The Dreams of My Cousin

I sit here helpless, like I was helpless 30 years ago.
I sit here helpless crying in front of the screen as I watch a country that I love go up on smoke, just like I sat there helpless watching the news reports of what was happening in the streets maybe 20 feet away, 30 years ago.

What am I most upset about?
I will stay away from the politics of it. Because I will not even pretend that I understand any of it now after 30 years.
I cry the tears that I couldn’t cry 30 years ago, because of the unreality of it all, because of the impossibility of it all. And I dedicate the following to a cousin I have never met and scarcely spoken to, except during these past 8 turbulent days. It is for him and his generation that I cry.

Our first conversation was 25 years ago. I spoke to him on his birthday, his fourth or fifth, I cannot recall. I asked him what he wanted. He replied, “ I want a helicopter so I can fly to Iraq and kill Saddam the Zahhak.” The reality of this little boy was going to bed and waking up with sirens warning of an imminent Iraqi attack. We may have been the children of the revolution but the generation after were the children of war.
I cry because rather than learning simple games at school, they were taught to spy on their parents and report what was suspicious according to their definition of what warranted suspicion. I cry for him because childhood is about innocence and a sense of wonder and not what they were subjected to.

15 years ago, there was a booth set up in front of the Art Gallery by a group of Mujjahids. Immense posters with graphic photos of people after having been tortured. The big bold caption read “Crimes Against Humanity” And for me that was enough to turn my stomach. I put my head down to hurry away, but I found I couldn’t just walk away. I had to speak. As I looked up I saw one of the bearded men look at me. He hurried to me and started with his carefully rehearsed speech. But I couldn’t let him go on, I jumped in. In English I demanded, “Tell me how is it that this is a crime against humanity when it is done to you and not when you were doing it to others?” He was shocked; he tried to explain about the innocence and righteousness of his cause, about his deep passion for his country, all arguments that I very passionately countered. At last he yelled while pointing his finger at my face, “ What do you know about anything when you have been brought up in the comfort of the West?”
And I stood there sobbing like a baby, “ What right do you have to talk to me this way? What do you know about what goes on in my heart? How much longer do you think I can live with this guilt knowing that I am safe here, while my little cousin thinks that having bombs dropped on his head is a part of life? If I could, if I possibly could I would trade places with him in a heart beat” and I continued to sob… We spoke some more, and then he admitted that the money they were collecting was to buy arms to go back to Iran and continue the fight. “But how much more bloodshed?”
I went away only to come back and find him speaking to an unsuspecting Canadian who had fallen for his sob story of his ill treatment by the government. And like a banshee I started to plead, “ Please don’t give him money, he is just buying arms, he is just going to kill people.” The bearded guy called me a lunatic that should not be listened to and the Canadian said it was his right to give his money to whomever he chose.

After the first signs of unrest, my mother told me that once we left the country 30 years ago, we gave up the right to have an opinion one way or the other about anything that happened in the country. What we had done 30 years ago amounted to handing over the keys of our house for safe keeping to people and now we have no right to question them or their methods.
She may have left her country but we were taken from ours. For better or worse they chose our fate our destiny, not us. I need to say this because I want my cousin to understand that being away was not easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
I loved my country. I loved my family. I would spend the first year daydreaming throughout the school day. I would close my eyes and move through the house, room-by-room, move through the school inch by inch. I relived the last encounters with family and friends. I overheard the adults during one discussion say that any immigrant caught shoplifting would be deported back to their country of origin. The next day I went to the mall. I stood there in front of the candy counter, with the worst dilemma of my young life. I had a solution to my problem. In order to go back all I had to do was to take something that wasn’t mine, and I would be sent back home. Easy, simple! And it would be out of my parents’ hands. But if I took it, I would be a thief, and that was morally wrong. But if I didn’t, I would be stuck in a country where people were polite and distant, and halfway across the world from my heart.
5 years later we were called to take the oath of citizenship, after a yearlong feud with my parents where I declared, “ I was born an Iranian and I will die one too. I will not be a traitor and I will not be a sell-out, and I will happily tell this to that idiot judge. “ It must have come as a huge relief to my parents when they found out that they would be granted the interview and as minors my sister and I would just be present for the oath. I remember them begging and pleading, threatening and cajoling me to behave properly during the ceremony. I sat there mesmerized by the fire alarm, planning in my mind how I would make an excuse to go to the bathroom and pull the alarm and at least get a reprieve for the day.

And although I didn’t see that ruinous barbaric 10 year war, I lived through those dark days of the Revolution. And it has scarred me for life. I saw people get shot in front of my eyes, and fall to the ground maybe 2 feet away from me. One day, on the way back from school, our car was stopped and one of the revolutionary guards pulled me out of the car at gunpoint with his G-3 just inches from my throat. Why you may ask? They were doing a random check of the schoolbags of children for suspicious material. In those days, the first four pages of each and very Farsi school book contained a picture of the Shah, the Queen, the Crown Prince and the Imperial Family in that order. He wanted to check my family’s sympathies by examining my book. I refused to hand over my bag. My father begged and pleaded, “Hand the gentleman your bag dear.” Once he had my bag he flipped through the book. “What are these pictures doing here?” “They came with my book.” “You must tear them out immediately” he growled still pointing his gun at me. “ I will not.” I screamed, hysterically. “Do as the man says,” my father anxiously pleaded. “ No! I will not! Mom said she would skin me alive if I touched this book. I will not tear anything out.” A struggle ensued between me and this guard until my father stepped in. I don’t know who tore the pages out, but in the excitement too many pages were torn out. “ You DO NOT argue with a man with a machine gun. What is wrong with you?”

I cry as I see the news from Iran because I remember October 30th 1979. I was studying in my room in Vancouver when I heard gunshots. I started screaming and threw myself onto the floor and rolled into the closet, like I had done so many times when they started shooting in Tehran. My parents came running to my room, to find me a hysterical mess in the closet. Those weren’t gunshots I had heard, but firecrackers. To this day I hate Halloween, and I hate any movie with violence.

I cry when I see the news reports. I cry for myself and I cry for my cousin because these were not the normal experiences of childhood. My Canadian friends never experienced gunshots and executions and martial law and not knowing if they would take your father to be executed.

But most of all I cry because my cousin said on June 13th, “They lied to us. They robbed us, they cheated us.” But they have done this for the past 30 years. We have been robbed of our dignity, our identity our heritage. We are displaced even in our own homes. We are gypsies in search of the Promised Land. Dazed and confused for 30 years.
And these tears have been a long time in coming.


I dedicate this to my cousin who believes in a bright future and all those people displaced by war and revolution … ironically on World Refugee Day.