Homeland

Where do we come from?

Is it our ancestry? Our place of birth? Our citizenship?

When I graduated from undergrad I asked my parents for a plane ticket to Iran. I was offered a job in Mexico, but I had to decline, I needed to take this trip to my homeland. So that is what I did.

I left Iran when I was 4. Visited once when I was 8. And then as a 20-something year old knew this was a trip I had to take.

It was a trip of a lifetime. We travelled the country with the eyes of a tourist but the heart of a local. I fit in and stood out all at the same time. I learned, relearned, unlearned…

Years later as a 30-something I did it again.

The trip to a homeland to a place that was only home for my first years of life is an interplay of paradox, contraction, familiar, and unfamiliar.

These are some of those moments in time.