<\/p>\n
Home. A fragment of a sentence. Fragments of fields, pieces of a place. How can you have nostalgia for a place you\u2019ve never been? For a language that struggles to sit on your tongue because you cannot plant your feet in the soil its syntax grew out of.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My mother tells me stories about Iran so acutely, I\u2019ve lost my own hearing in the crowds of Tairish Bazaar. I\u2019ve touched the chipped paint of stairwells and courtyard gates. I let mulberries and sour cherries stain my fingertips before we turned onto her street. I ran alongside her and her siblings through narrow alleys still glowing long after sunset. I\u2019ve even sat by her side as she counted tomans at the kitchen table while her father watched patiently.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The feelings echo in my body so strongly, I swear the memories are my own. I want them to be. Maybe I\u2019ve inherited them the same way I did my mother\u2019s genes. Since I was a child, I\u2019ve repeated the same sentiment I write now as a college senior: I want to go home. Well if these sentiments are as strong as I contend they are, then is \u201cgo\u201d the right word? Dare I say I want to return<\/em> home.<\/p>\n Yet, when I share my deep yearning, I\u2019m met with shame, confusion or both. People interrogate me: Is it safe? Why would you want to go there? As if longing for my country is controversial. Various orientalist<\/a> narratives reduce one of the oldest and most beautiful countries to sand dunes, to bombs, to \u2014 nothing. It\u2019s like asking why you would want to be held in your mother\u2019s arms. Why wouldn\u2019t I want the hums of Persian poetry that already flows through my blood to have a heartbeat?<\/p>\n