Mission impossible

I pulled out my mobile phone from my pocket and checked a new message. “Everyone is here. We are waiting for you. Where are you, brother?” It was from my friend or as I like to call her my sister, Xiaojing. She was leaving in few days to go back to Atlanta after spending a year in California and she had a goodbye party at our friend, Mirte’s place in Palo Alto. I stopped to text her back. I was exhausted, my hands were shaking and my fingers were sweaty. I tried to focus. “Coming… just passed Redwood City…have 20 more miles… will join you later” I texted back and put the mobile back in my pocket The sun was about to set and my story, was about to be written.

In late 18^th century, after Spanish explorers reached California and established their colonies there, they set up a missionarysystem that was going along the coast of California from San Diego in the south to San Francisco and beyond it in the north. The mastermind behind the project was a very controversial Catholic priest of Franciscan order, Father Junipero Serra. The main purpose of the mission system was to spread Christianity among the Native Americans but there are many controversies around how they achieved that purpose by enslaving the natives. There was a road to connect all these missions called “El Camino Real” or the royal road which has been turned into highway 101 for the most part today. There is a good part of this road still in use in the San Francisco Bay area and in fact this is a major street that connects San Francisco to San Jose. El Camino Real was a 600-mile (950 Km) road stretching from south to north connecting 21 missions. The idea was that a roughly 30-mile (48 Km) distance between each two missions can be traveled on horse in one long day. When I first came to the bay area and lived near this road, I became fascinated by the idea of connecting north and south of California by one road through 21 missions. What if I could travel along this historic road and see all of California? That seemed like a dream until a magic summer morning when I realized I have to do something remarkable to remember and be remembered with.

I woke up around 8 am on Sunday, September 13, 2015 in the bunk bed of my tiny studio in San Francisco. I had just recently come out of long lasting injury in my right leg; sheen splints. For the good part of last two or three months, I was not able to run or do any serious workout that needed my both legs. As an avid runner I was sad and depressed.  It was just a week before that I finally tried and succeeded to run to the top of Lassen Peak in northern California. But I was not still sure if I am ready to run a very long distance, longer than anything I had done before. The idea was simple but hugely ambitious; I wanted to go from San Francisco to San Jose or better o say from Mission San Francisco de Asis to Mission Santa Clara de Asis along El Camino Real. On the Google map, it says it is 45 miles (72 Km). I was not sure if I can do it at all. The longest distance I had run before that was 28 miles (45 Km) between Redwood City and San Francisco that I had run few months earlier when I was living in Redwood City.

As I was making breakfast, I thought about it more and more and I convinced myself that I was not ready to run it. I was not sure if the sheen splints would be back if I start running that long, or even if they would not, there was always the risk of dehydration when you run for that long in the summer plus I had no idea how long I would be gone for. What if it takes the whole day and what about the night? Where would I stay? I was scared and unsure, my confidence was shaky and my brain that I trust the most to optimize my life and give me the optimal solution at every little decision I am making in my life, was in disarray. Finally I managed to make up my mind. It was Xiaojing’s party and my birthday so I have to be with my friends. I decided to take my bike and ride it from San Francisco to Santa Clara along El Camino. This would count as my first mission-to-mission journey and then, I promised to myself, I will run the next ones, all 20 missions after this one. Having made my decision, I quickly geared back into my usual perfectionist mode. I changed and got into my cycling cloths, took my bike with few snack bars and water bottles and left the house in a journey to my first “mission”.

I rolled down Fillmore Street and started passing intersections one after another very quickly, then something started to change inside me. I felt a growing emptiness inside, I felt I was getting away from the person I was, the person I knew and I had worked really hard to become. I felt something big was missing in me. I was not myself and it bothered me the most. I have loved cycling since I learned how to bike when I was a little boy. Bicycles have been an integrated part of me for most of my life so riding a bicycle for me as natural as running, I ride my bike so freely and so happily that most of the time I forget that it is actually a mechanical machine that may not always operate the way I want and may fail me in dangerous circumstances. But honestly I have never cared about this. But that day, that Sunday morning, I felt something that I had not experienced before. I felt that the picture of me on my bike was something that does not belong to that sacred moment in my life. I hit the brakes and stopped. I was unsure and confused. Something was not right and I did not know what but then I started feeling it, hearing it from deep inside me. “I have to run the missions”. Suddenly I felt calm and confidence again. I was me again and now everything became clearer to me. I knew what I have to do and I was ready for it. No more doubts, no more fear. No more overthinking and underestimating. I was myself again: the adventurous, risk-seeker, confident me was back. I turned and started pedaling toward my home. I was determined and knew what I want and I could not wait to get home. California was calling me.

