Home again

I spent most of January in Iran, fleetingly meeting dozens and dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles, eating food enough to sustain a smaller family, and feeling lost and loved and absorbed in the vibrant, suffocating and stressful everyday that is the homeland of my parents.

It had been too long. I'm old enough now to be "aunt". I am old enough not to draw young boys all-to-forward attention anymore. I'm too old to pull off my head-dress at any given public occasion for pictures and protest alone (though I admittingly still do sometimes, and mostly out of vanity).
I don't think I've ever understood Iran as well as now. I don't think I've ever been so scared of it. Iran is a monstrous devouring thing, doing it's best to crush the opportunity and hopes of a young and struggling population, stuck between traditions they don't accept but still feel infused in, and a free foreign culture they keep accessing through media. It's an entire country plagued by split-personality syndrome, and I'm an Alice, concerned about loosing myself and my mind on the other side of the looking glass.