Motherland

I went out to buy some bread. The weather outside was delightful. I didn't want to drive back home. It was one of those nights that you like to just take a long walk with a friend and let the calm of the dark velvety sky and the singing of jeerjeeraks(!) soak into you. I thought if i were in Iran i would call up this and that friend and we would go to Park-Jamshidiye... And thus the thoughts came back to me again. The homeland. Where your school buddies whom you can call up late in the evening are.

My dear friend Nazy has asked me to write about "Vatan". For a person like me, who is hanging in between two countries, this is a sensitive topic to write about. I now can't name either of these two counties as a land i belong to. I was born and raised in Iran. If I like it or not, my mindset has formed there. My values, my insights, my way of living.

However there were many things about Iran that made me feel like a cast away there. Things that don't happen to you in US. In Iran, your daily encounters are often tough and hurtful. People are often harsh to you, the doorman, the taxi drivers, the bank clerk, the secratary, the sales associate, ... . You have no space there, any minutes you should expect anybody to come and confront you for how you walk, how you talk, how you are. In Iran you grow up to learn how to hide your thoughts, how to fade into the crowd, how to suppress your opinion. In Iran you're robbed out of excitements, out of laughs, out of colors, out of music and out of silly small things that make a package called youth.

Perhaps these feelings are personal, perhaps now the kids in iran experience a happier life. Perhaps iran is "nice"r since the gloomy day i left it. But i can't let go of the feeling that the people i see around me here, are more like me. I feel less of a cast aways in this country that is not my homeland.