I remember when I was a little kid aged five or six. I always told my mom I wish I was an Indian. I used to run around the house screaming and yelling just like a redskin. Of course, I wanted to be many things, like a Princess, a police woman, a dentist. I’d think a child with no such wish has a serious problem. But I was more serious about being an Indian. I thought Indians are a folk directly chosen by God. I don’t know why, but I thought they were something special and being “only” Persian made me feel like a subhuman being.
I’m sure it also had something to do with the kids in kindergarten. When I first got there, I was the Turkish girl, even the nigger, simply: the foreigner. I was never a playmate, like the other kids, I was always different and being different, in particular being Persian, it just felt – somewhat – wrong. But Indians were admired, every once in a while, the “normal” kids pretended being Indians in their games. I was certain that this was what one should be.
I even remember a time when I felt so bad about being what I inevitably was that I didn’t just play being a redskin as a game – I really pretend being from a different country. I didn’t my own country and my own heritage because of external influences that exerted pressure on me. In any case, one day I went shopping and the seller asked me in Spanish if I was Spanish. I thought if people can see me as a Spanish girl, maybe I should pretend I really was, this must be convincing. I changed my nationality like a T-Shirt: from day to day to day to day to day.
I remember a time when I started doubting God – yes, I doubted the God who I thought had chosen the Indians as “supermen”. I had my reasons for doubting a higher power, for sure. I blamed God for things he/she must have been responsible for and for things he/she couldn’t have been responsible for. While God must have been responsible for human suffer, God couldn’t be responsible for my personal dilemma about my lost identity. But it was easy to make someone responsible who wasn’t really there in front of your eyes (at least if you didn’t open your eyes properly).
One of the things I remember best of my adolescence is that I cursed everything. I didn’t care about anything, and I cared least about God. But when it came to rough times and I didn’t see a way out, I suddenly started praying. But when I grew older, I realized this was pathetic and hypocritical: I couldn’t turn my back to God in good times and deny her/his existence and pray and beg to her/him in bad times. Plus the prayers didn’t change anything anyway. I realized if I wanted my life to change I had to roll up my own sleeves.
Everyone has one’s own way to deal with identity issues. My way was to whoop it up as soon as I turned 18 and wrote my last graduation exams. I can’t remember another time in my life where I partied so hard and argued so bad with my mom about stupid and preposterous topics. One act of protest at that time was piercing my nose (which – I must emphasize that – I don’t regret at all). Luckily, I didn’t do anything I’d have to regret now. But I gave my mom and the people around me a really hard time. Thus, I slowly started finding myself and finding out who I really was – and I was certainly neither the good girl half of the world thought I was nor the naughty still water running deep the other half of the world thought I must be.
Although I thought and still think this time was necessary and fundamental for finding my true self, it was still not what I was searching for. I felt as a stranger, although I thought I had well accommodated to my environment. Sometimes, when I walked around town in between of hundreds and hundreds of people, I even thought about whether people did recognize I was not native German just by my looks. And still everyone showed me where my place was in the hierarchy. When my friend said “You’re exactly like us honey, you’re no different”, not later than the third sentence would sound like “Well, but YOU GUYS ARE DIFFERENT, right…”. This was how much I really had accommodated.
I must have been about 14 years old when my brother started educating himself about Persian History. I was never much of a theoretical person. I wanted to feel history, to LIVE history. But still, of course, I was also interested in who my ancestors were and what they had reached in the glorious Persian Empire. That was about the time when I started feeling a special fire, a passion… I had never seen my country except in books, magazines or in the TV. But I really started even missing my country. Every Norouz I sat there crying because I wanted to be close to my country, my roots, especially on this finest day of the year.
I remember sitting in the airport hall on a quite cold day in March. “Hurry, eat your stuff up, we gotta check in soon.” That’s just as much as my mom could say that morning, with a slight tremble in her voice. I was having a hard time keeping myself awake after staying up all night and searching my brother’s search after a visit in his favorite disco. The only thing keeping me awake was the thought of seeing my nation, finding my roots, after 19 long years of waiting – and of course the fear of what might happen at the passport inspection. You know – you never know… Anyhow, five hours went by so quickly. No wonder, when stewards and stewardesses keep battening you for five solid hours.
What I also remember very well is the scariest moment I had to manage in my whole life (by now): At the passport inspections, they separated me from my mom and my brother. I was so scared that they might ask me questions I couldn’t answer, especially since my Parsi wasn’t the best anyway. But before I could say knife, I didn’t stand in the airport hall of Hamburg, but Tehran and a bunch of excited, covered people were hugging us and tearing away our bags. I guess that’s what my mom always meant when she talked about Persian hospitality. To make a long story short: There were things that I knew from reports that my mom made once in a while and things I didn’t know. There were things I liked and things I didn’t like. But it was definitely a huge step on the right path.
I remember sitting back in my room in suburban Flensburg one month later and sighing continuously. It was love that made me crave for a return journey to my country. Not only necessarily love for my country, but also true love: Love for things I had seen, the good ones and the bad ones. Love for people I had seen for the first time in my life and I still had embosomed.
And again, before I could say knife, I was sitting in the plane getting battened for five whole hours. The second journey was a really special one. I found out what true love was and I found out what and who I am. Why I became who I am. Why I can’t and shouldn’t deny who I am. We went to see the ruins of Parse (Persepolis) and Pasargad and for the first time I felt like I was really in Iran itself. For the first time I felt comfortable and at home. Of course, I feel comfortable and at home at my mom’s house and at my grandma’s house. But this was different. It felt like the answer to all open-end questions. I pinched myself thinking whether people would recognize I was German. I realized that I accepted I was both German and Persian and this was when I didn’t feel in-between anymore. Germans might think I was a foreigner and Iranians might think I was a foreigner. I might be a foreigner to both worlds. But I didn’t feel as a foreigner. To me, I was not a stranger at all!
I remember sitting in the auditorium to hear the last lecture of the first term. Man, I can’t hear words like “compensation” and “acquiring in good faith” anymore. I noticed how my thoughts were slowly fading away to another dimension: Since I found a way of recognizing who I am, I’ve never denied my identity. When someone asked me where I was from, I said I was German. Where was I originally from? I stood upright and held my head up high answering I was from Iran, the land of the noble and precious. We are supermen, too, you know. I think every people is a people of supermen and God hasn’t chosen any folk above another for a higher destiny. God has given us our sanity, our intellect and our abilities to lift ourselves from others. – Yes, I am speaking of God. The God that I don’t pray to because I don’t want to be exploitive. The God that has given me and about 6,999,999,999 other humans sanity, intellect and abilities to produce relief. The God that is undeniably there and that all of us believe in – no matter whether we believe in God as an old senior sitting above the clouds and watching what mess we are making down here or as a strong power within ourselves.
Enough with memories. I don’t remember anything right now. The only thing I can think of is sitting in that familiar, soothing airport hall in about four months…
