The city wraps me in its arms. The subways take me on an underground journey. Faces pass over me. Their reflections in the dirty windows. My reflection: a sad girl. I am floating, wrapped in the arms of a stranger. This is my home. This is not my home. As the subway shakes and we collide against the rails, against time, against energy, I lose myself. I think of the first time I started living here in the city of my dreams. Not anyone else’s dream. I know this city is most people’s dream. But it’s a different dream for me. Or it was. For me it was about me. I had to do something big. I had lived the immigrant life. I had learned to love two cultures inside me, two parts of me that collide everyday, that want to fight me. I love the parts in me that are different. I love the Farsi I have kept, the mother tongue that I speak, the way I can also write poetically in three languages if I let my heart speak. I also love my dreams in English. I love that it’s still a learning process, that I find new challenges everyday, as a writer, as a bilingual, as a woman. But in order to dream big I had to challenge myself even more. I had to break away from family because I had to feel like I could do it alone. I had to let go of my mother’s hands. My mother, who was with me every step of the way, as we climbed together, as we taught each other how to speak the new language. When I cried, she cried with me, she felt my pain, she told me I could do it, she believed in me. I had to dream big, not just for me, but for her. I dream for my father, the man who made me want to love the America he was in love with. The man who broke away to give me something better. The man who is many years my senior, but who always follows close by, always by my side, always on my side. Many people dream. I made mine come true. I took the city by the fingertips and I hoped to become something. I was in the biggest delusion. I was dreaming bigger than I intended. I dreamed for the wrong reasons. Maybe.
The subway takes me underground. Everyday. I am doing the same thing. I am repeating myself, over and over, everyday envisioning that I may be growing. But I am not so sure that I am. I am seeing nothing new anymore. I am just moving, the same, the same. This sameness, this repetition makes me bored, makes me hate myself, makes me feel like I am letting myself down. I have to do something. BIG. I have a gift. It would be insulting to my mother, to my father if I kept living like this. If I became no one. If I did nothing.
What have I become?
I have to take a new route. I have to walk a different street. But then what? What will I see? How will my perspective on life change? How will I become better? How can I help society? What am I supposed to do? Keep writing? To what end? For what cause?
I do not belong. Anywhere. Nowhere on a map, there is nowhere I can point to and say, this, this right here is mine. Nothing is mine. Not Tehran. Not Madrid. Not Virginia. Not New York. Not Brussels. Not Paris. Not the places I visit, not the places I live, not the places I am. I am no one. I am something. I have no home. I am…
When did I stop dreaming? Maybe I took it too far, with this dream. Maybe I have to wake up and change something. Again. Change.
To what end?

The immigration cycle. The ones who come, again, to start a new life. We have new people in the house, with new dreams. I am seeing it all over again, what they are going through. The first weeks are exciting. There is vibrant energy. Then nostalgia hits, memories are reminisced, bad, uneasy feelings surface. I have been there. I have felt it, in my way. And now they are going to feel it. Those of us who’ve become citizens point them to a direction, give them hope, and help them move forward. This American dream is so bizarre nowadays. These fresh minds who come from an abyss of dictatorship and censorship. They come and write, uncensored. My father says that your homeland is where you are respected, where you are loved. I disagree with my father. I have many homes and while I’ve felt respected, I have also felt alienated and bitter and yet I have called it home. I don’t know if our newcomers have felt alienated yet. This is a cycle. People coming into our house with bigger, broader, more perilous dreams. They come and as soon as they step in, it’s a dream for them. They want to start right away, begin things, write things, dream in English. Meanwhile, I envy them for dreaming in Farsi. I cannot remember the last time I dreamed in my mother tongue. These newcomers want to feel loved right away in a country that doesn’t know them yet. They want to dream for themselves. They want so many things and I am afraid that the excitement will end, that they will soon see flaws, that they will feel desperate. I have felt all kinds of things and don’t want to see them go through those feelings.
Why do we keep dreaming? What happened to our homeland? What happened to us?
I am conflicted, but this conflict is not new, nor is it troublesome. It is something to think about, discuss, and analyze. Perhaps our newcomers will resolve their conflicts before I do, and perhaps then they can help me. I am hopeful for them and I know they will find everything soon. But it will take time. They have to be willing to struggle and go through the pain. They have to learn before they can start dreaming in English.
And I will be here. I will help them. I will hope with them. I will have my dreams in English, converse with them in Farsi. I will be the translator. I will be the interpreter. I will hope that one day we no longer feel obliged to speak a particular tongue, that we can just be ourselves, that something else other than a new land will excite us.