The Road Between Hearts

Here's the story of a Black American language and culture professor who is too ashamed to admit she is terrified of moving to post-revolutionary Iran with her husband. Nevertheless, she packs up her life in Columbus, Ohio, and ventures off to her husband's homeland with him and their one-year-old daughter in 1992.

In her first two weeks, the "morality police" stop her for wearing stockings that aren't black enough, and she is herded to the back of a bus whose passengers are segregated by gender. Did she make a terrible mistake, as she had feared?

But then... she spots a framed photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X smiling down on her from her in-laws' wall. There's the moment when an unexpected treasure from her devout Muslim in-laws is slipped into her hand. And the delicious aromas of saffron rice and cardamom tea do not escape her. That's when she begins to experience Iran and its people as having all the color, glamour, and humor she had secretly feared she would have to give up-but not without the complications, challenges, and contradictions that come with living in a new culture.

A cross-cultural memoir and a love story, The Road Between Hearts is Leslie Powell Ahmadi's account of her intercultural, interracial, and interfaith journeys-and the new pair of eyes she develops as a result!Here's the story of a Black American language and culture professor who is too ashamed to admit she is terrified of moving to post-revolutionary Iran with her husband. Nevertheless, she packs up her life in Columbus, Ohio, and ventures off to her husband's homeland with him and their one-year-old daughter in 1992.

In her first two weeks, the "morality police" stop her for wearing stockings that aren't black enough, and she is herded to the back of a bus whose passengers are segregated by gender. Did she make a terrible mistake, as she had feared?

But then... she spots a framed photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X smiling down on her from her in-laws' wall. There's the moment when an unexpected treasure from her devout Muslim in-laws is slipped into her hand. And the delicious aromas of saffron rice and cardamom tea do not escape her. That's when she begins to experience Iran and its people as having all the color, glamour, and humor she had secretly feared she would have to give up--but not without the complications, challenges, and contradictions that come with living in a new culture.

A cross-cultural memoir and a love story, The Road Between Hearts is Leslie Powell Ahmadi's account of her intercultural, interracial and interfaith journeys--and the new pair of eyes she develops as a result!

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Muse Literary
Published: 05/26/2026
ISBN: 9781960876973
Pages: 376
Weight: 1.48lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d