Her voice echoed through the room. I was suddenly comforted though saddened at once. Her voice had the power of sadness. It went into a higher pitch, smoothly. I was sad that week, and alone, and battling an external obstacle. I was almost ready to give up. I was going through hell, but as someone once told me, I had to keep going. There was no way out. My desperation was beyond explanation, and her voice got me through that night. I cried. I wanted to sing too. I wanted to fly towards the Brooklyn Bridge and forget my sorrow, forget the loneliness of being. Then I remembered. I wasn’t alone. I had new friends, people who cared, and asked me how I was everyday. I wasn’t alone. Her voice continued to rise. She was sitting in the kitchen, singing. It was dark out and maybe a little chilly. Fall beginning to finally set in. I didn’t know her well, but her voice comforted my tired soul. And she was alone too, but somehow I feel that she was okay with it, that through singing, she had found a way to comfort her soul. What could I comfort my soul with when my pen wouldn’t work? How could I save myself when I had nothing of my own to give? So I cried as I listened to her and hoped that one day I could find a way to be stronger in my soul.

What do you leave behind when you leave a place your blood is stained with?
You leave everything. You leave scraps of little things, like a shoebox that was once filled with childhood diaries and letters you used to pass around in class.
You leave your footprints on the stairs. You leave hand marks on the doorknobs. You leave your emotional scars, your fantasies, your childhood nightmares and happy dreams. You leave yourself. You tell yourself to forget. You become something different.
In Manhattan, I am sometimes another version of the old me. I know where to walk. I carry a purse twice my size. I carry a mug of coffee. I sometimes don’t have time to look up at the sky or think about how pretty it is. I just walk to get to class, to get to work and sit at my desk, to grab a bite to eat, to cook, to buy groceries, to glance at pretty dresses. I don’t have time to criticize myself. If I think about all that I am doing wrong, all that could be better, all that is flawed, I wouldn’t make it through the day. And here in this city, it is important to make it through the day because no one will pick you up, no one will get you out of your misery. You wanted this dream. It’s yours now. You take care of how it happens from now on. You make the call. It was your dream. You own it and you have to pay the price.
In Fairfax, Virginia, I drive my parents’ car and blast music with the windows down and I pop bubble gum as I sing along the beat. I see Mom and Dad everyday. I live in their house. I breathe their air. I walk on grass. I sit on the porch. I sip tea sometimes in silence if no cars pass by. I hear birds. I think of my flaws and how utterly alone I am in the world and I write about the grass below my feet. I write about my father because he walks in front of me and has strong presence despite his silence. I write about coffee because when I make it, it seems like an eternity, like a moment frozen in time, where I hear the water moving through the tube, and the brown liquid gradually sinking into the pot. Everything is slower, the motions, the gestures, the conversations, the movements of living things. I write about boredom.
In New York, I gather thoughts but they disperse into the sound of subways. Sometimes the sound is so loud that I feel a vibration in my ear and this effect causes me to think of sound, rather than a concrete thought. What is sound? It is the force of a train, its body crashing against the rails, the screeching, appalling, beautifully moving sound that reminds me that I am constantly moving. Often I bump into others or vise versa. It is always a split second. It lasts just enough for you to realize there are others around you, watching you, maybe asking you to pardon them with their fatigued eyes. In the city, I don’t think. I just keep walking because this is my dream and it is the kind of dream where there is no break, no stopping point. It’s a constant breeze, a constant battle with the self, constantly recreating itself.
If I think really hard, I can describe something concrete. The building I live in: it’s brown and not very elegant. There is nothing smooth about it, nothing that makes it home-like from the outside. The elevator sometimes smells like trash. The ceilings look as if they could break and having water running down. There is a smell of antiquity everywhere, in the narrow, poorly lit hallways. Inside, however, is where home is. Inside is where I have made sense out of New York and how I am in it. It is where I have organized thoughts, on my desk, the pictures I’ve put up of family and close friends. The people I live with make me happy. They make me want to share my life. We drink together, sometimes unplanned. We get up early or sleep a little longer than the next person. We say cheers. We share bread and eggs sometimes. We make weird food and compare. We buy protein bars and wonder if they are really good for us. We close the shades. We take out the trash. We live together, and continue with our own habits as if nothing has changed. We say good morning and hope we have a good day. We fall asleep on the couch. We laugh. We watch great television shows. We watch dumb things. We talk intelligently and then we mock ourselves. We are sarcastic.
This is home. This is the constant moving of things, of people, of thoughts against a very loud city that doesn’t tire down, that demands of you to stay awake, that begs for you to love life, fall in love, lust after things, be needy, but independent, a great lover and a caring friend. And you do all these things because you don’t know any better and because this is after all, a dream, a good dream, where you are at peace with yourself.

