Home Coming
I was born in Iran, raised in France and Canada, and lived much of my adult life traveling back and forth between the United States and my country of birth. I did not choose to leave Iran as a child. My leaving was initiated by my mother whom after several months during which Tehran was under airstrike by Iraqi forces, no longer wanted her children (my twin sister and I) to experience war. She insisted on taking us to France despite my father’s reluctance. But my mother was determined so off we were with some savings and two months of French classes, while my father stayed behind to work and supply us with the financial means to make a humble new life oversees.
I remember my first days of school in Nice before moving to Paris a year later. Everything had suddenly changed and not having language to communicate, slowly turned me into an observer, a silent outsider. I began to long for belonging, for being part of something in order to find an anchoring of some sort. At home, I often witnessed my mother crying. Perhaps she regretted her decision to leave the comfort of her home and her husband behind, but being proud and stubborn as she was, backpedaling was not an option. This was the mid 80s and the Arab minority in France was heavily discriminated against, in ways and for reasons different from today’s marginalization of refugees. Iranian identity at the time was confused with, and fused to Algerian and Moroccan identities neither of which were highly respected. Most French kids never bothered to invite my sister and I to play and the friendships we forged were with the Arab children. Our association with them solidified our identity and position as the lesser Others.
Being an empath, I felt the racism and distaste in my teacher’s eyes all the way into my bones. Encounter after encounter, my body registered the feeling of shame in its cellular memory. Every time someone looked at me as if I was dirty, I felt dirty. By the time I had finally built enough vocabulary to defend myself against unspoken insults, I had already come to a place where their gaze had become mine. I saw myself as the dirty, assumed poor, lesser than, uncivilized little burden that occupied too much space and should have never been allowed to infiltrate their sophisticated society. Children I supposed, don’t have the analytical capacity to understand what might cause people to behave in the ways that they do. They innocently absorb the experiences they encounter in their little malleable bodies; experiences that become subconscious beliefs about who they are and what their worth is. It was not until my early twenties that I began to look at and unravel these demeaning beliefs about myself. The journey to restore my sense of worth and dignity began as I dove into the practice of Yoga so as to cope with chronic lower back pain and the hypothyroidism that was crippling me. Little did I know at the time that every Backbend that exposed my heart and chest cavity would become an opportunity to face my grief and re-teach my body the language of dignity; that every Shoulder Stand would invite my frozen thyroid to bathe in a warm pool of blood and bring me closer to the ability to express my unspoken rage at having been invisible while growing up in the West.
To me invisibility is synonymous with being misperceived, and misperceptions often result from blind stereotyping by the dominant race, culture, class, community or gender. In Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man I identify with the narrator. As an Iranian child in France I learned to satisfy and please. I walked on eggshells around French adults and would do anything for the children to take me in. I made sure to never upset anyone and agreed even when I disagreed.
I began to heal my perception of myself in a very visceral way through yoga, reprogramming my spine to stand up straight, rooting my feet into the ground with firm confidence, lifting my gaze from the floor to that which was ahead of me. Little by little the aches and pains began to quiet down. I set aside my thyroid medication and I began to take baby steps towards self-determination. I discovered the rebellious spirit that had been buried underneath my shame and fear and made room for her to take my hand and guide me. She took me all the way to India with a backpack and a sense of curiosity. There, I met a teacher who gave me the name “Priya” which I still use today. She represents the individual I continue to shape myself into being, peeling off layer by layer those borrowed feelings and beliefs about who I am. But the struggle had just begun and it was not until my early thirties when I decided to devote myself to higher education that I began to reflect intellectually on what had happened to me. History classes in elementary and high school had never grabbed my attention, not because I was lazy but because I never felt that any country’s history pertained to me. I had not spent enough time in any given society to feel that its past was mine. My sense of un-belonging had made me numb and disconnected to any particular set of events, groups of people, or geography. College education however, gave me the perspective I needed. As a naturalized American artist, I realized that I was perceived in a very different way from white American-born artists and that there were certain expectations of me that I had to fulfill if I wanted to be seen as relevant. I learned about the impact of ongoing Western intervention in the politics and social conditions of my country of birth and I finally had language for the experiences that shaped my reality in the Western world. I learned that much of my unease resulted from my sense of displacement. I learned that as a Third World Woman I was Othered. I learned that there are different levels and degrees of Otherness. I learned that people are Othered because of the color of their skin, their gender, their economic and class status, their sexual orientation, or their physical and mental disabilities; that the further one is removed from the said healthy-heterosexual-white-middle-class-male identity, the more complex the struggle for self-determination becomes. I learned about Colonialism, Orientalism, Capitalism and every other soul hungry ism. I learned that the Western art world did not see me as I saw myself: An artist. I realized that my Third World, Iranian, Middle-Eastern, Muslim, female identity spoke before my work ever did. I saw these gaps and my seeing them meant having to make choices as to how I would navigate these constraints. I began by acknowledging my disadvantage and rejecting the stories made up about me by people who had themselves drank the Kool-Aid of the dominant gaze.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent we are still afraid.
