My uncle's declaration
I hoped there wouldn't
be a time when outside forces would be trying to get me to choose
between being
American and being
Iranian
February 19, 2004
iranian.com
I felt like taking a long walk when I heard my uncle say that
after Iraq if the United States were to invade our country next,
he would go and fight them there himself. I felt like taking
a long walk and think about America and Americans
and how if one of them had walked by and heard my uncle, they
might conclude that he was a terrorist. The thing that made me sad was
that even though I didn't want anybody invading anybody and I
didn't want anybody
having to fight against anybody invading anybody, there was still a lot of
beauty in a sixty-two-year-old man saying that he would go and
fight against any invaders
himself, and I figured that Americans wouldn't see any of it.
I was an American writer and I was used to sharing something
beautiful when it came my way, and the logical people to share
it with were
Americans, and it was
the first time that I had thought that no matter how well I wrote it, there
would be people who wouldn't see it, and it was a crazy feeling
because I had always
thought that art was free. I thought that if I wrote about him the way that
he was, as someone who was not at all trying to sound tough in
saying something
like that, but just laying out the facts, and who might in his next breath
notice a bird up in a tree, then they'd know what I meant. But
this was one where they
might not know it even then.
Well, I thought, I guess I can write about things like flowers
and trees and buildings and streets as much as I ever did, but
there's going to be some difficulties
when the people I am writing of and the people I am writing to don't always
see each other as people. I don't know who else to write about than Iranians,
considering
that that's what I am myself, and I don't know who else to write to than
Americans, considering that that's who I've gone out and seen
each day. It's lousy to
think that there might be stories that I can't tell them. We've always had
a good relationship,
at least since I began writing. I've never held back in anything I've told
them. I didn't want to start now. But I didn't want to spend any time explaining
that
my uncle was not a terrorist. They ought to know that, I thought. They ought
to know it and if I did, it wouldn't be art.
They wouldn't want me doing that anyway. They wouldn't want
me writing as anything other than a man in the world, because
the whole thing didn't seem
to start
with just me wanting me to be a writer. It seemed to start with me and
everybody wanting
me to be a writer, Iranians and Americans both. It was a joint movement.
I did not want it becoming fractured. Each day of the movement was
based on what they had in common, which was everything inside, everything
inside
me to start
with. My uncle's words went straight inside me as soon as he said
them, and I felt like taking a long walk because that was what
I used to do with what
was
inside me before I began to write, when I had thought that there was
nobody to talk to.
But I knew that if I did take a long walk, I would just come
back to the same things I already knew, (1) I did not like
war, (2) I had felt proud to hear my uncle would
fight against an American invasion, and (3) I should not be afraid
in what
I wrote. If it was really a joint movement, then I had to trust them
that they would know that the writer of the story of my uncle
did not hate anybody. I
had to trust them that they would know that it was an American story,
as American a story as anything I had written, as American as
anything anybody had written.
It was Iranian too, in ways that I probably did not understand
as readily, and
I liked it that way because a story was an act of peace even when
it was about war, even when it was about a possible war between
those I was writing of and
writing to. Not even that could stop the movement. Not even the assumption
of terrorism could stop it. The only thing that could stop
it
was if I did not write what
I felt. That was what I had done for everything else, and there was
no reason to think of what my uncle said as any different.
As for the story itself, well, he said it, and I did feel proud.
My aunt did not say anything, even though she was used to having
to remind
him
that he
was sixty-two-years old. My cousins and I did not even think of saying
that. It felt
like it woud have been very rude. And we did not doubt him, or doubt
how much he loved Iran, even though he had not been there in twenty
years.
"You should be careful not to talk like that at work," my cousin Katti
said.
"Yes," my cousin Ramin said. "They might report you."
My uncle made an expression that looked like it could only
have been made by someone who already knew all about being reported
on, which he
did, from his days of growing up under the Shah. He seemed to be considering
how
much stuff
he could take at sixty-two that he had been able to take at twenty.
"They would do the same thing if their country was invaded," he said. "Why
would they think other people would be any different?"
We didn't know what to say to that except to appreciate him.
My cousins were still worried that he would say something at
the wrong
time,
but they looked
like they were proud of him too. Outside our window was America,
and the flowers and trees and buildings and streets were as much
a part
of us as
they had ever
been. And even the people were just as much a part of us. There
was nothing that we were saying that we would take with us to the
next
American we
met.
There
was nothing that my uncle was saying that he would take with him
to his office. It just happened that if the United States invaded
Iran,
that's
what he would
do. They might think that it meant that he hated them, but hate
did not have much to do with what we were talking about. What we
were
talking about actually
felt like it had more to do with all those things we were part
of.
Some time later I was talking to my brother, and I told him
about what our uncle had said. I waited until I saw him in person,
because
it
didn't seem
like something
I should say over the phone.
My brother smiled. "I can see him saying that," he said.
"Katti and Ramin were worried that he would say something in public."
"He shouldn't have to be concerned with that stuff," my brother said. "He's
too old for that. I don't mean he's too old to handle it, I mean he's too old
to have to put up with that stuff."
"Yes," I said. "He sounded young when he said it though. I wish
you could've seen how young he sounded when he said it."
"I would've liked to have seen it."
When we were kids,
my uncle had told us about growing up in Iran and how he had
finally gotten so sick of everybody reporting
everybody else
that he had decided
to leave. For some reason I had always thought that it was
going to happen to me too. Even though I wasn't growing up in Iran, I had
thought that
it was going
to happen to me. I just figured it was something that I was
going
to end up going through.
I hoped there wouldn't be a war and I hoped there wouldn't
be a time when outside forces would be trying to get me to choose
between being
American and being
Iranian. I already knew that there was a way to not have
to choose,
no matter what the
outside forces tried to do. I knew it from the last war.
I knew there was a way to wake up in the morning and sign a peace
treaty inside
myself before
going
to bed at night.
But it was going to be hard if it was
my own
country that was invaded. It was going to be hard if it was the
people who
spoke my
language, which was not the language that I was a writer
in, but was the language that
I had been a child in. It was the language whose speaking
was close to writing for me, because of the way it went back to
so many memories
I did
not know
I
had. They came back even just to hear it being spoken,
and the thought of something
like bombs falling on those who were living their lives
in that language, who were saying 'mother' and 'father' in
it as I had
done, was
a terrible
one.
My brother and I didn't know what would happen if the U.S.
invaded Iran and our uncle went to fight them there himself.
We didn't
want him to
get hurt,
but we
didn't think we could say anything because that was the
country he had grown up in. All I knew was that there would
be a time
when it
would seem
as foolish
as any other war ever fought, because no matter what
anybody tried to say, the distance between the two places was
nothing.
It was nothing
and
I knew
it was
nothing because it was the same as the distance between
me and me, and there was nothing that anybody could do
to change
that.
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