One of the first questions many people ask upon meeting me is: “what are you?”
I tend to sideline my smartass remarks about the dehumanization of that statement—I know most inquirers mean well. What they mean to say is: “what’s your nationality?” or “what’s your heritage?”
I don’t really like to think or talk about it, but people frequently comment on my physical appearance. I’ve been told I look “foreign” or “exotic” and the ever-so-clever, “definitely not just white.” Men and women compliment my facial structure and ethnic features. I don’t think I look particularly different, but I can’t deny the consistent evidence that strangers are often interested in what I am.
I am half white. Boring Wonderbread. My mother’s family originates almost entirely from Western Europe—mostly British and Italian with a few others sprinkled in. My maternal grandfather claims some fraction of Cherokee, but his parents came right off the boat from Italy. My maternal grandmother’s family was almost definitely from Great Britain and maybe Ireland too.
Neither side of my family likes to talk much about the past.
But everyone immediate grew up mostly in the states, my grandparents in Pennsylvania and my mother in Florida. They lived briefly in Maryland when my mother was in high school, which is how she met my father.
My father’s background is where the answer lies to the question of origin.
***
I am half Persian. My father was born in Iran, as were both of his parents and who knows how many generations back. I know almost nothing of their lives. Just a few basic details.
My grandparents were progressive journalists in Iran, living in Tehran. My father was born in 1972, so in just a few short years, they found themselves fleeing their homeland after the Revolution. From what I understand, they were threatened very suddenly, had to leave in the middle of the night with only the valuables they could carry, and narrowly avoided the new government regime taking them into captivity—a guaranteed death sentence.
When my father was alive, he told me the story almost every time I saw him, so once or twice a year…
It was the middle of the night. He was scared. He could only take very few of his belongings. They ran across the desert for a long time. He was terrified the whole time, but he believed that God guided them to safety. Then they made it onto a boat and set sail for America. My father was only about 8 years old. Starting a new life in Maryland, he had the challenge of acclimating to a new culture and learn a new language. But he never failed to express his admiration for America, his new home.
I always thought it was so cool that my father and his family came from a far away place. I grew up learning about an America built on welcoming humans from all over the world to create the life of their dreams. When I was younger, I was unquestionably proud of my family’s journey. They stood up for what they believed was right and faced impossible consequences because of it. Still, they overcame and found a way to thrive elsewhere in the world. They were heroes to me.
Clearly, I later learned the real truth about this country and the way it was exterminated and stolen from its indigenous inhabitants then constructed with some of the cruelest and most stomach-turning practices in enslavement history.
And today, we see what America really thinks of immigrants.
***
I only have a few things to remember my family by. I feel very fortunate that I was bestowed many beautiful pieces of Persian gold, literally carried from one world to the next.
Several simple necklace chains, one holding a circular pendant with the symbol for Allah (ﷲ), one with a golden horseshoe.
A handful of very tiny rings. I wear one daily and it only fits down half of my finger. The women on my father’s side were all tiny and slender. One of those rings is a full engagement ring and wedding band set. I’m not sure who it belonged to. It coincidentally fits me perfectly on its intended finger.
Three solid gold pendants on a thick gold chain that now hang by my bedside. The first is a mini-calendar for the month of Mordād, August. Coincidentally, the same month I was born. There is a diamond on the 18th of the month. It must have been made for someone’s birthday or anniversary, but I’m not sure who’s. I’ve thought about getting another diamond on the 5th, my birthday. The second is a circular coin with a braided rim and an engraved Arabic phrase I cannot find the translation for. It seems to be some kind of protective amulet. The third is a cut-out of the shape of Iran with a phrase engraved in Farsi. From what I can tell using a reverse image search, it is a verse from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh:
“If there is no Iran, may my body not exist; without this land, let no soul remain alive.”
***
When I was in 5th grade, about a year after 9/11, I started at a new school and a boy in my class asked the inevitable question at recess one day: What are you? Huh? Like, where are you from?
Flawed with impulsive honesty, I told him: “I’m Persian.”
“What is that?”
“You know, Persian, it’s people from Iran.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“The Middle East”
“Like where Afghanistan is?”
“I think so, somewhere near there.”
“So, you’re a terrorist?”
He walked away at that point. I’ll never forget the look of disgust on his face.
That was the day I stopped telling people I was Persian or Middle Eastern at all. It didn’t feel good to be called a terrorist. I was just white from now on, no matter what people asked. It’s not like I had any real connection with my Iranian heritage anyway.
When I was in 10th grade, the kid who sat next to me in math class was a confederate flag toting good ole southern boy. He spit tobacco dip into an empty water bottle every day. By the end of class, at least a third of it was always filled with brown liquid.
He too, demanded to know what I was.
I wouldn’t tell him. I was long past the point of hiding my identity. I was just white. British and Italian.
No, there’s something else. I know it. Are you an Oreo? Black and white? No… you look more like a s**c. Mexican be***r, I bet… Your pops run a lawn service?
