Homesick,
for a land that holds my childhood
for a place which saw me through love
for streets that saw my joy
for trees that witnessed my tears
for shops that traded kindness
for shopkeepers who sold wisdom
for friends who gave me love
for old ladies who gave me advice
for children who gave me wonder
for youth who gave me pride
for my parents who were my world
for their graves which beckon my tears and tales
for the people who are strung out
for the time that it was
for the place that it was
for the home that it was
for the home that is no longer
for the hope that rests within,
I am homesick.
Photo of Tabatabaee House, Kashan, Iran, by Mansoreh Motamedi, IRNA, August 18, 2008.
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Dear Ebi
by Nadias on Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:20 PM PDTVery interesting link. Sepaas!
My home town El Paso, Texas happens to be a desert. A sort of Oasis in the middle of no where. Many mirages to be seen.
solh va doosti/paz a vosotros/paix et amitié
Re : A home long gone....
by ebi amirhosseini on Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:43 AM PDTMirage?!
//books.google.com/books?id=kJT9TmD__z4C&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=mirage+somerset+maugham&source=web&ots=dNNhKL-VKB&sig=DQjl5ladj2twXC3-j1UFE-iWLvc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA305,M1
Anonymous Bystander
by Nazy Kaviani on Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:38 AM PDTThanks for taking the time to leave me a note. Your polite and well-written note made me think and the anger in your message made me wince.
I don't understand the reason you are so angry with Iranians of all shapes and sizes! It is true that nostalgia has a "PhotoShop" effect on most of our memories, retouching and fixing many of them to deliver a perfect picture when we look back. I may be a victim to that syndrome, too, but not all my memories of Iran are old enough to fall into that category.
I could argue with you about my whereabouts before, on, and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but I won't. I assume your anger is directed at me generically, as a fellow-countrywoman who is evoking painful nostalgia but like you, can't do anything about it.
I did go back to live in Iran for more than a decade in more recent years. The Iran in my memory is in fact both an older Iran and a new Iran. I wrote something based on the love I have for Iran and Iranians. Certainly, as with any other nation, there are many faults and flaws in Iranians, too, but why would I hold contempt for a child who went to the warfront only to get blown up on a minefield? Why would you?
I didn’t wreck your home Bystander. I would argue that our mutual home is not wrecked at all. It has changed shape and tenants and rituals, but it is all still there. Iran has been going through a painful transition, yes, and it has been hard for us to watch this over the past 30 years. Couldn’t this be another step in a country’s historical evolution, painful lessons which must be learned before a nation can go forward? To experience pain and loss and hopefully to grow as a result? Thirty years could be most of your life but only a spec of dust on the pages of human history, which has shown nations fall and rise again.
Politics can change overnight or over decades, Bystander, but my love for that country and its people will never change.
Hamash zire sare een inglisiaas
by Anonymous bystander (not verified) on Sun Sep 21, 2008 05:09 AM PDTMs Kaviani
Your heart wrenching memories of that sweltering night in London is yet another example of the hand the Brits are playing in our lives even when we are thousands of miles away from our home. Can't you see? Why should you hear the voice of a man singing kuche-baghi" in the middle of the night in the leafy streets of Ealing? Why? Because they want to make you to return to the States and some ten years later tell the folks how homesick you are? Can't you see the logic?
But the home you are describing in such moving terms as:
"for shops that traded kindness
for shopkeepers who sold wisdom
for friends who gave me love
for old ladies who gave me advice
for children who gave me wonder
for youth who gave me pride "
did only exist in your imagination. What shops? Which shopkeeper? Are you talking about the old ladies who saw the face of "agha" on the moon? Are you talking about the children who were carrying G3 rifles? Are you talking about the youths who were singing Khomeini ey Emam? one of which is your good friend and our dear editor JJ?
Please wake up Ms Kaviani. You wrecked your own home by your own hands and now, out of a sense of guilt, are mourning its demise. Havn't you heard:
"khalaayegh har che laayegh"?
Dear Friends
by Nazy Kaviani on Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:35 PM PDTThank you all for your heartfelt and kind reflections and encouragement. I must say I am honored to see some of you more serious people leaving a comment on my humble post! Thank you for taking the time to share something personal about yourselves.
Aah, Iran, and the home that is and is no longer... If only words could paint the pain and joy and the familiarity and the strangeness that it has for me these days. I feel Iranian and I speak Iranese, and yet I'm not in Iran.
To be from Iran and not in Iran is the tightrope of emotions and reminiscences we walk everyday in diaspora.
