Land of “ No Landers”



Let me breathe. Let me just hold on to my rest of energy and try to grasp another piece of this thin air.

How do I feel? Perhaps weightless. I feel as if my body is empty, as if no flash is left between my bones. I can totally see that this emptiness is dragging me inside. It is like a hole, like a black hole, so dark and so powerful. I cannot resist it. My whole mass is changing, is transforming. Am I changing to energy?

Alas, I know the answer. For sure I am not changing to energy. I am not changing to the beautiful state of no boundaries and no gates. I have to carry the mass even though I feel empty. The people see the mass, they feel it, and they ask me for identification.

I have carried this emptiness of this mass with myself, inside my heart, within the flame of my eyes like a secret hidden in my chest all this time. Ever since my feet touched this land.

Now my gradual transformation to emptiness is stronger than any moment of my life.

With a brain full of learning, experiences and a heart of adventures I have been through, I am being devastated of my unique identity as a human being each single second.

In my mailbox lies another petition, another new act: “NO Visas for Iranians - Phone Campaign against it on THURSDAY ”. On my desk among those pile of papers for my work, there are print outs of news and e-mails I have received. The unbelievable, bitter, shocking yet true story is drowning me, you and us with itself like the legendary titanic. My eyes capture it again:”

“Washington DC, October 8, 2002.

Representative George Gekas (R-PA) has introduced immigration legislation that

Would ban all visas to Iranians (except diplomatic visas). The legislation,

Securing America’s Future through Enforcement Reform (SAFER) Act of 2002, H.R.

5013. It will prohibit visas to all Iranian nationals or residents.

The bill reduces legal immigration by eliminating several categories of persons eligible for green cards based on their relationship to a U.S. citizen or green card holder….”

All those lengthy words and phrases, these laws and complicated reasoning translate so easily in my mind:

They do not want you, Persian kitten! You do not want to go back to your motherland with all due respect and love. So, where do you belong to finally in this world? Ha? A cat with no shelter?

My sad, little brown eyes lift from the piles around me and looks inside the raw silicon die (my technological mirror) on the wall. I see a vagabond of no land in them.

I am reaching the point of not belonging to any land. But instead of the great feeling of independence inside my veins, I feel like” renard” (fox) in “ le petit prince” (the little prince). Belonging to a land is like being tamed( d’etre apprivosie’) . It is hard to satisfy a master to tame you but seems that I will like it better than none.

I whisper: “ Apprivoise-moi!, Tame me , I am a brilliant technological worker. I come to you, learn your rules and work like a mule for you day and night. I will forget the color of stars and the warmth of the sun inside the cubicle that you put me in. Just give me a land to belong to, to settle in, to feel like buying my dream home. Call me into your arms, me, lady of no land!”

I look at the intangible windows beyond the walls surrounding me and I see you. I am not alone. You are with me. Anybody who leaves his footsteps on sands of that blue pearl: Caspian Sea and steps down the airplane in any single one of the “United States” to study, to live and to build that palace of hidden dreams knows what I mean.

In these moments of weightlessness you are with me, believe it or not. You, who are getting a second Masters, a third PhD, you who send resumes non stop like a robot to this and that employer, me who follows each INS news like a psycho, all to tighten a rope to this land, to show that we belong to it, yes, you. You are with me!

We all feel this, this metamorphoses or no landedeness, sooner or later. We cannot live in our land evidently as we left it beyond. We cannot live here obviously as the owners do not want it. So, join me, you another creature of no landedness era. Can’t you see the bright future of building our home sweet home in the land of no landedness only if we ever get together?



Katayoon Hadizadeh

9th October 2002

Los Angeles