Feeling in Farsi, Writing in English

[matsushima]

I knew that sooner or later, we would leave to join my mother’s family in America.

Sitting in that classroom, with the muffled hum of traffic outside, I sensed that my history with Iran was going to be cut short, interrupted. Our history—the way we lived, the stories we told, the memories we held, all the unrelenting hurt we bore—was not going to last. It was going to end, and I thought I would be free of it all.

At the time, I did not realize that Iran would cross oceans, following me thousands of miles away. That it would haunt me, my dreams, my memories, my stories—my present and future. That it would reinvent itself, breathe fresh air and speak again, undaunted, like a message from the underworld.

-Feeling in Farsi, Writing in English by Sahar Delijani for Lit Hub

Comments

[matsushima]

I work at an English-taught international school in Japan. Most of my students do not speak English as a first language and I'm constantly aware of … all that, as a monolingual English speaker. (I say I speak 1½ languages: English and some Japanese, but I'd be lying if I called myself anywhere close to fluent.) I'm going to send this to my coworkers, who don't seem interested at all in the complications and contradictions of our jobs.