"The quick version of this story is useless. Let's agree to have a complicated conversation. If you give me your attention-- I know it's valuable-- I promise I won't waste it with some 'poor me' tale of immigrant woe.
I don't want your pity.
I don't want your pity.
If we can just rise to the challenge of communication-- here in the parlor of your mind-- we can maybe reach across time and space and every ordinary thing to see so deep into the heart of each other that you might agree that I am like you.
I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I pick my nose. I don't know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don't know what anybody wants from me.
But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw.
Like you, I want a friend." (15-16)
"This is a memory that has no sound, but probably it should have my Baba's laugh, which was such a rich and resonant chortle that it fills rooms of my memory that he was not even in." (31)
"Memories are tricky things.
They can fade or fester.
You have to seal them up tight like pickles and keep out impurities like how hurt you feel when you open them. Or they'll ferment and poison your brain." (92)
"At church potlucks they play a secret game of dumping random cans of food in casserole dishes and pretending their grandmothers gave them the recipe. Jell-O is their favorite. Campbell's mushroom Jell-O goes on everything. So does Veveeta, which is a cheese Jell-O that only sort of hardens." (96)
"There is an American filmmaker named Orson Welles who said, 'If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." And Doctor Hamond (Pastor, not a doctor) says, 'It'll be alright in the end, folks. If it's not alright, then it's not the end,' which means Doctor Hamond thinks the world is going to end at his birthday party." (105)
"Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn't crumble.
Making anything assumes there's a world worth making it for. That you'll have someplace, like a clown's pants, to hide it when people come to take it away.
I guess I'm saying making something is a hopeful thing to do.
And being hopeful in a world of pain is either brave or crazy." (121-122)
"It's always the same story but it happens a thousand different ways." (137)
"A patchwork memory is the shame of a refugee." (185)
"The legend of my mom is that she can't be stopped. Now when you hit her. Not when a whole country full of goons puts her in a cage. Not even if you make her poor and try to kill her slowly in the little-by-little poison of sadness.
And the legend is true.
I think because she fixed her eyes on something beyond the rivers of blood, to a beautiful place on the other side.
How else would anybody do it?" (214)
"Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you've never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it's a loving thing to do.
You speak someone else's words to yourself, and hear them for the first time." (333)
***
Daniel Nayeri, you have written a book that sears to the very soul, that made me cry, laugh, and love you just as you invited me to do. I am in awe that this entire book is as welcoming and hospitable as if you had invited me into your home, as if your heart were an Iranian home itself, one which allowed me to come in and sit on your beautiful Persian rug and eat all of the best food. The entire book is an offering like that, of welcoming, warmth, and hope. And it's absolutely beautiful. Thank you for sharing and having the courage to bring the light of words to your experiences and memories. 5/5!
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