Liser19

“Remember, be a good person, not a good girl. Good girls suffer a lot in this life.”
― Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, A Girl Is a Body of Water

“Iranians don’t like solitude or silence (any noise other than the human voice, even the blaring horns of a traffic jam, is considered silence). If Robinson Crusoe had been Iranian, he would have let himself die the minute he got to the island, and the story would have been over.”
― Négar Djavadi, Disoriental

“Oh, there are transsexuals in Iran?” they exclaim, in the same disconcerted tone as if they’d just learned that a nude beach was being established in the Vatican. Because they don’t get that, in our culture, the important thing is to be something; to fall into one category or another, and follow its rules. Transsexuality exists because there is something worse than being transsexual, and that’s being homosexual. That’s not shameful. Shameful is losing your virginity before marriage, or having an abortion, or staying an old maid and living with your parents until they die. Shameful is being a drug addict or having an affair or raising children who then turn their backs on you. No, being gay isn’t shameful. It’s impossible. A non-reality.”
― Négar Djavadi, Disoriental

“I have become—as I’m sure everyone does who has left his or her country—someone else. Someone who has translated myself into other cultural codes. Firstly in order to survive, and then to go beyond survival and forge a future for myself. And since it is a generally acknowledged idea that something is lost in translation, it should come as no surprise that we unlearn—at least partially—what we used to be, to make room for what we have become.”
― Négar Djavadi, Disoriental