New York air makes me want to take a deep breath and hold myself still so I can capture it all into my body. In yoga today, I let go. I let go of my stress. I went into the downward dog pose and child pose and hugged my knees at the very end. I let go, or so I thought. I cried and the tears mixed with sweat.
I need more time. I need more time to finish things. I need time to write. I need time to describe things, to reassess them, to break them a part for further examination.
New York is exhausting. It is demanding and time-consuming and loud. It gives me a hard time. It gives me a good time. It makes me feel fantastic. It makes me feel like shit. It makes me feel high. It makes me feel like a failure. It makes me feel sexy. It makes me feel used.
This yoga instructor has lit candles. The windows are closed. There is no air. Bodies are inches a part; everyone’s breath is on my shoulders. Breathe in, take it all in, then exhale and let go. Do what feels good for you. Smile. Smile and thank your body for getting you here.
I thank my body. I drift into oblivion for a mili second, then I am back into the abyss in which all my nightmares come to life. The bad dreams that wake me up and make me cry, the fears that take hold of me, the rotten guilt that turns into knots at the pit of my belly.
I ask for my mind to let go, but it doesn’t. Yoga ends. I roll up the mat. I put my shoes back on. I head out on St. Mark’s street, into faces I have not seen before. I hop on the train. I think. I get off to buy groceries. I think about the money I spent. I hop back on the train. I watch my feet and the bags of groceries. I get home. It’s cozy and warm.
This is a cycle I like. This is a cycle that may need more time to get used to. This is my life going onto its next chapter.

Everybody is scared of being alone in the city. There is always that sparkling energy and nervousness of constantly wanting to meet others. There is that need to be loved. A need for connection, for intimacy and friendship. Everybody’s alone, including you and I.
As I walk through the crowd, wherever I am, wherever I am going, I try to hold my head up. I am not weak, I remind myself. I made my way here. I am walking here. I belong here. And then I think of all the places people leave behind because they have to, not because they choose to. I think of the ones who are in places where they are miserable and sad, where they are not welcomed, where they are only trying to survive. I think of Maman and Baba, their journey to America, their love, their sacrifice. Baba used to always say he would never go back to Tehran because he hated living there. I never believed him.
I know a part of him must miss something. He has happy memories too, like the trips he used to take as a young man, and how he and his friends ate kabobs with butter and egg. That was his home. He must have some of its parts still within him.
I think of Daddy as I walk through the busy streets of Manhattan. I think of how he brought me here, how he raised his children, how he was always content, always humble, always grateful. He was proud of me. I just knew he was proud when he hugged me and said I would do great things.
I think of Daddy. When I am alone in the midst of the crowd, lost and happy in my thoughts, I think of him and push myself forward.

I breathe in New York City again as a lover. I walk down town as a dreamer who’s been awoken. I talk to New York as a believer. I take the New York subway as one who’s got a destination. This is home baby. This is home.
I popped in my seat and the cab driver cursed the driver in front of him for not helping his customer, a young girl with luggage, like myself. “That’s just rude, you know?” he said to me with an accent I didn’t recognize. “Yes. Thank you for helping me.” I wanted to make sure he knew I appreciated that he didn’t leave me stranded on the side of Penn Station, awkwardly managing two suitcases, a laptop bag and a purse. When he dropped me off in front of my dorm apartment, he got out of his car and handed me my bags from the trunk. I gave him a five dollar bill and thanked him.
I was home again, back on Lafayette street and China Town. My apartment smelled new. It was bigger, high ceilings and large windows in the kitchen. I was happy. I was going to have a big smile on my face. That night, Becca and I raised our glasses to our New York, our beautiful lover. It was going to be a sweet love-affair.