I am reminded of a trip I took to UK in 1987. I was staying with relatives in a suburb of London. On that really warm August night, with my bedroom windows wide open, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep despite my jetlag. In the final moments of succumbing to sleep, I thought I heard a man singing a koocheh-baaghi song just outside my window. It was a dim sound at first, so hearing it made me think that my imagination was playing games on my homesick mind. As the voice became stronger, obviously getting closer to my window, I could distinctly hear a man singing a beautiful song, complete with chah-chaheh. In the half-awake and half-asleep state of my insanely disoriented mind, I sat up and reached for the curtains to look outside the window and find the man on the street. I couldn't see him, his entire presence had become that voice that was singing something so familiar, as though he was singing my heart. I so wanted to run out of that house onto the street and catch up with this man and to see him, to sit down and talk with him, to share my sorrows and longings and to hear his. But the moment came and went so quickly, the August night taking the man and his sweet singing away, back into where it became another memory next to all that I hold in my heart about Iran.
Your tales tonight were that sweet singing outside my window again. I heard you. Thank you for hearing me.
P.S. F.N. Glad to see you back. Won't you stay?
A Very Nice Poem
by Killjoy (not verified) on Sat Sep 20, 2008 07:55 PM PDTMs. Kaviani,
A very simple and beautiful poem. Thanks for sharing.
I'm sending this link to a song that I used to listen to more than three decades ago--by a different singer, though.
//www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni+mitchell/urge+fo...
As a very young man, I always got the urge to go to places far and unknown and most places I've been to I miss to the point of getting "homesick."
Years back, I wrote a piece to a childhood friend about our hometown. I talked about the urge I got--and still get after all these years--to go back every spring when the wild flowers of our hometown attract thousands of visitors and every Autumn before the winter settles in AND the beautiful memories I still cherish. The friend told me she cried for days reading the piece.
Having moved around a lot, I couldn't find the piece to share it with you all.
At times, I remember a line from a song by Jim Croce where he says, "If I could save time in a bottle and then spend it with you." And think to myself, wouldn't that be wonderful?
To Dear IRANdokht who said:
"When the home no longer is, why do we still call this feeling "homesick"? we're hanging on to a memory of a place and a time. A memory stripped of the negatives that sounds better and better every time we remember it."
Isn't that what we almost always do with the things we love and care for and the things with which we don't want to get ourselves involved?
Our naughty children are adored, our nagging aunts and uncles are ignored and the meanness of the people we know is forgiven because we feel the need and have the capacity to do so.
Many of us have been through so much in our lives that our sanity which seems to be taken for granted by people around us, is indeed the most valuable treasure in need of our uttermost care.
A home long gone............
by Nadias on Sat Sep 20, 2008 06:10 PM PDTOne of my sisters recently went back home. Only "home" was no longer as it once was. The house is still there but the neighborhood had changed. Some neighbors had married, moved away or passed away.
Also, my family is now scattered through out Texas.
No matter how much we try.........there is truly no going back home. Like Jamshid, mentioned the buildings may still be there but the times have changed.
For me now, home is truly where my heart is. I do fondly, remember some of my childhood memories. They will be with me for many years to come. :o)
Nazy,
Thank you for sharing such a beautiful and deeply felt poem with us.
solh va doosti/paz a vosotros/paix et amitié
Very nice poem
by Zion on Sat Sep 20, 2008 05:22 PM PDTOne can really relate to it. I hope you see it built a new again for your children. A new-old land.
Dear Nazi
by jamshid on Sat Sep 20, 2008 01:14 PM PDTI could relate to every word of your heart felt poem.
In the past, before the revolution, I defined homesickness as missing my home, family, and as you said, the trees, streets, shopkeepers, and everything else that defined the word home. Homesickness was a terrible sadness.
But I could always go back. The home, the shops, the streets, they were all there and waiting for me.
You wrote, "for the home that is no longer"
This changed everything. Now "home is no longer", and the feelings of homesickness have an ingredient of longing that in some ways is similar to a parent losing his/her child.
That's why I can't call it homesickness any longer. I call it "mourning" for a lost time and place, and more importantly, a lost state of mind and being.
I'm sick of
by FN (not verified) on Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:25 AM PDT...being homesick.
Nazy jan
by IRANdokht on Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:07 AM PDTI think we all experience a similar state of mind from time to time.
When the home no longer is, why do we still call this feeling "homesick"? we're hanging on to a memory of a place and a time. A memory stripped of the negatives that sounds better and better every time we remember it.
I do get down like that too and I find myself longing for something that is not there anymore. I even went back to live there again, hoping the voices would be as warm, the smiles would be as loving and friends would be as close as I remembered... but the friends that I have now know the person that I am today so much better, they share so much more with me than the ones I reminisce about. They are always there when I feel homesick and need their understanding and sympathy...
thanks for the heartfelt poem
IRANdokht
Nazy Jaan
by ebi amirhosseini on Sat Sep 20, 2008 09:01 AM PDTwho isn't ?!
BTW,do you know that behind the house of the picture,there is a romantic eastern real love story?!
sepaas
the answer is:
by john lenon II (not verified) on Sat Sep 20, 2008 05:24 AM PDTGO BACK, GO BACK TO WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED!