UAF Director Mardjan Seighali: 'It's all of us'

I have lived in the Netherlands for more than half my life: 

• I cycle to the Albert Heijn for a quick message   

• Prepare my favorite Persian dishes when friends come over for dinner,   
• Read a poem daily from one of the collections in my bookcase: Willem Wilmink, Hafez, Leo Vroman and Ahmad Shamlou   
• When my son's team plays I stand by the hockey field to shout the men forward,   
• And when my husband puts his ladder against the tree, I take the buckets of ripe figs. 

I am it all.

I lived in Iran for 26 years, fled because I couldn't be who I am there, and continued living in the Netherlands, where I can. Perhaps you saw me as an empty bottle when I came to the Netherlands. Because you had no idea what I was carrying. I knew the content, although it felt like ballast at first. 

Now I know what's going on. I am Dutch and Persian. I live here, while I make carry with me. The future cannot exist without the present and the past, someone once explained to me. I am a little of all of it and I will remain a little of all of it. Society thinks in frames and asks for choices, but I don't want to make a choice. 

It is and and and not either or. 

My children came to the Netherlands when they were two and five. They are as Dutch as anything. But the Iranian roots remain: they can speak a bit of Persian and know how to welcome visitors. They are all too. Yet I see them struggling with their identity from time to time. Because they get questions about it. Crazy actually, how much value we attach to where our cradle was.

I want to be seen for who I am   – because of my Persian background, my flight experience and my years in the Netherlands. All chapters of my story are worth reading. 'Until the day' is not a book about starting over in a new country, but about moving on in a different environment. 

To survive. 

Some people are asking for a sequel to this book. "How did it turn out, Mardjan?" Nobody knows. Because I'm still alive. Just like you. I want to be scattered here, because here I found freedom. But until my last breath the chapters will fill. And you participate in the ending of the story.