Coming up: "The Architecture of Connection"

Announcing my new 7-part series.

Dear friends,

I’ve been working on a longform, personal-political story titled The Architecture of Connection. It’s about being an immigrant, grief, exile, and the strange choreography of events that pulled me back to Iran during a family emergency in 1997.

What begins as a frantic trip home ends with me—somehow—chasing the mayor of Tehran through the mountains with a camera I barely knew how to use.

But underneath the chaos was something quieter. Something alive.

This isn’t just a story about coincidence. It’s about the moments that rearrange everything. When grief, memory, history, and presence come together to crack something open.

Over seven weeks, I’ll be releasing this story in parts:

• Part 1: The Signal and the Summons – My pager went off in Mission Control and everything changed

• Part 2: NASA and the Art of Confidence – A young immigrant walking into a Space Industry Job Fair in Houston like she owns the place

• Part 3: Grief, Mothers, and Late Night Clues – The moment my passport found me

• Part 4: The Champagne Muse and the Mayor Behind the Curtain – Where defiance meets destiny

• Part 5: When I Stopped Observing and Started Weaving – A question, a handshake, and me stepping through the wide open door

• Part 6: No Longer Just Following the Story – Stepping into authorship

• Part 7: Chasing the Mayor Through the Mountains – Where the field said yes
  

This is a story about the failed reform movement in Iran. About family, politics, memory, and the liminal space between belonging and estrangement.

But more than anything, it’s a story about what happens when the world reveals its secret architecture—and dares you to follow.

I hope you’ll come with me.

With love,
—Banafsheh