Veni, vidi, vici

I woke up around 8 am on Sunday, September 13, 2015 in the bunk bed of my tiny studio in San Francisco. I knew right away that something big is waiting for me that day. First of all it was my birthday so if nothing, I had to celebrate it somehow. The night before, I had gone to bed thinking about my dream project. I wanted to to something unique and unusual, something that would define me forever and would add a new dimension to my being and my identity. "Who I am?", I had been asking myself constantly since I remember but every year since I turned 30, I had been revisiting this question trying to find new answers to it. I had listed 30 things that had made me who I was at the age of 30 and had written extensively about them. It was a killer exercise and now few years after that, I was ready to add some more big items to the list.

Running was going to make it to the list pretty easily, as well as San Francisco itself or in a more general way, California. And now I had an opportunity, a desire, and a wish to make them merge and marry and make a something new, unique and special. Something magical like my every single day in San Francisco. I was ready to add to the magic and beauty of this place and I was ready to be initiated into what I considered to be the true San Francisco lifestyle. It was a big day for me, I was turning 35 and I was about to engrave California into my heart and make my mark on it in return. But it was not just all symbolic or a fantasy. It was a paradigm shift for me to finally find a place to call home and feel belonged to.

I was born and raised in Isfahan in Iran, a beautiful oriental city with an essence and reputation of one-thousand-and-one-night cities. I grow up in a relatively new part of the city and I loved the city with all its hustle and bustle. I moved to Tehran and lived there for three years after I finished my undergrads but I knew it is not my city. In fact, even Isfahan never made me feel happy or excited about my life. it was a beautiful city with lots of historic mosques and monuments, a beautiful river with old bridges over it, and pretty parks along the river. I had always felt foreigner in my life and I had good reasons to believe it is true. In order for you to understand why I felt that way, I have to give you a little bit of my family background. Both my parents are coming from a small village in the Zagros mountains, about 90 Km west of Isfahan. My father moved to Isfahan to go to highschool and later when he finished his university in Tehran, he came back to work in Iran's then largest industrial complex, the Isfahan steel plant. My mother moved to Isfahan with her parents and went to school there. Since both their families were from the same village, it was easy for them to meet and get married. They decided to live in a part of the city which was historically an Armenian district. In the late 16th century, the king of Persia made Isfahan his capital and ordered a big community of Armenians to move from Armenia in the northern part of Iran to the center to help him build his capital. Armenians to date have been always famous for being hard working with special interest in manufacturing and architecture. The capital and the center were being built on the north side of the river and since Armenians were Christians they were settled on the other side of the river next to the Jewish district in the south to have a safe distance from majority Muslim residents of the north. Over the next hundreds of years, as the city grew many of these small communities mixed and migrated but the Armenian district remained almost intact. So when my parents decided to move to that part of the city, they were among a few other non-Armenian families who were living there.