I ignored him for a while. Then one day, he found out. I can’t remember if someone I knew told him or if I just caved to his never-ending questions and gave up the answer out of annoyance.
His reply?
The memory still makes me flinch.
“Are you kidding me? You’re a fucking sand n****r?”
Just this sliver of racial aggression haunts me deeply.
I ache for those who experience it more regularly and severely.
***
A few months ago, I was binging Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Parts Unknown. One night when my boyfriend was visiting, he skimmed through all of the countries, looking for an episode about Iran. He found it and we put it on.
I’m kind of glad he dozed off halfway through because I sobbed through the episode—a reaction I wasn’t expecting. Seeing the markets and the mosques stirred something ancient in me. I have always so badly craved a cultural connection in my life. My boyfriend is Puerto Rican and I envy their rich culture and fierce pride. Everyone of their land is one family. They welcome each other with food and dancing and music, laughter and love. Boricuas are rarely, if ever, ashamed of their identity.
I don’t want to be ashamed of my heritage or my culture. I don’t want to hide who I am or where I come from. None of us should ever have to. At the risk of sounding cliche, we are all one. There is no “other” in humanity. There is no illegal alien. The earth holds space for all respectful creatures. It is only a certain disrespectful lineage of the human species that has poisoned our modern perceptions on identity.
Every night I pray for my family and countrypeople in Iran as they fight again now for freedom. I don’t know if I believe in prayer, but I focus on the energy of courage and bravery for them. They deserve the Iran that once was—the liberal democracy of art and education. I’ve prayed equally for our cousins in Palestine for over two years. I hope above all that they also have the strength to stay through the aftermath of both collective and personal trauma. What you don’t see after the wars and revolutions are the survivors who can no longer bear to stay or whose wounds run to deep to endure any longer after having their lives uprooted.
I’ve spent over twenty years trying to unpack the suicides of my father and grandmother. I know it is a futile rumination that doesn’t change any outcome, but part of me wants to believe that by figuring it out I can change something. Maybe I can write about them, I can change the mind of someone who is considering committing. Perhaps, if I can figure out why people kill themselves, I can convince myself to put aside those continuous thoughts I’ve had too since I was in high school. How coincidental that I would find so much pain and healing in Bourdain’s episode about my father’s homeland when both suffered the same fate by their own hand.
But you should know…I don’t really believe in coincidences.
***
When I had the impulse to write this blog, I dug through my office to find some books on Iran that my family had given me after my father passed away. I still have so much to learn about the country and the Persian people from which I am descend.
We are one of the most ancient cultures in existence. A culture imbued with artistry—poetry, painting, weaving, architecture, pottery, metalwork. No wonder I am a multi-dimensional creative by blood. Nothing makes me happier than engaging in a beloved artistic medium or trying my hand at a new one. My father was a bassist and a DJ, my grandmother played piano and painted beautiful multi-medium pieces, my grandfather writers and translates poetry. In the deepest parts of my soul, I am an artist. To create external beauty with inner light is infused into the blood pumping through my veins. I cannot separate myself from my creativty.
I finally find the books and open one of them—a slim and concise history of the nation and its people. A single folded piece of paper falls out. I immediately recognize the stationary. The memory sends a chill down my spine. It is a page ripped out from a childhood journal. At the top of the page is a quote by Charles Dickens:
“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
The date: July 8, 2002.
Less than a week after we learned about my father’s death. And the first time I wrote about my experience and how I was feeling.
Dear Diary, my daddy died. I feel very sad about it.
What a coincidence.
But it’s not. I think finding that journal page was a sign of what I am supposed to be doing in this time where I feel so lost, no matter how small or insignificant. I am supposed to be doing what I’ve always done—write about my experiences.
The spirit runs deep through Persians. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions in the world. It teaches about the ever-present existence of duality, the influence of the cosmos on our destinies, and the three-fold path. Good Thoughts. Good Words. Good Deeds.
When I look at America today and I see the resurgence of fascist, racist, dictatorial practices, I think about the commonality that all beliefs teach us. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Regardless of where we come from, we all deserve to be treated with basic humanity. That should go without saying, but it’s not safe anymore in these streets. Chinga la migra.
I mourn the family I’ll never know. I haven’t spoken to my grandpa in ten years and I’m not sure why. I rarely talk about my father or grandmother with anyone, but every day I think about what my life would be like if they were here. I feel such a sense of emptiness not being connected to my culture. Maybe that is something I can eventually change. I hope one day, I get to visit my ancestral home. For now, I wear my gold amulets, I play the piano and sing and draw and paint and create for my ancestors, I try to think good, speak good, do good.
I don’t know what the answer is for Iran, or for the rest of the world. It’s hard to know what to do when the global circumstances seem so hopeless and out-of-control. But true freedom is worth the fight. Not the false promise of freedom we were sold under capitalism. At the risk of sounding cliche, I believe there is a way for humanity to thrive in life with equity, balance, and love. We must fight for it.
زنده باد مردم
Long live the people