Homeland has different meanings for different people. For some, it may hold no meaning at all.
For me, beyond just geography—the soil, mountains, plains, deserts, forests, and seas—homeland carries many deeper meanings.
It is all the memories etched in my mind, heart, and soul from the moment I was born until now, linking my past, present, and future.
My homeland is childhood memories: walking to the market with my mother in Abadan, seeing the lottery ticket seller honestly calling out, “Buy a ticket, maybe you’ll win!”—“Two tomans a ticket, maybe you’ll win a hundred thousand!”
It’s the joyful games with children in the Sik Lin neighborhood of Abadan, where Armenians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Baháʼís, and Jews lived side by side. As kids, we never questioned each other’s faith; we were simply friends.
My homeland is where my parents and teachers taught me honesty and to shun lies. They said if I ever found even a tiny coin, I shouldn’t keep it but give it to a beggar. That was my homeland.
It’s where I first experienced schooling and the teacher’s cane in Nersiabad, Yazd. My mother and grandfather Ardeshir held my six-year-old hand and took me to the traditional school. They gave me a black slate, a piece of unsharpened chalk, and a rag for erasing. We sat on a mat learning Saadi’s Golestan, verses from the Quran, and the Persian alphabet. The pomegranate cane would strike my head when I was naughty, leaving me dazed. There, I learned to fear the teacher. That was my homeland. It was in that city I first understood that people are divided by religion: this one and that one.
My homeland is where, as a young child in Sik Lin, Abadan, my father bought me a half-metal, half-wooden tricycle. I loved riding it in the garden until one day my knee got caught in the wheel hinge and tore—it was a painful memory. My mother cared for me then, and even after seventy-two years, two thin white scars on my knee remain as reminders.
My homeland is the sound of my father’s bicycle bell when he returned from the market with colorful children’s magazines like Kayhan-e Bacheha and Etelaat-e Koodakan. My siblings and I would rush to grab them. Being older, I usually won—and that was my first lesson in how age brings advantage.
My homeland is where I encountered both good and bad teachers, learned some lessons, and sometimes forgot them. Much depended on how lessons were taught. From them, I gained a love for learning and for my homeland through the poetry of Ferdowsi and Hafez. It’s where I first heard the phrase: “If there is no Iran, may my body not exist.”
My homeland is where I first played barefoot or in cheap rubber shoes with neighborhood kids on hot, humid evenings. Later, in high school, I proudly wore imported sports shoes costing twenty tomans, a luxury many kids didn’t have. It’s where I realized that some children had shoes and others did not.
For me, homeland is the place where, still half-asleep, you travel by old Leyland buses at dawn through the villages around Yazd. The scent of wheat fields and freshly watered orchards fills the air, enchanting you—and even now, whenever I return to Yazd, I search for that familiar fragrance.
It’s where, years later, an Iranian singer sang about the smell of wheat and earth, bringing those memories back.
Homeland is where you first leave your birthplace to move to another city or town within the country, starting a new life with new classmates, neighbors, and cultures you had never known. In Tehran, I first experienced how varied and conflicting ideas can be, and how people struggle to accept one another.
Homeland is where you first fall in love—once as a teenager in Abadan, then a few more times in your youth in Tehran. Losing that love, with all its dreams, becomes harder each time, until finally, you decide not to fall in love anymore.
Homeland is where you’ve worked hard for years, taught younger generations, built or bought your first home, started a family, and raised children. It’s where you and your partner find shelter, a job, some freedom, security, health, and hope for the future—a place filled with peace and friendship.
Homeland is love, kindness, and friendship. It was the tea boy from Yazd who, during grape season, brought us crates of black grapes to soak in the jar, saying, “If you want more, just ask.” Homeland was the friends I made from Abadan to Tehran and Yazd—some as refreshing as flowing water, others as rich as a garden of wisdom. Friends who never questioned your faith and always shared their bread. That friendship still lives on.
I still dream of returning to my homeland one day, to spend my final days peacefully in Yazd and begin my eternal journey there. It doesn’t matter if my body is burned, placed on a mountain, or buried in the earth—the important thing is that before leaving this world of sorrow, I am surrounded by peace, friendship, and comfort, feeling the happiness of the people deeply.
But homeland was also where we became familiar with oppression, lack of freedom, lawlessness, and cruelty. Unfortunately, we grew up with these from childhood. We witnessed the first dictatorship at home, experienced beatings from our own parents—not strangers. Later, the same harshness appeared in school and society. From past and present rulers, we saw only tyranny and abuse of power—even watching as those claiming to defend people’s rights plundered the country’s resources. I don’t know what kind of homeland this was or is. Sadly, our story is not unique.
Though we now have a home here—small though it may be—with a little garden, colorful flowers, and rainy skies, and our days aren’t so bad, having more than just bread to eat and clean water to drink—this place, in the end, is not truly our homeland. Homeland is where the roots of your life, with all its struggles, are firmly planted. Our homeland is where war, hatred, theft, lies, and enmity have not uprooted those roots.
One can have a homeland without the scent of wet wheat or rain-soaked hair, as long as those roots remain intact and are not destroyed by deceit, hatred, or lack of freedom. Homeland is a place of truth, friendship, work, effort, and life. Wherever these exist, that is homeland—if only it were always so.
Dariush Mehrshahi
Sunday, 29 June 2025
Sheffield, England
