For Findingmoxie, the Bell Tolls.

I went out after work with some colleagues--actually, my bosses and yes, that's how far I've come. I no longer mentally play the Imperial Death March when my boss approaches. Don't get me wrong, I still hear her approach and get that reflexive twinge of 'Look Busy!'. Anyway, going out for two drinks soon leads to communal bottles and someone topping up your glass without your knowing and leads to this:

Drunken ramblings on the bus home. I do remember the moment. The clock was lit with the aged yellow of history, the bus windows were open and it was 8pm. I remember hearing the bells for the first time and suddenly wondering how it was possible that I ride past Parliament and Big Ben ('Look kids, it's Parliment and Big Ben!!') twice a day, five days a week, for 14 months and have never heard the bell toll the hour.

Certainly begs the question, for whom the bell tolls? Clearly, it hasn't been for me. Although maybe that's the point. You never know when it tolls for you. Maybe it's been tolling this whole time and I couldn't hear it. Speaking of which, I really need to finish that book.

In that moment, living in London became slightly more concrete. I mean, it's hard to ignore the range of British accents, lilting up and down and dodging consonants, and the absence of my nearest and dearest (except for hubbs). Nothing emphasizes disassociation from everything you used to know more than an 8 hour time difference. I no longer react to my life with my community of peers, but detachedly relate it at a time more suited to their sleep cycle and my own. Removed from my time and until I heard Big Ben tolling the hour, without any time. It was almost like Big Ben restored my gravity and ground me in London--19 months after I arrived.

It also brings to light (pun intended) another issue. Why does having a tipple or two too much stimulate my writing life? Why does the urge to put my thoughts down to paper always froth up when I won't be able to legibly record a damn thing? I speak of the many journal entries from my year in Leeds where journaling usually meant more spilled ink than anything else. I began to wonder if my preoccupations with daily life were stifling my froth? Perhaps the time I spend strategizing the next day's outfit, mentally prioritizing paperwork for tomorrow's to-do list, or dreaming of our next holiday isn't settling my chi. It's coating my chi, the white noise of living. Apparently, hooch sets my chi free, de-clutters my mind and releases the writing life.

Just have to figure out how to have both without becoming a lush and the sort of illegible genius no one can ever understand--including myself.

Complicated in Farsi

I remember first seeing Funny in Farsi at Cody's on Telegraph Street in Berkeley several years ago. I was just coming to realise that this whole ethnic thing didn't have to be such a bad thing. In fact, suddenly, it made me a richer, more interesting person. Non-ethnics and Other-ethnics wanted to know what I ate at home, what it sounded like when I talked to my parents and even how to pronounce my name correctly.

This was a drastic about-face from my early days in the American public school system where anything exotic was shunned, especially if it was green and didn't smell like peanut butter and jelly. Needless to say, I learned that lesson well. I assimilated and so did my parents. We took up Christmas, bought a Ford and spoke English to each other, even when no one else was around. It was only then, 20 years later, that I felt like I had lost something--a part of myself, of my parents, of my past that I would never really have again.

When I saw Funny in Farsi, prominently placed on the front table at Cody's, I felt an overwhelming mixture of kinship and sadness. This was my story and it had been told by someone else. I was both afraid and eager to read it. What would this book reveal to me about my own life? But, as a not so financially solvent student, the hardback seriously exceeded my modest means. (You should know that 5 years later, I'll buy another handbag before I shell out nearly thirty bucks for a hardback...patience is a virtue, kids. Wait for the paperback.)

Five years later, on my 29th birthday, I open a delicious looking Seychelles shoebox in breathless anticipation. Inside, I find an unbearably cute pair of sky high wedges with black canvas straps, accented with a little red bow at the toes and adorable polka dot lining. I squeal. Urged to look under the wedges, I found my own paperback copy of Funny in Farsi. A little less excited (I mean, come on, it's polka dot lined WEDGES!), I thanked my best friends, the Millers.

So I read it. I even saved it for a month--as you do with books you're sure you'll love and want to savour it, or is that just me? Anyway, on to the book. I really wanted to have an emotional resonance with this book, the way I had and still do with Lipstick Jihad. But, I just didn't fall into it and maybe that's because it's laid out as quick little vignettes that are more amusing than poignant. It's not that my experience growing up Iranian in America wasn't funny and endearing and precious for having laughed through it with my family. But much of it--the public part anyway--was tinged with awkwardness and loneliness.

And maybe that's how I feel about belonging to a people who are exiled from a country that no longer or maybe never really existed. You can make it humorous, tell your friends how your dad goes by Fred "like Fred Flinstone" and loves shopping at Ralphs everday, having made friends with the butchers and bakers. Or how about the time my best friend in elementary school wanted to know how to get rid of leg hair without shaving and I told her that I had seen my mother use honey to do it? (This is before leg waxing became mainstream and when it was only done by stocky little Persian women in back storage rooms of Persian-run beauty salons). I am happy to report that honey apparently works as well as proper Persian wax. But, my relationship with my lost heritage and growing up in a country that I've come to love very much is much more complex than that and it goes too deep in my self to only laugh at it.

I guess I'll have to keep looking for the answers. Maybe it's unfair to expect a memoir to give that to me. Maybe I need to go to the mountain. That's right, Mohammed's mountain. The homeland itself. Now, how to convince the hubby that we will make it back with all our civil liberties intact?