Thread by @ShamsWriter

'Why did I feel such nostalgia for days neither lived nor seen? I held onto the memories of others in the mistaken belief that if things went back to how they were before the revolution, I would be accepted.'

From @Swarthy_Bastard

bit.ly/ShervinM 1/

Such a brilliant piece from my twitter friend @Swarthy_Bastard. So many gems and bits peeling back the onion into my own experience as the son of an immigrant from Iran. 2/

We want to remember, but also forget. But what happens when we're never allowed to forget? When our status, our very presence is a constant reminder of the tensions that brought/kept us here in the first place. @Swarthy_Bastard 3/

Will we ever be allowed to be just American? Will we be allowed to remember without having that hyphen ever present? Will that tension between both nations we call home spill over into something far more dangerous? What happens to us then? @Swarthy_Bastard 4/

I remember my own childhood and how I imagined Iran. It's one, primarily comprised of the black and white photos my dad has in ancient picture albums. The Iran in my head was always the Iran my dad left in 1964 and only changed as I got older and studied Iran for myself. 5/

I thought that Iran, the Iran of my dad's memories, would somehow be attainable. Letting that go hasn't been easy. Understanding that I'll never get to experience Iran as my dad did is part of the experience of growing up Iranian-American. 6/ @nedasoc

Maybe that's where part of my exhaustion comes from...the constant struggle to imagine myself in a place then realize that it never existed for me to experience. And to know that my life will be defined by an event several years before I was born.

@WhiteAdjacent 7/

Do I even want to let that hyphen go, though? Should I try to forget? Should I let the memories from those photos of my father and his buddies on Mt. Damavand disappear in an effort to be American? 8/

Part of the American experience, experiment really, is that like @Swarthy_Bastard says in the piece I shared above. We're all here from somewhere else. We all arrived with nostalgia and memories of another place. And that in part is what makes us American. 9/

It's made all the more difficult knowing that it was so easy to experience the culture from my mom's side. I touched it every day, every holiday, every Thanksgiving and Christmas. 10/

While my dad's was always an imaginary far off world from b/w photos and only visible through the random moments when his family or college buddies visited. Persian was spoken loudly and only by the old men. But even their memories were black and white. 11/ @nedasoc

I'm not sure where this was meant to go, to be honest. I guess @Swarthy_Bastard tapped into some unexplored vein within my own experience. It's probably wise if I spent a little more time with this actually. 12/