Exile

Abbas Milani an Iranian writer and an expert in history of Iran, in Lost wisdom: Rethinking modernity in Iran --a collection of essays, says Exile is when you live in one land and dream in another. When I was living back home in Iran, I had this sense of not belonging to that land for many reasons. I was dreaming in an imaginary land, and according to Milani's beautiful definition of exile, I was in exile when I was living in my mother land. I was constantly seeing myself living somewhere else and since my late teen age years I began considering my life in Iran as a temporary state of being and mind. Over every plan of my life there was this shadow of leaving the country, but never knew where to. Years passed by and I lived life the way it dictated me, I began settling down without losing the dream of the unknown land. Then I migrated to Canada. For first couple of years I was preoccupied with adjusting to the new life style. I was exploring and exploring. I had no time to dream. Then the reality of north-American life style started to bite. The financial obligations, the tight grasp of financial institutes and giant corporations on people's personal lives, the fear of instability in job market, barrier of language and many other things. You dream when you lack something or when you mind the reality. So I started to dream again but in a different way. I felt being home in Canada; yet not feeling quite accepted and welcomed by her. Now after seven years I've noticed that the dream has changed in a bizarre way. It doesn't occur in any land, it's free of any geographic sense. Even in my nightly dreams, most of the time, I can't identify the places of my dreams or nightmares. They are mostly formed by personages and the interaction between them. It feels like I am not in exile anymore, not because I have settled down in Canada, but because I've lost my utopia or I have lost the land of my dreams.