There’s an old photo of my dad in an Iranian village. He is young and sitting on a poor donkey in lieu of a horse, in lieu of a stallion, enacting his childhood dreams of being a cowboy. With the donkey’s eyes gazing blankly off camera, my dad’s feet positioned too close to the ground, and his hands tightly holding the reins, it makes for a funny image. To me it says: almost.
I think of this image as I read books on Iran’s history for my thesis. It is more difficult than enjoyable, but the work feels important. I feel some form of longing mounting, the need to know where I come from, to which place I am anchored to, if not here. I am trying to see who I am in the context of a history that is both personal and cultural. I am weighing up possibilities. I am looking at windows ajar and wondering how my body could fit through if I twist in certain ways.
But in everything, I come up short. I find myself inseparable from the voices of others, things heard and seen, and yet there are aspects of my identity that seem to not have any place to go home to. There is no through-line they can safely travel across, no point that they stop webbing or cutting off completely. Again, the word returns: almost.
The photo of my dad was found in a major clearing out of the spare room, my old room, the place where there is so much to empty. For two days, everything poured out, unending, lining the hallway in stacks the dog was shooed away from. As the items multiplied, belonging was assigned to each through the weakest connections. A painting I mentioned liking ended up in my room; a pair of sunglasses I wore once; some shoes. Rogue papers found themselves on someone’s dresser, socks to someone else’s drawers. And with this, the insignificant became personal. In ownership, space was made, and things went on.
I sat in my room, reading, as more and more items trickled in. A shirt, a belt. A cardboard box full of wires. In between the pages of Iranian lore, these small stories unfolded around me. And so, I realised, history is this: ownership. Just constant conquests, over and over, the overlapping of voices calling for something to be theirs. But here I don’t understand, how could anyone be so sure? How could the story ever be so clear?
I know what to do with my brown eyes, my thin fingers. I know from who they come from, and to who they now belong. When I see my mother, something animal knows we are tied, and when I eat food familiar to my tastes, and sink into my bed at night, the pulse is there: mine mine mine. But then things empty out, in my writing, in my speech, and I’m unsure of who they could belong to, how they could possibly be mine and mine alone. They sit around me unclaimed, suspended in that air of estrangement that threatens to morph into insignificance.
I think of a Lorrie Moore quote, one about creating the self out of nothing, out of thin air, and I shudder. Because I expect it to feel like freedom, but it feels more like an abyss.
Do these facts change when parts of me are shared? Am I really passing anything on? I’m not sure. I feel less that the load is really lightened, and more that I am just showing, in small ways, how heavy it can be to carry.
I hold the photo of my dad on the donkey close to me. I consider pinning it on my wall. I see it: the figure of the cowboy. For some moments, I share his vision, the wish for the saddle, the stallion. A horizon that mimics the shape of one’s hands. The clicking of a tongue, a thwack on the roof of the mouth. An openness, a chosen exile. A brown cowboy, donning the clothes of the other. Looking outwards, inwards, wild and unafraid. I imagine: a heel click, a whistle, that tongue in another language, singing loud, mine mine mine.
Oh this one made me all teary-eyed.. I know this feeling all too well and it's something very abstract and indescribable for me. It's so incredible how you define it so closely to what it is!! I love your understanding of ownership here. It really does feel like a desperate attempt to me and you captured it perfectly with your writing. Makes me wonder how we'll see things and others' memories as time progresses