Gravity pulls you down in this city. Every inch of you, every lasting breath, every forward step is like a journey in time. Backwards, forwards, inwards, outwards. Your body adjusts its pace to the beat of the person whose shoes touch yours for a split second. Your feet adjust to a rhythm your body creates as you step on the train and wonder if you are going in the right direction.
Home. Is it where you belong or where you are told you belong, or a place in your dreams?
Imagine yourself on the run. Imagine that you grew up in Tehran, in a city unforgiving of your libertine desires, where women are pretty dolls who speak with their eyes and hide smiles on their pretty pink lips. A city that speaks fast and honks in loud outbursts. A city that forbids your Western thoughts, your public displays of affection, your dreams of writing, your ideas of sex. Tehran, the home of a child, the story of childhood that ends abruptly, so much that when you are 21 and thinking back, it is no longer really home. After you’ve left, and moved on, and built on your idea of home, of yourself and of your work of art, the Tehran you knew is just a thought in your veins.
You don’t know where you belong. Last spring, you walked the streets of Madrid, surrounded by Spaniards, by boys with Mohawks and women in fashionable boots and old ladies in fur coats. You walked until you got tired and sat at a café. You ordered a café con leche and said gracias and because you had dark hair, they thought you were one of them. At night, men called you guapa as you flew past them and Juanes sang in your ears. You ate dinner at senora’s and talked of that Tehran again. You almost wanted to call it home, but you stopped mid-sentence, trying to remember the color of your room. You also remembered that the apartment you’d lived in for 11 years was sold a couple of years ago and when your brother told you on the phone, you cried with your sister in your American living room. After you’ve left, and moved on, and built on your idea of home, of yourself and your work of art, the Madrid you knew is just a thought in your veins.
Today, you are walking Manhattan, looking to belong. Do you belong underneath the lights of the city, in the streets where you encounter walkers and dreamers and drifters who don’t know which street to take? In the subway, you look at faces, the often tired, sleep-deprived eyes of women who are covered in stress and fatigue. You look at the homeless who ask for your kindness, for you to spare a dime and there is maybe one woman who might spare a dime as everyone else pretends he is not there. No one has a home, not even those who stand with their briefcases, or those who read silently. No one has a home; everyone is on the move.
No one has time. Everyone is running to catch the next train because the next train will get you there — to home, to your lover, to your friend, to the meeting that will mark your career, to your mother who still loves you, to your sister with a broken heart, to your daughter with high hopes. The train will get you there. And you have no time to spare for the man without a home, the man who doesn’t run, the man who doesn’t fly.
Here in the city, people fly. You can’t even stop to look at signs. You have learned to watch for them before you get too close so you don’t stop in the middle and have fifty feet run you over or worse fifty eyes curse you out. You feel like you are flying as the wind inside the station propels you forward and you no longer fall behind. You walk fast, faster to reach home.
As you wait for the train, you notice mice in the tracks. There are cigarette buds and pencils and scraps of paper. There are a tiny million pieces of memories and diaries inside the tracks and as the train approaches, as the doors open and close, you move on, forward, onward into the next. And you wonder where home is.
The faces change, their smiles fade and fall, their lips pursed, their eyes afar. They are all thinking of home as you think about where you will go next. You are running all the time in your head to newer places. You call it experience and learning. Your mother calls it insane. You call it dreaming. Your inner self calls it running away. Away from weakness, and doubt, and uncertainty, and the emptiness of being. You still don’t know what home is. Maybe it was once that city of childhood. And today it is a different one everyday and maybe you will always be somewhere foreign, somewhere you blend in without belonging, without being asked, “Where are you really from, where was your home?”
For now, you run after subways. You speak three languages in your head as you think of khoone, home, casa and neither one makes sense. You absorb cultures and there are always things you won’t have the answers to. So you run. You get on the train, get on with it, and move on and keep moving, all the time thinking of something resembling home.

I wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and as I walk down the stairs, Daddy says good morning. My sister has already set up the table on the porch. There are glasses of orange juice and cups of coffee for everyone. She asks me to bring the basket of bread as I make my way to the kitchen, my eyes still half-closed. She has on a pretty necklace and her short hair is tied behind her head. I smile at her and she returns the smile, asking me again if I could please bring plates.
What I love about summer in Fairfax are mornings in our house on Cedar Lane and our long breakfasts of organic produces and whole wheat breads. If there is one thing my family doesn’t complain about, it is the porch and the view of the yard, the apple trees that grow bigger everyday. The way my mother willingly pays our gardener to make it perfect: cut grass and excess branches. She loves the greenery more than the house itself. Daddy, the quietest out of everyone, tells Mom to appreciate it when she complains about the tedious tasks of keeping a house. She frowns and says she does. We try to believe her.
I also love the smell of candles on summer nights when my sister gets into that special mood. It’s a mood we’ve all learned to go along with; it comes with candles, silence and serenity. We find it soothing. I pick up on her habit and she always asks, “who lit the candles?” her eyes glittering. I am not sure I get the same mood, but I’ve learned to love the candles the same I became an avid coffee lover. Maybe I like loving what she does; it fills the 14-year gap between us.
Summer nights have a certain degree of sadness, especially after a rainy day. If the candles are lit, the pot of coffee still on, and the door left open, there is always that air of nostalgia that lingers. Maybe I am the only person who feels nostalgia so easily and so often. I am used to it, used to the sound of it, the smell of it, and yet I get sad. I go to sleep, trying to fight the sadness, but all my body wants to do is hold on to it.
When I leave, summer ends and Cedar becomes something else.

I am not okay. Last week I accompanied my father to his doctor. The doctor was concerned with my father’s weight loss. I sat on a chair next to the doctor, and translated the things that Daddy had trouble explaining in English. For the first time, I realized how little he understood of what the doctor was telling him. And there in that room, my Daddy was another man. He was an aging man, bony without his shirt on, his body covered in surgery scars. I was almost afraid to look at him. I thought if I looked, he would disappear right then and there. And what I would be?
I am not okay with him getting weak and me moving away, as if running away from this horrifying reality. I am not okay leaving my mother watching over him and worrying. Today, Mom told me that he saw Daddy cry over some disturbing news about Iran. I have never really seen him cry, and I don’t think Mom has either.
I am scared to leave them.
I am not okay.

I worry about him. I worry that he is lost in the chaos, that he has given up hope, that he is alone. I worry that his wife is caught in the same turmoil his mother was twenty some years ago. He works outside of Tehran, away from the immediate conflict. But his mind remains tormented. He has too many memories. His mother left him at a very young age and he is sensitive to this kind of trauma.
I worry for him as mother tries to dial his cell. He has been broken too many times and it is as though the revolution continues, after more than twenty years, it still goes on.

I am running in the woods, towards a clear blue sky, surrounded by trees. I am running, my friend following beside me. Today could be a good day. It could be a calm Monday morning, full of vibe, life, and sweetness. But as I run, my thoughts divert to the bloodshed that happened over the weekend in the streets of Tehran, the blood that continues to boil, the faces that continue to scream for freedom. Neda’s face haunts me, her shocked eyes, her open red mouth. Her eyes haunt me, and I am unable to comprehend the terror, the disbelief over what has happened to my people.
If I were there, if I were home, I would be in the streets with them. If I were there, I would be asking for my rights, for my freedom, for the rights of my people, for the rights of women.
I am screaming. I am hopelessly running towards a clear blue sky, unable to believe in what little power these words hold.