Paradox of Place
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A superposition of longing, estrangement, memory and erasure shapes Namazie’s emotional and paradoxical view of homeland. Homeland is described as an ever-shifting entity in A Place Called Persia, and it is seen as “alive and unknowable and intangible.”
This perspective challenges the conventional understanding of homeland not only as a physical space but also as something that includes emotional and ethnic ties. Instead, we are invited by Namazie to imagine the homeland as a repository of feeling and a vessel for identity that persists even in displacement.
Reading Namazie reminds me of Edward Said’s thoughts about exile where he says it is “strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience” and like Said, Namazie shows the bittersweet duality of exile with a deep yearning for a place changed by time and distance and the realization that true return is impossible. It is taught by both authors that the homeland is not simply a destination but also a creation and an act of remembering and reimagining. She reminds us that our relationship to homeland is shaped as much by what we remember as by what we forget.