I grow up in that part of the city which was isolated with some invisible lines from the other parts. Sure, we had the same stores and businesses as in other parts but there was something more profound that separated us. A feeling of being minority and being looked at differently. I remember when I was walking back home from the school everyday, I was passing groups of Armenian students in their navy blue uniforms and they were all over our neighborhood. I was the only one who was not dresses in school uniform and didn't speak Armenian. Sometimes there were bullies and sometimes there was just heavy looks. The outcome was devastating for me, it made me feel like a foreigner in my hometown, a funny minority because I was part of an overwhelming majority of non-Armenian Iranians but I was in minority in this specific neighborhood. When I finally graduated from University and moved to Tehran, I thought I was going to blend and integrate pretty quickly in the melting pot. But it did not take that long for me to realize that I was still a foreigner. In Tehran, my Isfahani accent was like my Jewish star. As soon as I was opening my mouth to say something, or ask an address or  order food at a restaurant, the first thing people would pick up was my accent. "Are you from Isfahan or..?" they would ask with an unpleasant curiosity. It made me feel like a stranger in my own country. How can I not fit in even in my own hometown, in the capital, or wherever I go? And it was not all that, I had like many other people in that age, lots of confusion about my religious beliefs, cultural upbringing, political ideologies, and of course my sexual identity.
Few years later I moved out of Iran and started a journey around the world to find myself. I found good answers for some of my confusing questions, and I found new questions that made me even more confused. But one thing remained constant until that Sunday, September 13, 2015, my 35th birthday: I never felt I belong to anywhere. I remained a foreigner wherever I went and in every city i lived. This sense of not-belonging was so strong that at some point I started questioning the ideas like nationalism and patriotism in all form. I thought it was really absurd for anyone to endanger his or her well-being for a piece of land. "Why can't we all feel the same about everywhere? Why do you prefer certain geographical locations to others? Why we always think "home" is the best place on earth?".  I was almost sure that I will never call any place home, or hold it so dear to my heart that I would be ready to die for it. I thought if things get worse, I can always move and I will feel the same everywhere I go. I am always a "foreigner" so why should I prefer a place to another?

Interesting enough, my first home after living Iran was in Armenia! I was now a true minority in the country of Armenians. In a sense, my childhood neighborhood had grown to the size of a whole country. For the most part I could pass off as Armenian as long as I would keep my mouth shut. I looked like Armenians. In fact i remember once in a supermarket a nice old lady behind me in the cashier line was so surprised that I could not speak Armenian. She was certain that someone in my family  should be Armenian because "how come you can have such a unique big Armenian nose without being actually Armenian?" she asked while drawing the shape of my big hawk nose in the air with her finger. I was glad that I could blend in and feel belonged to even it is only for a little bit. My nose helped me blend in one more time when I was living in Abu Dhabi few years later. There I would pass off as a real Emirati and one of the elites (less than 20% of people who live in UAE are Emiratis, the rest are expatriates mainly from Southeast Asia).
The story changed dramatically when I moved to Kenya the year after. There was no way I could pass off as a Kenyan. In the first time in my life my skin color became a part of my identity. In Iran at least in the places I lived, and in Armenia the minorities are not about their skin color. There are religious, ethnic, or cultural minorities but skin color rarely bears any privilege or disadvantage in the extend that exists in the West. In Africa I came to the realization that for many locals there, I am just another "Muzungu". I loved it even if it was used sometimes as a derogatory term. I remember walking on the streets of Kampala in Uganda on the New Year eve of 2008 and a Matatu (a minivan used for public transportation) passed by. A guy pulled his head out of the window and yelled at me "Muzungu!" while laughing. It was so embarrassing to be singled out but at the bottom of my heart I liked it because at least showed that I am, good or bad, different from others.

When I moved to the US, the very first thing I experienced as a true "cultural shock" was the fact that no one was "American" as I thought. Everyone was an immigrant and almost no one was speaking English. I could not believe it. This was the story in the areas within and around the New York City.

But when I moved to Atlanta in Georgia the race and skin color became a defining factor again. Although I was spending most of time at school with other international students and never really felt discriminated, there were few times during my time there that I felt my skin color is a defining factor. I remember once I had to fill an application for the background check at a police station and I noticed that I'm the only non-black person there. As I was filling the form, I got to the question about my race and since there was no Iranian or Middle Eastern listed there, I checked "Others". I turned the form in and waited for them to process it. Few minutes later an officer came out and called my name (actually she called some very strange name but since I was the only foreigner there I realize it should be my name). I got up and went to her. She looked at me and asked why I had picked "Others" for my race. I was puzzled and wanted to explain but she just looked at me and while correcting my application for me, said "you are WHITE, sir!". I was not white, at least before that moment  was sure that I was not white. In my whole life if anybody would have asked me about my race, answering "white" was as far for me as any other color, "black", "brown", etc. I was pretty sure I was Iranian or at most Middle Eastern. But "white"? no way. After that day, I realized that I am white or at least for people who care about this stuff, I am white. So now I am checking "white" on any application without even thinking about it anymore. That day in Atlanta, I was assigned my race. That solved some of my confusions about who I was but did not help me find an answer for the person I really was, a foreigner inside.