my husband and I’m just like tiny on this bed. And he's asking me questions about my accident and I have a really vague memory of it so I’m just trying to tell him what happened. He's writing things down and it just feels like he's a doctor writing things down waiting to tell me I’m dying. That’s how it felt.

So he keeps writing things and then he's done and then he tears this piece of paper and he gives it to me and he says, “So here’s your ticket because you jaywalked and this is the court’s date and time and you will be attending the court.”

I’m like, “Excuse me? Court? A ticket?” I am thinking that I’m an immigrant. At that point I have been waiting for my green card to come for around three years for no good reason, something that should have taken me six months.

So I’m thinking, “Oh, great. On top of all this resume that they're looking at it to see if they want to give me a green card or not, there's going to be a ticket and a court case and everything, and crime and prison.” I’m just thinking more and more.

And I’m just crying and I say, “What does that mean? Why do I have to go to court? Is this going to affect my immigration? Am I going to be deported?” And I’m just crying.

He's like, “No, no, no. This is like a petty crime.” And he looks at my husband and he says, “Do they have petty crimes in Iraq?”

My husband furiously looks at him and he says, “Iran. She's from Iran.”

“Yeah, yeah. Do they have petty crimes in Iran?”

And I’m confused and I keep crying and that’s over.

So later, we look at the ticket. The only witness on the ticket is the driver who hit me. We later also find out that driver never got a ticket or anything.

So after that I thought, “You know what? Maybe that police was doing his job. Maybe he gives a ticket to whoever jaywalks. Maybe.”

So the day of the court comes and we’re sitting outside this courtroom and I’m so nervous and suddenly I look around me. In this really, really white county that we are, I just realize that everyone around me is black and brown, Hispanic and just not white. I’m like, “You know what? Maybe we do commit more crimes.”

And I say, “But I didn’t commit a crime that others don’t. Everyone fucking jaywalks. I got the ticket. That police was not doing his job.”

That day, the driver who hit me didn’t show up to the court so my case got dismissed, thank God. Went home and I told my husband, “I want to file a police report.” We did.

Surprise. No one ever got back to us. Nothing ever happened.

This was a very hard year. I spent so much time going through therapy. I had to immobilize my knee. I had to go through hours and long days of physiotherapy. I couldn’t run or do a lot of things that I loved, like swordsmanship, for a long time. And even a year-ish later, now I still can’t run for long, I can’t properly jump, I have pain on and off.

But that was not the worst part of that year. The worst part was how I felt about my name. This fun name, this name that I loved and I could joke about it and everything, this alien name singled me out and turned me into a target.

I really, really want scientists to find this Planet Nine. This ninth planet that is longing to be found, that is just waiting to be found.

Let me tell you about my soul mate, Planet Nine. Some scientists are saying that there might be a ninth planet in our solar system and they think that that might be true because they see that some objects in the outer edges or outer places in the solar system are moving a little weirdly. So they think maybe there's this really gigantic planet out there that is causing them to move this weird and they call it Planet Nine.

Because we don’t know anything about it. We don’t know how it looks, what color it is, what it’s up to. It’s not like Mars that is red so we’re like, “Oh, it’s angry, like Mars, the God of War,” or, “Neptune, blue, the God of Oceans,” or Uranus. No. It’s just Planet Nine.

And I get Planet Nine. I get it. I think Planet Nine is this rebellious planet and she loves her son and her other sibling planets but some days she's like, “You know what? I want adventure. I want to go out and explore.” And she just leaves and goes far, far away from where her son is.

On her way I’m sure she gets to meet the most amazing aliens and becomes friends with some great asteroids and sees some breathtaking scenes. But I also think that planet nine might feel misunderstood and very lonely. Maybe she has a family. Maybe she has a name. I don't know. Maybe her name is Planet Reyhaneh and maybe all she wants is to be found and to be seen, to be understood and to be loved. Thank you.