Nipple seeking
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Though Iranian-American, Bahman's experience studying abroad in Jordan fulfilled a sense of a return to home aided by familiar Islamic imagery, landscapes, and soundscapes, reminders that he and his family would have ordinarily rejected and associated with the home they spurned. He expresses the catharsis of finally being able to align with the majority, where your cultural background does not have to be explained because it is the standard, where you are not immediately identified as an other. I remember feeling a similar catharsis traveling to Japan. Though it was not my country of origin, being surrounded by foods and cultural symbols that felt close enough to what I grew up with and people who looked like me made me feel a sense of effortless belonging that I'd never experienced in any Western country. But this catharsis was also founded on a superficial basis, and I remember my grandma, having experienced the cruelties of the Japanese occupation, criticized us for visiting and giving money to Japan. The historical and racial contexts of these two personal experiences are wildly different but just as many of the interviewed Iranian-Americans and their immigrant parents expressed disdain for the Iranian/Islamic homeland, what is revealed is that the diasporic individual is inherently hypocritical and forever confused. The longing for belonging/home is a valid impulse but baby want bottle so badly that they lose criticality, mistaking one boob for another!