This is the Guardian.

By Ariane Chavezi, read by Serena Mantigi and produced by Esther Opoku Jenny.

When I was 12, a perspective called Boy with a shock of thick hair and his forearm in plaster

gave me the first Harry Potter book. We were at that age when gifts need little occasion

and this marked the last day of our first year of secondary school. It was 1999

and the book was unknown to me. I was mildly embarrassed by its childish watercolor cover,

but I dutifully packed it in my satchel when two days later my family flew to Iran for a six-week

summer holiday. On the large faded floor cushions of my grandparents' apartment in Tehran's central

district, I read the book aloud, flanked by my twin younger sisters. While the adults took their

siesta and scorched air and car horns filtered through the mosquito blinds, we fell for it instantly,

rooting for Harry as he was transported from life as a misfit in a gloomy suburban cupboard

to the secret world of wizardry in which he found fellowship, adventure and belonging.

In the years that followed, I would read each successive book to my sisters,

even from the start they were too old to be read to, but it was more all gratifying and

compatible to follow Harry's story together. And besides, we could only ever get our hands on

one copy. Every now and then one of us would sigh and say, don't you feel sad when it hits you

that Harry Potter isn't real? We lived in south-end on sea and attended the local school,

an underperforming comprehensive housed in a squat brutalist building on the edge of a large

cancerless state. Most of the pupils were poor and many underfed, which gave rise to an unshakable

fog of hopelessness, shame and anxiety. While there were a few children of colour, racism

prospered alongside the many other casual cruelties. With our packed lunches and summer holidays,

we were the lucky ones, as our parents often reminded us. But we nevertheless lived in hope that

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