Our Story

Why I Created Mehr

When my son was born, I started reading to him. He loved books immediately. He would wake up asking for them and go to bed begging for one more.

His favorite was My First Little Library, a small boxed set he carried everywhere. So I began reading it to him in Dari, translating each page as we went.

He learned the words. If I slipped and said cat instead of peshak, he would correct me “Ne, peshak ast” in his own half-formed toddler words, absolutely certain.

But I knew that window was small. One day, he would learn his letters. The English alphabet would come first, and peshak might quietly become cat, unless Dari existed somewhere he could find it for himself. Not only in my voice, but in his hands.

So my search for Dari children’s books began.

I looked for books written in Dari, created for children, and made with care. I ordered them from Amazon, Afghanistan, Etsy, and every website I could find. Each time a package arrived, I opened it with excitement. I wanted not only to introduce Dari to my son, but to create the cultural rhythm and reading ritual I wished I had while growing up.

Instead, I found thin pages. Misspellings. Illustrations that felt disconnected. Pages that felt more like homework than discovery. Books made without the attention a child’s first encounter with their language deserves.

I felt something close to grief: the distance between the world I wanted for my son and the one I could give him.

Mehr is what I went looking for that day.

Dari books made with the care of heirlooms. Objects rooted in Afghan stories, Afghan places, and the small rituals of an Afghan home. Things my son can hold before he can read and return to long after; not as a lesson about where he comes from, but as a lived-in experience he can carry with pride and find joy in.

Culture lived in, not learned.