What does it mean to be both East and West? I couldn’t think of a bold one-liner response, so I’ll try to elaborate my answer in paragraphs.
It wasn't until I returned from my last trip to Iran that I realised the weight that this question carried, for that trip had changed my perspective completely and has lead to many discussions with friends and family in a quest to find the answer. Alas, there is no one answer as we all have different relations with our heritage be it through our upbringing, our circumstances or our individual choice. But if there is one thing I learnt from hearing others’ perspectives on the issue it is that our collective Doganeh status has affected us in one way or another and as a result, we (dis)identify with it.
So, to go back to the question, it seems to me that growing up in the West has affected how I identify with my heritage in a funny way: at times I identified and dis-identified with it. This constant oscillation reached its climax more than a year ago, when I decided to go to Iran after fifteen years in order to ‘find my roots’. Yes, I realise now the proximity it brings me to having probably suffered from a case of ‘identity crisis’, but it is surely something others continue to go through as well, at least that’s what I hope.
Surrounded by both worlds, I always believed I could marry my Iranian and European identities and live in a constant flux. I was raised to embrace both cultures, the gharbi (Western) as well as the sharghi (Eastern). I saw no borders between my two cultures. However, racism did, and as I grew older it became harder to merge these two identities.
In more recent times, we speak of identity politics albeit with much unease. Some use it to polarise and ostracise, while others believe it to be important for opening up debate in the hopes of creating an inclusive society. In fact, even this debate is polarising in and of itself. Precisely this upsurge of identity politics revealed how imbalanced my relation to my cultural identities was. So, I embarked on this long overdue trip to find out if my multiple cultural identities could be reconciled and if I was indeed, “Iranian enough”.
I was not. I had not been prepared to expect to feel like a tourist at the same time as feeling like a local. Ironically, I feel more Iranian outside of Iran. Even though I left with an abundance of memories, the void that I felt prior to my travels was only half- filled with the love and abundance of family. The same feeling I had prior to my trip seeped up. Ironically, I felt a part of me was being suppressed yet again. It did not take me long to realise that what I had been doing all along was wrong. I was so invested in putting my Iranian identity on a pedestal that I had effectively suppressed my European identity. I had set myself up for failure.
Upon my return, it became clear that reconciling my cultural identities does not entail proving myself “Iranian enough” or “European enough”. Like a good cup of chai, I am a balanced blend. We are all perfect blends, no matter how we chose to identify with our cultural identities.
Ahou Koutchesfahani