One of my earliest memories was of my mother, warm fingers grasping my tiny hand
as we crossed the road. A flash of colour, and fabric was floating down the street in an
odd dance: lift and tilt, lift and tilt. The wind’s mischievous finger had unwound my
mother’s veil from her head, and the Iranian morality police were on us in an instant.
I remember bouncing into a dusty castle in Oman alongside my schoolmates, too
young to keep still, as I explored rooms with old chests and carvings on the ceilings. I
crouched by a hole in the wall that made for a window, playing pretend by peering out
as if I were some Arabian princess of a bygone age.
As I did my homework every day, I could hear the sounds of the Salat al-zuhr from
the white-domed mosque nearby. I frequented bazaars and shopping malls where
women dressed in burkas and men in thawbs, and where the distinct smell of the Oud
perfume flooded the hallways.
A few years later, I would run in an entirely new land, one where I would climb trees
and search for dandelions and dare to stand a few feet away from kangaroos in the
wild. I would wake to the kookaburra’ laughter, analogous as ever to the free-
spiritedness of then, a time where I would build sand castles and sneak into tree
houses without a thought.
And yet, not long after, I was back in the country where I had spent my earliest years,
its name stamped across my passport. At my international school, Thai culture and
language reigned supreme amongst the students. I struggled to make sense of words I
was now hearing on a daily basis, to mould my tongue into odd shapes; to speak in a
language I had only ever associated with domestic settings.
Having places you had called ‘home’ for a while be whisked away from you as you
were transported elsewhere meant that ‘home’ was never a place for me. It meant that
I had no one identity. Home was a feeling, and I was a kaleidoscope of memories; of
different cultures and political systems; of histories, of identities. I experienced the
raw beauty in being alive. My eyes opened to the role of the human will in creation
and destruction, and to the respect that differences are owed. It shaped me inexorably
into a global citizen who is fuelled by the desire to make a positive change in the
world.
For what I have come to realise is this – we are mosaics. We are the pink and blue and
green of Iran’s Pink Mosque. We are the inquisitive child’s voice in our head, like my
‘why did he have to die, dad?’ prompted by a depiction of the crucifixion of Christ.
We are an eclectic mix of identities – pieces of things we’ve seen and people we’ve
been and spaces we’ve occupied. We are made of all that has gone before.