— Audre Lorde
While my experience of life as the Other is unique and particular to me, it also embodies similarities with the struggle of black, brown, and Indigenous women living in the United States. It is through these similarities that I’ve come to discover a sense of solidarity and sisterhood with them. The same ideologies and systems that massacred, enslaved, and persist to disenfranchise their people, have their tentacles wrapped around mine, making sure through propaganda, sanctions and ceaseless interventions, that we Iranians maintain our position as a Third World Nation.
Security is such a fundamental need for every human being. When the building blocks of security feel wobbly or missing, little can be created for security is foundational in the construction of one’s life. Without the sense that the earth is solid beneath one’s feet, how can one stand and look up to the sky, eyes twinkling with hope, or look ahead to a horizon dreaming of prospects yet attained? In the last paragraphs of Lord’s poem, I feel this the most: Insecurity embedded in the body of Women of Color as well as in my body as a Third World Woman.
When I reached the age of 40, I made the most important decision of my life. I chose to wrap up my world in San Francisco and make my grand return home to Iran. This marked the systematic part of my decolonization process. To decolonize my worldview is to reframe my gaze and to reclaim my dignity. I would choose to live in demonized Iran over the glorified United-States. I would choose to speak my mother tongue over International English as often as I could. I also began orienting my art practice which has always been a recording of my personal journey of healing, towards decolonization as the current chapter of this journey.
I want to propose now that we switch from words like struggle and fight and resistance to healing because ultimately this struggle for justice and equality is a journey of healing, and it isn’t about one side winning and one side losing; one side gaining dominance over another. It is about healing and it is about wholeness. Healing is a lifelong commitment to the gradual and humbling remembrance of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine that we each embody; one being dysfunctional without the other. Wholeness can only come as we hold equal space and reverence for everything that we are: Feminine and Masculine, dark and light, good and evil and everything in between. Only then can we experience full coherence within ourselves and with each other. In our healing, each of us will face unique challenges and learn unique lessons. But in our healing, we must also acknowledge when and where we’ve betrayed one another. We must ask for forgiveness when we do, and chose anew to include and elevate those whose dignity, wisdom, beauty, and power we’ve ignored because of the color of their skin, their economic status, their sexual orientation, their religious beliefs, or their mental and physical disabilities. To feel that anyone is less worthy of our attention and respect is a dis-ease we must heal from.
Raising our consciousness to know that we are all on the same boat isn’t a quick fix. It happens little by little through trial and error and experience. Millions before us have walked this path to get us to where we are today. Those who’ve struggled the most are often the ones who know the most and can help the most, for it is through hardship that wisdom, strength, and compassion are often built.
The resilience and strength of women like the late Safiya Bukhari, member of the Black Panther Party teach me to keep going when I feel most tired and hopeless at the state of the world. Safyia’s commitment to protect her community even from her prison cell, reminds me to stay committed to mine and to write and record my journey, for one day another woman somewhere in the world, engaged in her own healing, may carry this torch I’m carrying today and that Safiya carried yesterday. She may read my words and wake up a little more from the slumber and remember better who she is and what her worth is. As she wins I win, as I win you win. There is no real winning unless it is for all of us. The Feminist healing in bringing equality between men and women, balance between Masculine and Feminine forces will never hit home unless it makes room for everyone despite our differences. All women and all those men who want to walk with us. The mountain top demands that we arrive all together, hand in hand. It is only then that we’ll be able to claim our arrival under one god.
