Flowering

I’m a seed of arid land

Born on wet sand

So I couldn’t take root

And have a chance to shoot

Dispersal

I followed the sands of time

Split to places once sublime

So I found a space to grow

And nutrients to make me glow

Dormancy

I stayed put for many years

While hostage to all of my fears

Of being washed away and drowned

All the time losing more ground

Germination

And finally, I germinated

But my brain, the germs ate it

And my roots, they withered

Because they had their water constricted

Decay

And after all I struggled

The soil beneath me crumbled

So I stumbled into the dirt

Broken, but barely hurt

Renewal

Only to learn a valuable lesson

That rich soil will turn barren

When the drought that my ancestors suffered

Comes back to where it was ushered

From Iran, Born and Raised in Dubai

This post started as an autobiography of myself with a focus on Home. As the words spilled out of me, the theme turned towards identity instead. I decided to scrap most of it and wrote the poem above instead, which captures all I wanted to share about Home. The text below is what’s leftover from the autobiography.

One of the silliest aspects of “woke” is that it is considered rude to ask someone where they are from¹. I despised this attitude for the simple, selfish reason that it ignored my complex relationship with the question “Where are you from?”.

I am an Iranian citizen, but I was born in Dubai. The UAE does not give nationality by birth or naturalisation, so I always understood my stay in Dubai to be temporary, and conditioned on my parents’ employment.

It was therefore never a home.

Neither was Iran, since I never lived there, didn’t have any social ties to it, and had the intuitive sense that it had no future.

As history would have it, I turned towards the West searching for home… and despite living amongst many third-culture kids and internationally minded people, no one had a clue what I felt like. A simple example being that most people didn’t comprehend how paralysing it can be to have your stay conditioned. Of those who did, they all had a peoples or a physical location they were anchored to. Even if they knew they could never visit those places again, I envied how it fuelled their existence.

When I look back at all the decisions I’ve made in life, I can see clearly that I made them (even if unknowingly) to find a permanent place of stay and end the feeling of homelessness. I have accepted a lot of suffering when any sane person would have said “no”. I have deprived myself of a lot of opportunities, including socially, because of this desire to find home. I have felt envious of how free of constraint everyone around me thinks. So free of ropes, where I am instead critical of almost any desire that comes to my mind because I worry it will threaten the path I’ve carved up for myself in search of a home.

Of late, many events have shown that law is ultimately a piece of paper we wipe our asses with. And with that, I’ve found that the floor has collapsed between my feet. It certainly feels like all of the dreams that I repressed, and everything that hinged on this ever elusive concept of a home has completely vanished. I am still very lucky because my livelihood has not been affected. However, the rejection is an attack on my raison d’être.

I didn’t think it showed. And yet a friend remarked to me recently: “You look like you’ve lost your spark”. My body betrays me. I wrote of the scholar who passed through the eye of his needle, blind to the haystack thinking that I’d never find myself in the same position. I was right and wrong: right because I was aware of the haystack, wrong because I arrived at the same place of paralysis only not as a scholar, but as a prisoner: of recent history, of a process, and of my own mind. I learnt that you can have a home and be homeless.

Strangely though, I feel liberated. I feel liberated because I am reminded of how I experimented with liberating myself a year ago. I did things that proved my existence. This was the right idea, even if some of it was dangerous. I was doing the rights things because I was fighting to create a new raison d’être, and a new identity.

There is a lot of running that I have done in my life. A lot a lot a lot. Always avoiding this question. Always waiting and waiting and waiting. But now, and maybe I will wait a bit more, I truly feel like a massive rope has been cut! I feel unchained, even if a little bit. I feel like my mind is sharp! This morning I was so groggy, and now I am sharper than I’ve ever been!! It is freedom that makes you feel this way. FREEDOM².

Earlier today before writing this, I had a deep deep desire to go for a run. I felt so cold in the morning, and then so hot in the afternoon. All I wanted is to get out of my body. My joints felt so stiff and I felt so stuck. When I looked at my screen, my body physically cringed and I wanted to get away. I wanted to sleep and wake up to a new day, but I knew I would just lie in bed and doom scroll. So then I thought of the next best thing: to go for a run! To feel the cool fresh air against my skin on a beautiful sunny day.

But I decided to sit with my discomfort, and it was difficult. I attempted to untangle my thoughts and I struggled. I struggled so much and I wanted to run away. I wanted to run away and was given the opportunity many times.

But a deep part of me knew that I must sit and confront the emotions. I must sit. I must sit through the discomfort.

And now I feel liberated.

My articles are cryptic for a reason, but it doesn’t make them any less honest: my emotions are the truest thing that I can express.

If you were expecting my post to turn towards something uplifting, like how home is a concept, or home is people, etc… then I’m sorry to disappoint you. Those concepts are valid and I have a place for them in my life, but there is a home that I have always yearned for that I will simply never find. And that is just the cold, hard, reality.

But, the silver lining is that writing this post has greatly liberated me: I no longer feel afraid that I am not understood, and that I am different. I accept that there are simply not that many people who can relate to my experiences. This difference is what makes me me, and uttering my truth validates my existence in a way that only I can understand and appreciate.

The photo for the blog was made using photos from Xinh and Slamlabs.

1. Of course, I don’t deny that this line of questioning is used to exclude people from a society that they are most definitely a part of. ↩︎
2. @DonaldJTrump American citizenship please? ↩︎