Quinn > Recent Status Updates

‘Any war that long becomes victorious by virtue of simply ending, has no winners or losers only what’s left, what could survive so much war is made more than war by virtue of surviving it.’

…we post and click links and like and don’t like and repost and then, and then it’s like it didn’t happen, we move on, the next thing comes. We get used to everything to the point that we even get used to getting used to everything.’

‘No not us that happens to them, the people on the other side of the screen, the victims, their families we don’t know those people, we don’t even know people who know those people. We’re once and twice removed from most of what we see on the other side of the screen… we watch and feel the horror, the unbelievable act for a day, for two whole days, for a week.

‘Does what we try most to avoid come after us because we paid too much attention to it with our worry?’

‘I like it though because when I do get it, I get it way down at that place where it hurts but feels better because you feel it, something you couldn’t feel before reading it, that makes you feel less alone, and like it’s not gonna hurt as much anymore.’

‘The court decided I was an honourable woman. Now I had learnt that honour required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one’s honour. An infernal circle whirling round and round, dragging me up and down with it.’

‘Do you prefer oranges or tangerines?’ ‘I tried to reply but my voice failed me. No one had asked me before whether I preferred oranges or tangerines. My father never bought us fruit. My uncle and my husband used to buy it without asking me what I preferred. As a matter of fact, I myself had never thought whether I preferred oranges to tangerines, or tangerines to oranges.’

‘My body bent down and sat on the ground. Or was January and the ground was bare, but I felt no cold. Like walking in one’s sleep. The ground under me was cold…. Yet the cold did not touch me, did not reach me. It was the cold of the sea in a dream. I swam through its waters. I was naked and knew not how to swim. But I neither felt its cold nor drowned in its waters.’

Though I still yearn for “home”, I no longer think of it as a place out there, to go on. It now resides in me, a “feeling at home” inside of me that I try to cultivate every day, that I can take with me whenever I need to go.

‘The price for escaping the ever threatening potential of being reduced, under the glare of the sovereign power of the host country, to a mere biological fact of life, is a tireless pursuit of exceptionalism. It is an implicit understanding that only through this exceptionalism can one “earn” one’s place in the new society, earn one’s right to the humanity which for those in their proper place is normal.’

.. and we set up ugly little lives around the corner, marring your view. If we need a lot of help and local services, if your taxes rise and your street begins to look and feel strange and everything smells like turmeric and tamarind paste and your fav shop is replaced by a halal butcher... and even if, after all that, we don't spend the rest of our days in grateful ecstasy, atoning for our need.'

'What America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we dont give you sugary success stories. Even if we remain a bunch of ordinary Iranians, sometimes bitter or confused. Even if the country gets overcrowded and you have to give up your luxuries...

...to endorse this same gratitude politics? Isn't it akin to holding up the most acquiescent as examples of what a refugee should be, instead of offering each person the same options that are granted to the native-born citizen? Is the life of the happy mediocrity a privilege reserved for those who never stray from home?'

'Even those on the left talk about how immigrants make America great. They point to photos of happy refugees turned good citizens, listing their contributions, as if that is the price of existing in the same country, on the same earth. As if that's proof that letting in refugees has a good, healthy return on investment. But isn't glorifying the refugees who thrive according to Western standards just another way....

‘Sometimes all that’s left of value in an exiles life is his identity. Please stop asking people to rub out their face as tribute.’

‘From then on, we sensed the ongoing expectation that we would shed our old skin, give up our former identities - every quirk and desire that made us us - and that we would imply at every opportunity that America was better, that we were so lucky, so humbled to be here.’

… if we had any photos of the Captain Sea. “Men treat women horribly there, don’t they?” The women would ask. Somehow it didn’t feel OK to tell them about my funny dad with his pockets full of sour cherries or my grandpa who removed his false teeth when he told ghost stories. Such memories would imply the unthinkable: that Iran was as beautiful as fun as energizing and romantic as Oklahoma or Montana or NY

‘The problem of course was that they wanted our story as a talisman, no more. No one ever asked what our house in Iran looked like, what fruits we grew in our yard, what books we read, what music we loved, and what it felt like now not to understand any of the songs on the radio. No one asked if we missed our cousins or grandparents or best friends. No one asked what we did in summers or…